PAM BONDI IS WRONG: HATE SPEECH IS FREE SPEECH | THE DAILY ECONOMY
The Founders codified free speech in the First Amendment because they were acutely aware that all the values indispensable to democracy depended upon it, but even more so, that if it were not permanently inscribed in the Constitution as the civil equivalent of Holy Writ, as an article of faith, it would be subject to the vagaries, whims, preferences and prejudices of the most powerful, and those striving for power. It would be manipulated into meaninglessness rather than standing as a bulwark of liberty. Free speech is both a shield and a sword which represents the rule of law and distinguishes it from the rule of men. Where speech is not free there can be no enduring principle for fundamentally fair and just governance, no equality of opportunities, only arbitrariness devolving into anarchy.
Paradoxically, hate speech is to be reviled and respected simultaneously. Where hate speech is prohibited free speech will be sacrificed and succumb, and without free speech we are doomed as a species to be returned to the jungle from which we evolved once again to be subjected to dehumanization by authoritarian rule. We exercise our freedom more perfectly when we fight to preserve hate speech, counter intuitively our best guarantor of free speech, upon which all else that is congruent with liberty depends.
“If not for the pen of Paine the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.”
He who owns the inkwells and aggregates the power to define words and phrases controls the lives of citizens and the destiny of nations. We despise speech that is hateful and denounce it with all our might yet we remain obliged to defend it with the zeal it deserves as the unlikely sentinel that assures our safe passage down the perilous corridors of history.
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/pam-bondi-is-wrong-hate-speech-is-free-speech/