Topic: Poll: 51% of Democrats support criminalizing hate speech - page 2. (Read 1413 times)

Anyone who supports this legislation is a coward and does not support freedom of speech, people are finally learning what real freedom is about and it's accepting the consequences of your actions.

I dunno, I was talking about hate speech laws in another thread, I think I made it sound like I was for them, but I'm not! I live in Canada, that lady with the Mohamed cartoon show would face charges here. I don't feel that would be the correct thing to prosecute her on. She should be charged with wreckless endangerment and disturbing the peace. She's going out of her way to incite this madness. It's like teasing the guy you know is on the edge. You know he'll explode soon enough. Problem is, there's collateral damage usually. The guy you teased loses it and shoots everybody there, bystanders included. He's guilty of murder but the person who goaded him on needs to take some of the responsability.
Meanwhile, I actually think that all the Islamist radicals should be killed though and maybe this type of stuff is just what we need to flush em all out. Was Pam Gellar even at that event? Bet she had Kevlar and full security backup

just what i was saying yesterday. jewish liberals are 100% behind efforts to bring in hate speech laws. they have done it in canada and most of europe already. they force third world muslim immigrants upon us then make it difficult to reverse the policy by banning any discussion of it.

Remember who supports freedom of speech and who does not.

Note: Hate speech, not hate crimes. YouGov asked people about hate crimes for its poll too and found bipartisan support for the federal law that provides steeper penalties for crimes motivated by hatred of the victim’s race, religion, gender, or national origin. Sixty-four percent of Dems gave thumbs-up to that versus 54 percent of Republicans. A plurality of Republicans also support expanding that law to target hate crimes committed against gays: 44 percent say yes versus 30 percent who say no.

Hate-crimes laws matter in the sentencing phase. If you’re guilty of the underlying offense, then you can be punished more severely depending upon what your motive was. A hate-speech law is different in that it treats hate as the offense itself. All you have to do is verbalize your thoughtcrime against a protected group and you’re facing prison. Our intellectual superiors in Europe cherish their hate-speech laws but the First Amendment makes them anathema in the U.S.


Independents and Republicans are heavily opposed (although, alarmingly, not quite to a majority degree among GOPers) but Democrats and liberals — proud guardians of the free-speech movement in the 1960s — are ready to censor. The best spin I can put on this for lefties is that YouGov’s question asked if they’d support a law that criminalizes comments that “advocate genocide or hatred” against a particular group. Could be that some people who said yes focused on the first part of that, genocide, rather than the second and figured that “advocating genocide” is close enough to making a credible violent threat against a person that it can and should be made illegal too. It can’t (unless you’re doing your advocating in front of a mob that’s whipped up and ready to attack someone), but a question asking exclusively about “hatred” would have been better. An interesting footnote to all this: Given America’s history of racism against blacks, you would think they might support hate-speech laws more than any other group. They do support those laws more than whites (44/34 in favor among blacks versus 32/43 opposition among whites) but not as much as Latinos do. Latinos favor them 49/20, a wider gap in support than you find even among self-identified liberals. On the other hand, the left-leaning 18-34 group doesn’t support hate-speech laws much more than any other age demographic does. They break 38/37. Seniors breaks 35/39.


Support across the board. This is another question that could have benefited from better wording, though: “Desecration” could mean anything from aggressive vandalism, like smashing a religious statue or graffiting a church’s walls, to mockery that doesn’t involve property crimes. (I.e. a difference similar to the difference between hate crimes and hate speech.) The question was inspired by the case in Pennsylvania where a 14-year-old went up to a statue of Jesus and — well, see for yourself. Jonathan Turley has the photo. When YouGov asked whether that kid should spend up to two years in jail for that specific act of desecration, respondents split 36/47 against. Among Republicans, it was 40/46. Among Democrats, it was … 44/38. That’s appalling but it makes sense given their response to the hate-speech question. If you want to criminalize offensive expression, as many liberals seem inclined to do, why not hit the 14-year-old with prison time for insulting Jesus? Coming soon, presumably: Blasphemy laws.



http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/02/poll-51-of-democrats-support-criminalizing-hate-speech/