As the real world grows more tolerant of differences, the virtual world grows with hatred.
Complaints against groups on social networking sites that call for threats, violence and hatred toward people who are Jewish, black, gay or have disabilities are on the rise as Americans celebrate the 19th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the country rallies around its first black president, and gay marriage is legalized in some states.
Read it all and please choose your language online or elsewhere carefully.
This is very disturbing. The hatred directed against various groups is just sickening. But it’s also disturbing that this kind of hateful rhetoric will most likely boost and harden proposed “hate crime legislation” to target those who sincerely believe certain [i]behaviors[/i] are wrong, and who wish to speak out against these behaviors.
And we need to restrict this speech because?
What, exactly is hate speech, who decides that question, what restrictions should be placed upon it, who enforces those standards and what penalties ought to be paid for violating those standards?
We can’t even block pedophilic pornography. In what sense would trying to stop ‘hate speech’ be even possible?
#3 “Hate crime” is, of course, the first step toward “thoughtcrime”, while criminalizing “hate speech” is yet another step toward whittling away our first amendment principles of free speech, free press, and free religion in order to make way for “speakcrime”. Open access to all sorts of distasteful and deviant “expression” is the wool over the eyes of the people, in that we can parade around all the “worst” things we offer and say “See, speech is still free!” while we pave the way for legislation that will only be enforced against those the establishment deems to be hateful toward it.
There in that last line, by the way, is the true definition of “hate speech”: that which the establishment deems hateful toward it.
As for the “rising problem” of hate speech- 99.9% of all this “hate speech” comes from thirteen-to-fifteen year old boys trying to offend as many people as possible. Twenty years ago they would have been content with simple profanity. These days, four letter words just don’t have the punch they used to, but epithets and slurs seem to hit the sore spot.
Er, that should have been to “#2”, as I am of course “#3”, and not yet so egotistical as to respond to myself. Give me a few more years of church in Chicago.
Of course the type of derogatory speech directed at the former president, conservatives, and members of the Tea Parties and the like by Democratic leaders and other liberals (including the media) is exempt from the designation ‘hate speech’.