Freedom of Speech

[KMack]

The first amendment protects hate speech. Are you in support of people expressing their conscience in peace or do you support hate speech laws?
Europe has many hate speech laws criminalizing some expression of thought, such as Holocaust denial.

Hate speech is something the far left created long ago as an attempt to silence those they disagree with.

[KMack]

Do you think freedom of speech entails the right to offend?

Would you place restrictions on hate crime laws?

Do you support restricting seditious speech (speech to overthrow the current government, like sharia law does).

Some people get offended at the drop of a hat, others nothing offends them. It is almost impossible to offend me. Hate crime laws are stupid.

[Petros Agapetos]

Does freedom of speech entail the right to sedition and treason?

What about slander, libel, and defamation of character (if it is not true)?
In other words, should lying be protected under free speech too?

[Petros Agapetos]

Hate speech is something the far left created long ago as an attempt to silence those they disagree with.

You must mean the authoritarian left. Libertarian leftists are for the freedom of speech, such as myself.
On the political left-right spectrum there is a vertical axis that stands for authoritarianism- libertarianism. I identify with the libertarian left.

[Petros Agapetos]

What speech should be criminalized? and what speech should be given special protections?

[Petros Agapetos]

State of free speech in other countries

1. Australia requires that the government approve all video games before they are sold in the country, and now seems on its way to making an Internet censorship machine to rival the Great Firewall of China.

2. Canada has a ban on hate speech, which has recently stirred up a number of high-profile controversies:
In 2002, a fundamentalist named Stephen Boissoin wrote a letter into his local paper, the Red Deer Advocate, criticizing gay people for being on the fast train to hell. He was convicted and ordered to write a letter of apology. This was later overturned on appeal. Human rights complaints were made against a magazine, the Western Standard, that published the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons. Ezra Levant, publisher of the magazine, was brought to a hearing before the Alberta Human Rights Commission, and, despite his best efforts, was acquitted. Maclean's was also the subject of a human rights complaint for publishing "Islamophobic" material. The human rights officer assigned to the case said "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." You can imagine the response to that.

3. Europe also limits speech. The European Convention on Human Rights guarantees free speech in matters of public interest; this risks powerful pressure groups defining the public interest their way. Laws against racist speech, Holocaust denial and hate speech of varying kinds exist in many European countries.

In the United Kingdom many types of speech are potentially hate speech and potentially illegal. Also in the UK, a 2006 law banning "incitement to religious hatred" was strongly criticized by some comedians (who probably remembered the flap surrounding Life of Brian) and by the National Secular Society. Liberty, the UK equivalent of the ACLU, is uneasy over many restrictions to free speech.

In the United Kingdom, it is illegal to sell video recordings that have not been rated by the British Board of Film Classification.
A throng of countries also enforce hate speech laws.

Do you support these hate speech laws in these countries?

[Petros Agapetos]

[Petros Agapetos]

Would you ban the speech of this radical Islamic cleric? He is using the freedom of speech to recruit terrorists.

[Petros Agapetos]

What limitations on the freedom of expression do you support?

I will tell you mine:

libel
slander
defamation of character
abusive language (workplace, schools, not online)
harassment
incitement to commit violence

[Petros Agapetos]

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