RIGHTS that are not understood or valued can be too easily taken away. That's why the results of a poll by Rasmussen Reports are troubling.
Rasmussen's survey found one in four Americans (28 percent) believes it would be a good idea to ban hate speech. Rasmussen loosely defined hate speech as "comments intended to put down or incite violence against people on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and other legally protected categories."
In fairness, Rasmussen's definition of hate speech makes the question a little tricky to answer.
Simple hate speech is clearly protected, but speech that incites violence is a different matter.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes reasoned that the First Amendment protected all opinions, with the exception of speech "that produces or intended to produce a clear and imminent danger."
For example, inciting a riot is not protected by the First Amendment.
Barring incitement, speech has broad protections, and those protections represent an essential freedom in this country.
"The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market," Holmes wrote, "and that truth is the only ground which their wishes safely can be carried out."
In other words, free and protected speech allows for ideas to rise and fall based on their merit, not some arbitrary bureaucratic decision.
If one in four Americans would get their way and hate speech would be outlawed, who would decide what is protected and what isn't?
The answer, of course, is that government would make those decisions, clearing the way for the political winds of the moment to overrule the God-given rights of the people.
RIGHTS that are not understood or valued can be too easily taken away. That's why the results of a poll by Rasmussen Reports are troubling.
Rasmussen's survey found one in four Americans (28 percent) believes it would be a good idea to ban hate speech. Rasmussen loosely defined hate speech as "comments intended to put down or incite violence against people on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and other legally protected categories."
In fairness, Rasmussen's definition of hate speech makes the question a little tricky to answer.
Simple hate speech is clearly protected, but speech that incites violence is a different matter.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes reasoned that the First Amendment protected all opinions, with the exception of speech "that produces or intended to produce a clear and imminent danger."
For example, inciting a riot is not protected by the First Amendment.
Barring incitement, speech has broad protections, and those protections represent an essential freedom in this country.
"The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market," Holmes wrote, "and that truth is the only ground which their wishes safely can be carried out."
In other words, free and protected speech allows for ideas to rise and fall based on their merit, not some arbitrary bureaucratic decision.
If one in four Americans would get their way and hate speech would be outlawed, who would decide what is protected and what isn't?
The answer, of course, is that government would make those decisions, clearing the way for the political winds of the moment to overrule the God-given rights of the people.
Support for a ban on hate speech declined in Rasmussen's poll when those questioned were told the government would decide what constitutes hate speech.
Three-fourths of those who initially favored laws against hate speech then said they thought it would be better to allow free speech without government interference.
A government that can try to prevent you from saying mean things about other people can also try to keep you from criticizing the government.
The United States tried that over 200 years ago with the Sedition Act.
The Federalist-supported legislation made it a crime to publish "any false, scandalous and malicious writing" about the government, the Congress or the president. The law led to the arrest of editors of newspapers critical of the government.
James Madison, who belonged to the opposition Republican Party, argued against the Sedition Act, saying even speech that generated "a contempt, a disrepute, or hatred" of the government should be tolerated because only through the "free examination" of government can the people determine if such criticism is justified.
The United States standard for free speech protection is not shared by many of our contemporaries. The New York Times reports that Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have agreed to bans on hate speech.
In Canada, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal was to decide whether Canada's most popular news magazine - Maclean's - violated the law by publishing an article that critics say created hatred against Muslims.
The marketplace of ideas that Justice Holmes contemplated cannot flourish in a place where speech is so strictly limited - and that is especially true for speech that is unpopular and even hateful.
Kercheval is host of TalkLine, broadcast by the MetroNews Statewide Radio Network from 10 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday. The show can be heard locally on WCHS 580 AM.
