Sticks and Stones and “Hate Speech”

What exactly is “Hate Speech”? Nice little article by Donald Jeffries forwarded to me by Jon Eisen. MH

Do we still have a First Amendment?

I’ve been watching some of the Senate hearings on social media censorship, where Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is the star witness. All Americans should watch these “representatives” in action. Every Democrat now is openly and utterly opposed to any traditional concept of free speech. Violently opposed. It must be seen to be believed. 

Opposition to true freedom of speech goes back to the founding of the Republic. Those led by the bankers’ favorite Founder, Alexander Hamilton, never wanted a Bill of Rights. The Constitution only became a palatable alternative to the Articles of Federation because of the inclusion of these precious rights. The second President, John Adams, used the vile Alien and Sedition Acts to lock up those who disagreed with his policies. Abraham Lincoln raised this to a tyrannical art form during the Civil War. Of all the awful precedents “Honest” Abe established, imprisoning his political enemies was the most damaging to the notion of liberty. 

Free speech was given a disturbing asterisk during the Woodrow Wilson administration. That highly ranked president threw World War I protesters in prison. They took their case to the Supreme Court, and “liberal” Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (like Wilson an enthusiastic eugenicist) upheld his right to imprison them. He cited the now infamous “You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater” excuse for doing so. As I have noted many times, those protesting our entrance into World War I were not yelling fire in a crowded theater by any definition. As far as I can determine, there was little or no protest to this landmark ruling, which paved the way for censorship. 

The Hays Code controlled the content of motion pictures, starting in 1935. This was censorship driven from the right, by the likes of the Catholic League of Decency. Where is the Catholic League of Decency now, when we truly need them? They can’t possibly approve of transgender mutilation and drag strip shows. That’s a whole lot worse than married couples sharing the same bed, or the lovely Loretta Young showing too much calf. I guess there’s no room in America 2.0 for any group with “decency” in the title, given the overall indecency of the place. 

Franklin Roosevelt didn’t really have to worry about censoring anyone during World War II. The America First Committee (which was made up almost exclusively of classical liberals, including Joseph P. Kennedy) disbanded upon the “sneak” attack on Pearl Harbor. Evidently, what anti-war protesters remained understood the ramifications of the Supreme Court ruling, and opted to remain out of prison. Rebel poet Ezra Pound made pro-fascist comments in Italian broadcasts, and FDR had him captured and imprisoned, including time in an outdoor cage in the desert. Then he was locked away for a decade in a mental institution. The message remained: certain viewpoints and words are not covered under the First Amendment.

In fact, that has become a mantra with today’s anti-First Amendment authoritarians. They will chime, “hate speech is not protected under the First Amendment.” The word “hate,” of course, appears nowhere within the Constitution. “Hate speech” would have been an incomprehensible idea to Jefferson, and George Mason, and Patrick Henry, and other Founders who were free speech purists. And yet “hate speech” has become entrenched in our political and business worlds, and increasingly the legal system. Hate Speech should be called what it really is; Thought Crime. “Hate” is a thought or opinion that offends those in power. 

Very few people feel about free speech the way I do. I’m a civil libertarian. There aren’t many of us left. The ACLU no longer cares about civil liberties. They really ought to change their name. Kind of like the NAACP- why do they still have “Colored People” as part of their name? Recently, a member of Congress made the horrific mistake of saying “colored person,” and was suitably chastised for it by the usual suspects. He attempted to apologize- this is what almost all Thought Criminals do in America 2.0- and say he meant “persons of color.” Which is not only cool, but “Woke.” If anyone can explain the difference between “colored people” and “persons of color,” please let me know. It was the ultimate semantical crime. That’s our “democracy.” 

The vast majority of Americans do not believe in free speech as the founders intended it. The First Amendment was created to declare that some inalienable rights come from God, not from any government. But why would we expect those who don’t believe in God- which would include most of our leaders- to respect any rights that come from him? Most of us instinctively want to shut down someone who has a large public platform, if they are saying something that offends us. If they don’t have a large platform, and are someone we know personally, we are more apt to yell “Shut up!” or perhaps even punch them. The whole Leftist slogan of “punch a Nazi” gets little opposition. You just simply claim those you disagree with are “Nazis.”

When I was a radical wayward youth, the oldsters from the World War II generation would shut down any debate with name calling. “Commie.” “Red.” “Pinko.” “Hippie.” “Freak.” “Druggie.” “Burnout.” There were many names. But for the most part, society itself, even though that generation was in charge everywhere, didn’t institutionalize this. While they sometimes would fire a male for having his hair too long, there was no sense that an overriding agenda was being adhered to across the board. During this same time, Affirmative Action was everywhere, and those “Equal Opportunity Employer” signs were a feature on the door fronts and advertising of every company. 

In our present draconian society, the name calling is much, much worse than it was at the height of the Cold War. Your free speech can be restricted now if it is adjudged to be “hateful,” “racist,” “White Supremacist,” “homophobic,” “transphobic,” “xenophobic,” “sexist,” or if you “mis-gender” or “mis-pronoun” someone, among other things. The lunacy is evolving, so there will inexorably be more increasingly deranged examples. If the right someone is “offended,” your speech is not “protected.” Fundamentalist Christians get offended at most of the cultural product being produced today. But they aren’t permitted to be offended. Only the emotions of some are important. Some feelings are more important than others. 

You know we have reached the heights of Orwellian madness when those who are betrothed to censorship can promote themselves against “banning books.” The same people that wanted to ban Dr. Seuess and Mark Twain, are apoplectic about the book Gender Queer and similar works, which openly depict sexual acts between grown men and little boys, being pulled from middle school libraries. Those who cling to works promoting the transgender lunacy are the first ones to demand that books questioning some sacrosanct aspect of America 2.0 be discarded down the memory hole. “Hate has no home here,” as a shocking number of signs in my neighborhood proclaim. Except their hate, for those who they label as “haters.” 

Every elected politician, every judge, swears an oath to obey and uphold the Constitution. Now they’ve been failing to do this since Chief Justice John Marshall shattered the balance of powers with his Judicial Review, which angered Jefferson and altered the framers’ intentions. But now we have an increasing number of politicians- think “the Squad,” who literally don’t like or even believe in the Constitution. Since many of them also reject God, getting them to swear allegiance to a document they don’t support, with their hand upon a Bible, is utterly meaningless. And yet some of them will still maintain that the Constitution is “the law of the land.” When it suits their purposes. Otherwise, it’s just a racist vestige from dead White men. 

When I was growing up, we still learned the old “sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will never harm you” saying. Very sage advice, and crucial to any civilized society. No one utters this phrase any more. Speech itself now can not only be “dangerous,” but is a weapon. When wielded by “racists” or “White Supremacists.” For Black Lives Matter, or Trangenders ‘R Us, all speech is protected and a force for good. Think Gender Queer. What library could be without it? We must be free to “express” ourselves, unless those expressions are labeled as “racist,” “transphobic,” etc., by those who face no reprisals for anything they say. But if they’re “offended,” social justice warriors appear to be more concerned with words than violent crimes.

Test yourself. Would you put a limit on free speech? Okay, if someone really did yell “fire” in a theater, that would be irresponsible, reprehensible behavior. But what should the penalty be? I doubt that very many individuals have ever been charged with or convicted for yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. As we must always remember, the term was coined to defend the right of the government to imprison anti-war protesters. There have always been laws against slander. You have the freedom of speech to do that, but you run the risk of being sued for defamation. It isn’t really an abridgment of free speech. 

For most Americans, some speech “goes too far.” Questioning Sandy Hook. Flat Earth theory. Questioning “science.” Disputing the 2020 election. Pizzagate. Should we just add a postcript to the First Amendment, which restricts Congress “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,” to read, “except for the following?” How far do you take this? Can’t you see that, for instance, “cancelling” Alex Jones could lead to “cancelling” Tucker Carlson, down to the more milquetoast conservatives like Hannity or Breitbart? It’s obviously a very slipperry slope, when you’re ceding ground on what is “too far” or “too extreme.” Like “hate speech,” those definitions are in the eye of the beholder. Do we really want tyrants defining that?

We’ve come a long way since I was a teen in the 1970s. George Carlin first hit it big talking about the words you couldn’t say on television. The Left at that time were the ones fighting censorship, which was advocated by the Right, primarily because of nudity or profanity. Elvis’s pelvis couldn’t be shown on television. Religious groups burned the Beatles records. And the nudity the “blue noses” were up in arms about was strictly female nudity. I can’t imagine what the Catholic League of Decency would think- if they were around today- about all the gratuitous male nudity in films and TV. And even children’s programming now often features profanity. 

Cancel Culture itself is in conflict with the First Amendment. Untold numbers of people have been fired from their jobs over the past few years, for comments made on social media, on their own time. This is an outrageous abuse of civil liberty, yet very few people have protested. If we don’t have the right to express ourselves online when we’re not at work, couldn’t employers also fire you if you attended an “offensive” movie, or an “offensive” concert? How many MyPillows have you bought from Mike Lindell, anyhow? Lindell appears on the verge of being “cancelled” himself. And again, millions will cheer. Good! Like Alex Jones and Trump, he deserved it! 

Freedom of speech is tied directly into the sentiments expressed by Voltaire, and popularized in this country by the great Patrick Henry. “I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to my dying day your right to say it.” Profound words that thrilled me as a child, and obviously inspired by the Golden Rule. Which precious few people follow, or even believe in, these days. This is why the Founders must be “cancelled.” Their actions, and their words, contradict the entire narrative of America 2.0. Their War for Independence was basically a giant hate crime. 

I had an argument on Facebook a year ago or so, with a woman who chastised me over free speech being a “White invention.” She literally said, “that’s a White thing.” I asked her if she didn’t want free speech, and she just kept trying to make it a racial debate. So obviously she didn’t believe in free speech. But then again, most people in present day ‘Murrica would agree with her. I’d like to see an honest poll on whether or not the First Amendment is a good thing. I don’t think they’d have to rig the results to come up with a win for the anti-free speech brigade. 

It’s not easy standing up for free speech, when most people don’t believe in it, and your government wants to punish those who advocate it. I can’t stop doing it at this point. I don’t relate to “that’s too extreme,” or “that’s too far.” You can’t restrict free speech, or you don’t have it. Limiting the parameters of debate has been their game for a long time. The internet significantly widened those parameters, for a few decades. Now censorship is chic. All the celebrities will tell you that. At some point, they will just claim free speech is a “conspiracy theory” or something. You have to want it to save it, and sadly that’s not the case for most people in this country. 

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(1) “I Protest” by Donald Jeffries | Substack