Five times that hate speech helps

One key argument the cancel culture uses to justify destroying people’s lives is their desire to stamp out “hate speech.” But is that a good idea? Besides the difficulty in defining hate speech, I wonder if hate speech might actually have a place in a democracy. Consider this:

1. Hate speech helps us ID the haters and precisely what they hate. If we ban hate speech, all we do is force those feelings into hiding where they continue to roil, bubble, and build. We can’t see or hear them, so we roll along, fat, dumb, and happy, thinking we changed their mind. Gone is any chance of understanding the problem or of fixing it.

2. While we may find someone’s speech offensive, it does expand the discussion. Speech is like a stick laid horizontally with the left and right ends labeled extreme. Chop off the end of the stick, and all you do is shorten the stick. There is still a left and right extreme, and there is always someone who loves one end of the stick so much they want to cut off the other end. Eventually, all that is left is a useless stub.  No problem is solved, and now there is not enough stick to have a meaningful conversation.

Comedian Bryan Callen speaking with Candace Owens, recently said that good art disturbs and that being offended is not an argument. So…

3. Maybe hate speech can toughen up the wimps in society. Remember the old saying, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Some folks need to grow up and grow a spine –  their ability to deal with the real world will grow too.

4.  Besides, hate speech is part of the package that makes freedom – well, free. A few years ago, The Supreme Court unanimously ruled  that there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. Instead, they write,  “… the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.'”

5. Besides revealing haters, the fight against hate speech also helps identify those who tend toward fascism and totalitarianism. If we are pushing to legally end the ability to write or say anything that might offend another – guess  what – we are following in the footsteps of fascists.

Listen to Barack Obama’s words from a 2016 commencement speech he gave at Howard University:

Don’t try to shut folks out. Don’t try to shut them down, no matter how much you might disagree with them. There’s been a trend around the country of trying to get colleges to disinvite speakers with a different point of view or disrupt a politician’s rally. Don’t do that—no matter how ridiculous or offensive, you might find the things that come out of their mouths.

Because, as my grandmother used to tell me, every time a fool speaks, they are just advertising their own ignorance. Let them talk. Let them talk. If you don’t, you just make them a victim, and then they can avoid accountability.

Please don’t take this to mean we don’t push back against hateful speech and bad ideas. But using hateful and purposefully offensive speech shows that you lack a good argument. Instead, speak with power and conviction your good arguments. Then listen and try to understand the other’s point of view before responding with anger and name-calling. Finally, be thankful that we live in a country where hate speech is legal.

Now we need to convince big tech.