[throwanem]

I'm no lawyer either, but I think you are likely to have a very hard time finding someone who is, yet imagines "hate speech" to be a concept with any existence in the law of the United States.

Of all the principles we've ever espoused in this country, we have perhaps been most consistent in our national conviction that the answer to wrong speech is right speech - not less speech but more speech.

That is, until recently. We've lately seen the rise of a strain of thought in which not only is it acceptable to answer mere words - however cruel - with the full and mighty force of law, but to suggest such a course might reasonably inspire trepidation is itself worthy at best of contempt, and the many examples in history of why such trepidation might be justified are ignored in unseemly haste to crush those who speak in a fashion deemed insufficiently satisfactory.

In such a strain of thought, the problem with McCarthyism is not McCarthyism in its own right, but rather that the direction in which it was pointed was wrong - the weapon should not be put down and never picked up again, but merely wielded against a different target than last time.

Is that really the lesson to draw from such an unsavory example? Is there really any practical benefit in such a lesson for the causes such a strain of thought claims so loudly to espouse? The left has fought to silence its opponents for decades, more or less by whatever means fell to hand. The result thus produced, this very month, is remarkable, but not for its loveliness. It will not grow more lovely with time. Does it really seem likely that the tactics which have brought us to such a strait are blameless, and that only more energy is required?