THE SENSIBLE CANADIAN OBSERVATION that speech was a right but it isn't the only right has it right, as far as I'm concerned. The Canadian anti-hate speech law is far better than free speech absolutism which gives words more rights than the objects of lies and hate speech are given.* The victims of lies and hate speech might have that "more speech" which the preening idiots of the American civil liberties industry give as the universal antidote for the most deadly of hate speech though those idiots - Ivy League JD'd or LLD'd or credentialed in some just as bogus degree in journalism or whatever - don't seem to be able to notice that if their victims have "more speech" the hate speakers have their "more speech" on top of their hate speech ("more-more")A ND GIVEN THE FINANCIAL INTEREST THAT MANY OF THE RICHEST AMONG US HAVE IN LIES AND HATE SPEECH AND THE GIANT MEGAPHONE OF THE COMMERCIAL MEDIA that hate-more-speech is louder than the speech of their victims ever is. If "more speech" was the antidote for hate speech and lies that the idiots of the ACLU pretend it is then slavery, women's' subjugation, wage-slavery, etc. would have ended quite abruptly centuries ago instead of not only persisting but flourishing sixty one years after the Sullivan Decision made lies told in the mass media theoretical equal of truth being told. Only the golden age of liberty that was the promise of the free speech theorists of that age up till today has not worked out that way, at all. "Civil liberties" as it has come to be in reality means that millions can die after living lives of slavery and subjugation and it's no concern of the "free speech-press" crowd if all the blather in the world doesn't change that. The most rational view of this by the victims of lies and hate speech is that the "civil libertarians" can FOAD.
It is the most telling thing about the wrongness of the ACLU types, that Strossen idiot, the pantomime Fredrick Douglass, Cornel West (he has every right to dress up like him and I have every right to point out he ain't no Fredrick Douglass) is that today the biggest, fattest proponents of "free speech" "free press" are not only the liars and haters but also THOSE WHO IN POWER ARE ATTACKING THE FREE SPEECH AND PRESS RIGHT TO TELL THE TRUTH THEY HATE SO MUCH and that the "more speech" of the civil liberties industry is failing so abjectly in defeating them. American Nazis and fascists (white supremacists) and Republican-fascists are the biggest fattest "free speechers" there are. Look at how some of the biggest fattest "civil liberties" lawyers like Dershowitz **is thick as a thief with them these days!
The idea that since the courts are unreliable in the even-handed, non-interested administrations of the law that we are to always give up to the hate talkers and liars is absurd. They have shown themselves to be just as capable of being biased and entirely interested under "free speech-press absolutism" as they have been under any other aspect of legal action. They may feel the need, on occasion, to make some phony, bogus rationalization of their suppression of speech and truth telling ESPECIALLY WHEN THOSE PROVE TO BE A REAL DANGER TO THEIR PREFERRED PARTY AND IDEOLOGY but they'll lie through their teeth to back the suppression of it. Watch the Roberts Court in regard to any university that really challenges the Trump regime's suppression and wholesale control - control which so many of the most elite educational institutions HAVE ALREADY SURRENDERED TO, SOMETIMES IN ADVANCE, as well as the big networks and the few big rags on paper.
The question as to who will decide what is a lie and what is hate speech, well, the answer to that is we will. With all of the risks and dangers of that, we will because no one else can do it. The risk of letting lies and hate speech reign are far more certain than the theoretical risks of making that a matter of the law, risks that we take in so many other instances.
What we can be certain of is that the likes of the Roberts Court, the lower Trump-McConnell-Grassley packed courts will do whatever they have to to suppress the truth being told whenever that endangers the Republican-fascism that they favor. That is on those occasions when truth telling isn't already effectively banned by the corporate media, the networks, the big online operations and, when that doesn't work, their goons with their very real as well as threatened violence and endangerment of the truth tellers. And make no mistake about that, IF TRUTH TELLING REIGNED, THEY WOULDN'T.
Scratch a professional civil libertarian and you'll find someone who's really OK with oppression and even murder. Especially the lawyers but even many of the academics.
* I suspect one of the reasons for that perverted inversion of values is that words can be a property of some monetary value whereas People are not. The perversion of the Anglo-American legal tradition cares far, far more about objects of monetary value than it does human lives. I dream of a time when Americans and others are so fed up with the perverted values of our legal tradition and systems that they scrap it for something that puts life above property. It is one of the most effective refutations of the widespread superstition that the American legal system is based on Scripture that the Mosaic Law and the even more radical economics of Jesus are far from the Anglo-American system that turns property and money into the all-powerful idol of the civil law. I'd trade the entire legal code for the teachings of Jesus and I'd fully expect that the entire society would be better off, though the rich would be leveled out of their wealth. We should be so lucky as to have an egalitarian update of the Mosaic Law as the basis of it instead of the perverted neo-feudal English common law tradition.
** Speaking of the Dersh. I used to say "he's an advocate of torture who used to play a civil liberties lawyer on TV." Look at how his relationship with the truth and hate speech developed and how these days he's supporting not only torture but also genocide.
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