Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
I am indeed quite confident that a government that imposed restrictions on Nazi/white supremacist hate speech would be on my side. What percentage of German citizens, do you reckon, are opposed to the anti-Nazi laws in that country because of muh freeze peach?
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Germany is a different country with a different history. The American constitution isn't set up to treat various kinds of unpopular speech differently. If Nazis qualify as a special case, you can be sure legislators will be lining up to add Communists to the list of prescribed groups. Then conservative Islam.
The progressive left has lost sight of the fact that they owe the the survival and eventual victory of liberal movements to free speech. Pretty much every gain we take for granted today started as deeply unpopular speech, which good, decent, law-abiding folk couldn't stomach. The reason it wasn't snuffed out is because of a legal fidelity to liberalism and free speech.
Go back and look at the history of the ACLU. Look at the fights they undertook. It's not inconsistent to defend the rights of Communists, black students, gay writers, and Nazis. It's inconsistent not to.