BEN SHAPIRO
Freedom of speech is the right to express any opinion without censorship or restraint. On the other hand, we have hate speech that is a speech that offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or other traits. In the article “No, there’s no hate speech exception to the First Amendment,” by The Washington Post they make a very useful concern in questioning when free speech stops and hate speech begins. It responds by saying that there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment and that hateful ideas are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas. There are some kinds of speech that are unprotected by the First Amendment but those narrow exceptions have nothing to do with hate speech in any conventionally used sense of the term. Someone who would agree with this is Ben Shapiro.
Ben Shapiro was born in 1984. He entered UCLA at the age of 16 and graduated summa cum laude and phi beta kappa in June 2004 with a BA in Political Science. He graduated Harvard Law School cum laude in June 2007. Shapiro was hired by Creators Syndicate at age 17 to become the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the U.S. Conservative writer Ben Shapiro planned on giving a lecture at California State University-Los Angeles and was cancelled on Monday, but the Young America’s Foundation, who sponsored the event, insisted it was going to go on as planned. On Thursday, CSULA reversed the decision and permitted Shapiro to speak. Unfortunately, liberal activists at the school weren’t so willing to play nice, and repeatedly disrupted the lecture by blocking entrances and exits, and by pulling the fire alarm. But even then Shapiro gave his speech and in that time someone asked him what he would respond to people who think he is using free speech as a way of hate speech.
He replies that the constitution makes no distinction what they consider to be hate speech. He then goes on saying that he considers all the information he brought to be facts and that the problem with the left-side is that they live in a world were everything in which they disagree with is not an opinion it is a hate speech. Moreover, he continues by remarking that he is not calling what they(left-side) are doing hate speech because hate speech has no meaning, he is calling it stupidity.
Although I strongly disagree with both I think the problem has a lot to do with the system. The system does not make the terms clear and what the First Amendment actually covers and does not cover. It seems like the system lets it be okay in some occasions and not other, or that is what the people feel. So if we want to fix this we need to go way back to what started all of this, the constitution.
I do agree on something that the Washington Post recommended, “Those who want to make arguments such that the First Amendment is too broadly written should acknowledge that they are calling for a change in the First Amendment law, and should explain just what that change would be, so people can thoughtfully evaluate it. Calls for a new First Amendment exception for hate speech shouldn’t just rely on the undefined term hate speech — they should explain just what viewpoints the government would be allowed to suppress, what viewpoints would remain protected, and how judges, juries, and prosecutors are supposed to distinguish the two. Saying this is not free speech, it is hate speech does not.
