Why Free Speech Is Vital
Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you have definitely seen those campus videos, wherein protesters (mainly people with nose rings and pink hair) act belligerently while screaming out “HATE SPEECH IS NOT FREE SPEECH,” or “HATE SPEECH WILL NOT BE TOLERATED HERE.” Now of course, the fact that there is a form of speech that is either hateful or offensive—or worse, both—is rather self-evident. But the solution to speech that you hate is not the cancellation of hate speech , but simply more speech . First, two reasons as to why the solution to hate speech is not to cancel the speech (which is just a euphemism for speech regulation . Hello Orwell) are as follows: A.) It is tremendously difficult, one may argue even impossible, to define hate speech, and definitions are actually very important when trying to regulate something. B.) Who defines hate? Does it sound even remotely appealing to have other people...