February 16, 2017
Source: Bigstock
The devil comes to conservatives and says, “Ban flag desecration! It”ll lead to commies being beaten and imprisoned!” Ban passes, and five years later, pro-lifers are in the dock in Northern California for putting a fetus on a flag, and conservatives are like, “Wha happen?“
Time and again, we give away a right because we think it”ll adversely affect only those we see as adversaries. But it always comes back on you. When you give power to politicians you like in order to punish Americans you don”t, it’s guaranteed that that power will one day be used against you by politicians you don”t like, who see you as the bad guy.
But we never learn, as evidenced by the continued support for “flag protection” laws. And leftists will never learn that if they criminalize “hate speech,” it”ll one day blow back on them. I”m not just theorizing here. Fourteen years ago, I went to the source”Devin House, attorney and author of one of the “group defamation” model statutes drawn up at a conference at Hofstra University thirty years ago, to be used at some point in the future (when conditions allow) to criminalize “hate speech” (I dealt with that conference in greater detail in a previous column). In an interview, I asked Mr. House a question about how his statute, which was intended to protect nonwhites from hate speech, might be exploited by exactly the people whose speech was targeted for criminalization:
To play devil’s advocate, let’s say that “white people” or a group of white people decided to seek the prosecution of Michael Moore for an interview he gave to the “Los Angeles Times” last year, in which he said, “White people invented slavery” (actual quote). This is, indeed, a demonstrably false statement. As far as “modern” black chattel slavery goes, African slaves were first exported by Arabs, before Europeans got in the game. Under your statute, could “white people” claim they were defamed by Moore?
His reply?
I think that what you are asking is could white people, or an identified group of white people (such as the Ku Klux Klan or the National Association for the Advancement of White People), sue Michael Moore for the statement “white people invented slavery.” The answer is the same today with or without the model statute: yes, because anybody can sue anybody for anything. The question then becomes could they win. Under the model statute the answer may be yes.
So there you go, leftists. Keep pushing for the criminalization of hate speech, and one day, you might just find the KKK suing you. And you”ll be like, “Oh no, why didn”t anybody, like, warn me about this, man?” And I”ll be like, “Well, the dude who wrote the anti-hate-speech law, like, told you it would happen, man, and you didn”t listen because you were too busy pretending that Milo Yiannopoulos was murdering you with words.”
And you”ll be like, “Bummer, man.”
Yep…bummer, man. A bummer it will be indeed.
