SubscribeIn December 2006, official statistics showed that the rise in the number of incidents continued, with 10,154 “far-right crimes” registered from January through the end of October 2006, the highest levels for that time period since the current system of monitoring such crimes was introduced in 2001.Apparently, there were 8,000 hate crimes reported in the United States in 2006.
The information was published by the newspaper Taggespiel, which cited parliamentarians and leaders of the Jewish community who attributed the rise to the inadequate response of the main political parties to a growing neo-Nazi movement.
The rise in hate crimes in 2006 continued a trend observed the previous year. A 2005 report by Ger- many's domestic security agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, said “rightist crimes” there rose to 15,361 in 2005, up 27 percent from the 12,051 crimes in 2004.
A 1990 decision from the Canadian Supreme Court, for instance, upheld the criminal conviction of James Keegstra for “unlawfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group by communicating anti-Semitic statements.” Mr. Keegstra, a teacher, had told his students that Jews were “money loving,” “power hungry” and “treacherous.”Now, my reading of the above quote - from the link, you see - is that the likelihood of a breach of the peace from that speech is immeasurably small, unless he also taught Street Thuggery 101.
If all the shareholders got together outside of the corporation and donated en masse, you'd be fine with these donations, if at least in spirit. But when they band together within the legal framework of a corporation to do the same thing, that's when you have an issue? That's tortured logic.I'm firmly in the pro-free-speech camp, but I don't think that stance is as "tortured" as you're making it out to be. There are lots of things that natural persons are allowed to, and corporate "persons" aren't. E.g., voting. The employees of Ford Motor Company all get to vote, but the chairman of FMC doesn't get to go into the booth twice, once to vote "as" the company itself. If we restrict voting to natural persons, I'm not sure why it's not perfectly legitimate to restrict campaign donations to candidates to them as well. (Especially since there's no legitimate reason for corporations to have any say in a democratic government outside the votes that the people who make up them have as individuals. If a corporation is working to different ends than all of its employees are as individuals, that end is inherently a bad thing.)
How much we value the right of free speech is put to its severest test when the speaker is someone we disagree with most. Speech that deeply offends our morality or is hostile to our way of life warrants the same constitutional protection as other speech because the right of free speech is indivisible: When one of us is denied this right, all of us are denied. Since its founding in 1920, the ACLU has fought for the free expression of all ideas, popular or unpopular. That's the constitutional mandate.
Where racist, sexist and homophobic speech is concerned, the ACLU believes that more speech -- not less -- is the best revenge. This is particularly true at universities, whose mission is to facilitate learning through open debate and study, and to enlighten. Speech codes are not the way to go on campuses, where all views are entitled to be heard, explored, supported or refuted. Besides, when hate is out in the open, people can see the problem. Then they can organize effectively to counter bad attitudes, possibly change them, and forge solidarity against the forces of intolerance.
College administrators may find speech codes attractive as a quick fix, but as one critic put it: "Verbal purity is not social change." Codes that punish bigoted speech treat only the symptom: The problem itself is bigotry. The ACLU believes that instead of opting for gestures that only appear to cure the disease, universities have to do the hard work of recruitment to increase faculty and student diversity; counseling to raise awareness about bigotry and its history, and changing curricula to institutionalize more inclusive approaches to all subject matter.
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posted by Mister_A at 11:56 AM on June 11, 2008