Hate speech
Hate speech as we know it has been around just about as long as anyone could ever possibly remember. Throughout all history there has always been someone saying something derogatory about another individual or group, and no matter what someone is always offended. Many believe that this “hate speech” should be regulated under the law. But before many people make a half minded statement like this they need to sit back and ask them selves “Is this what we really want, regulation of our freedom of speech?” Everyone defines hate speech differently. I define hate speech as anything that incites violence regarding one person or a group of people. And I do believe that the only condition for the regulation of hate speech is if it attends to incite violence. This brings us to our next question; would regulating our freedom of speech be legal?! After carefully examining the given packet I found 4 categories that will really help reveal the truth, and they are regulation, the 1st Amendment, emotional harm, and the law. By taking a deeper look into these categories we will come to realize that hate speech should not be regulated by the government unless it inciting violence, and that it is protected.
Another issue that we must analyze when it comes to hate speech is the emotional harm that it may cause. The fact of the matter is that if we were to regulate things based on peoples own emotional feeling we would never be able to speak against a group or person in general ever again. One fact that must be faced is that there is always someone who is going to be offended, or emotionally harmed. There is no way around it. This certainly doesn’t make it right, but we must remember that if it isn’t inciting violence then it is legal and there is nothing that can be done about it. One example where the first amendment was shown no respect was the incident at the public college in California. There was a group of students peacefully protesting that had some very politically incorrect images on it. They were forced by the administration to take it down because some students were growing offended. This is a direct violation of the 1st Amendment especially because it is a government funded school meaning they are not allowed to make their own rules and standards. The students did indeed have some radical images and derogatory messages but it wasn’t inciting violence and should not have been taken down. Therefore I did not view this act as hate speech hate speech. For those people who take it personally, and become emotionally involved in the situation need to sit back and realize that these people do have the right to demonstrate and speak out non violently and no matter how much it offends them they need to learn to deal with it. Its just one of those things that you really cant do anything about unless it intent is to incite violence. If we allow a governing body to rule against what we say, there is no way we could even be able to call ourselves Americans anymore because we would be going against everything that we as a country stand for. Our right to be a free nation, where we are not prosecuted for our beliefs and what we say. We must also step out of the picture for a moment and ask ourselves if we give them this power to regulate what we say how far will they take this power and where will it end? I chose to add this quote to make an examp
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Approximate Word count = 1466
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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