S.2219
might not mean anything to you right now.
It may never. What it is a bill
proposed by Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts which requires the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to
Analyze information
on the use of telecommunications, including the Internet, broadcast television
and radio, cable television, public access television, commercial mobile
services, and other electronic media, to advocate and encourage violent acts
and the commissions of crimes of hate, as described in the Hate Crime
Statistics Act (28 U.S.C. 534 note).
According to Congressman Hakeem
Jeffries (D-NY), chief sponsor of the House version, the bill will target
“hateful activity on the Internet that occurs outside of the zone of First
Amendment protection”.
Let’s
review the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
It’s not
long. The English isn’t overly
complicated or complex. Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the
freedom of speech. To what zone
outside the First Amendment does Congressman Jeffries refer? In particular, what part of the First
Amendment allows Congress to “target” so-called “hateful speech”? The words simply aren’t there. The First Amendment’s prohibition against
Congress abridging freedom of speech is very, very broad.
Since the
handful of you who have actually read my blog must know how much I love irony,
I have to think of Catherine Ross, Professor of Law at George Washington
University who claims the First Amendment contains a “norm of tolerance” and a
“respect for difference.”[1] Wonder what she might say to Congressman
Jeffries? She thinks homeschooling is
dangerous because she claims it doesn’t respect this alleged norm (again, not
found in the simple wording contained in the First Amendment). But isn’t one person’s “hateful activity on
the Internet” potentially just another person’s “difference of opinion”? Given the common effort these days for people
to categorize difference as hate speech, what does Congressmen Jeffries
actually mean? What is Senator Markey
trying to do?
This isn’t a
political issue for me. This is a
practical issue for me. I am writing a
blog in which I have taken very clear stands on certain issues (homosexual
behavior, creationism, Christianity as truth) which many people would argue are
“hate” speech. Hopefully it’s not
because they claim I’m saying things in a hateful way. However, if the NTIA is scouring the Internet
I might well show up in its reporting, depending on how it arbitrarily defines
hate. The Department of Homeland
Security suffered a kerfuffle a year ago or so when so-called “fundamentalist
Christians” showed up in their documents as potential terror groups. The Army ran into similar problems for the
same reason. The Southern Poverty Law
Center routinely claims that anyone who does not accept the homosexual agenda
wholesale is a hate group. Do
Congressman Jeffries and Senator Markey propose that guys like me fit in this
category? Am I then part of the
reporting? If so, what do these two
propose to do with such reporting? What
purpose does it serve?
The reality
here is clear. I see language twisted so
badly, so often it makes Bavarian pretzels look straight. Congress
shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech. Not freedom of “nice” speech, not freedom of
“kind” speech, not freedom of “loving” speech, not freedom of “decent” speech,
not freedom of “respectable” speech, not freedom of “what we arbitrarily define
we like” speech, but freedom of speech.
What these folks want to do is change the rules without changing the
Constitution so they can get rid of their perceived political enemies by
targeting them via the NTIA (as an aside, until I saw the reporting on this
law, I had never heard of the NTIA, had you?).
Do I like it
when I read articles by people denigrating what I believe? No. Do
I like it that the purveyors of the website Jezebel think it’s reasonable to
use the F-word as part of a headline to attack the recent comment by actress
Kirsten Dunst regarding men and women’s roles?
No. Do I like it that Mark Joseph
Stern of Slate.com routinely rummages through his bag of clever phrases to bash
Christians about everything and anything?
No. Do I like it that pornography
gets zillions of hits every day? No.
But, here’s
the thing, and there just ain’t no getting around it. Freedom means freedom. Yes, we do permit very limited restrictions
on speech: you can’t lie, you can’t make false claims to people and profit from
those false claims, you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater when there is no
fire, thereby causing a stampede that might hurt people. Let’s face it, though, these limitations
don’t have anything to do with point of view.
Hate is a very subjective standard which varies depending upon who is
claiming the language or “activity” is hateful.
To allow some faceless bureaucrats in our federal government to make
some kind of report based on such an arbitrary and subjective standard utterly
undermines the whole idea of freedom of speech.
Let this
possible law serve as a clear warning to those who think their freedom of
speech is safe. It’s only safe until it
isn’t. As I write this I am chilled to
the bone as I think back to just about three years ago when I told two lawyer
friends that they would likely see me in jail at some point in the future
because of my beliefs and my convictions about those beliefs. While that day is not here, bills like S.2219
tell me my days are numbered.
Disagreement
and difference of opinion isn’t hate.
Frankly, very few of us in the United States really comprehend what hate
means. We’ve never really seen it in
action. We haven’t faced the Nazis or
the KGB and learned what true hatred looks like. The faux-hatred we cry about and complain
about is often nothing less than us throwing temper tantrums because someone
thinks differently than we do and won’t just shut up and go away. This law ought to terrify all of us. Don’t say you haven’t been warned when the
Feds show up at your door with a warrant or take whatever other action this law
ultimately intends for the government to take.
Whatever action is proposed, it will have nothing to do with free
speech.
[1] Catherine
J. Ross, Fundamentalist Challenges to Core Democratic Values: Exit and
Homeschooling, 18, Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 991 (2010),
http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol18/iss4/8
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