Does that mean that some political ideas, like "at some point it will be necessary to overthrow the government"[1] or "someday we should exterminate the blacks and expel the Jews"[2] can be banned from public discourse?

If so, who gets to make these decisions? Isn't it reasonable to conclude that many hot-button issues today, like whether circumcision violates human rights, constitute psychological violence against, among others, Jews and Muslims?

If we end up saying this must protect minority groups, then I think we'd certainly have to say that advocating banning kosher slaughter or circumcision would constitute, particularly in the context of history (which Jews are usually very much aware) continuing psychological violence.

But if we go this route doesn't that basically give the state a way to say "hey we don't like that idea so you can't discuss it?" I think that would destroy what little democracy we have left.

[1] Yates v. United States, holding that the First Amendment protected abstract advocacy for overthrow of the government.

[2] Brandenburg v. Ohio, holding that the line in Yates above extended to protecting abstract advocacy of other violent ends, in that case genocide and expulsion of disliked ethnic and racial groups.

Most G8 nations 1) limit hate speech, particularly by limiting genocide advocacy; 2) don't have terrible abuses of hate speech laws; 3) don't have ridiculous abuses of terrorism laws to limit what amounts to hate speech, e.g. proselytizing about jihad; 4) have better functioning democracies than the two party system of the US where the parties are very ideologically close to each other; 5) have greater freedom of the press.

Try talking extensively about your desire to establish an Islamic Caliphate by eliminating the Christians. You will go to a very, very dark place. Having hate speech laws in place means there's a proper process for dealing with this stuff.

But mostly, I just think that "sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me" is a fallacy.

Do you think Yates v. United States was wrongly decided?

Now, if the US government showed during the McCarthy era that they would target unpopular ideas, like Communism, as beyond the bounds of democracy, doesn't the "intended and likely to cause imminent lawless action" law in Brandenburg follow?

What I am saying is that in the US, we do have an extensive history of abuse of restrictions on political speech. Whether other countries can be trusted, or not, to fairly enforce such rules (and I think there is some dispute on this btw), the US has shown a propensity to insist that political ideologies like Communism cannot exist.

I say there is some doubt for two reasons. The first is that the NSDAP experienced the strongest growth, percentage-wise, during the years when they were banned. The second has to do with the Jyllands-Posten controversy. This controversy erupted because Denmark was willing to enforce hate speech laws against anti-Jewish speech but not anti-Islamic speech. I don't think the outrage experienced at feeling like Muslims were less protected by the law than Jews is entirely unreasonable there. Of course Jews are both a religious and ethnic group, so if you protect their ethnicity, you protect their religion.

So I think there are two issues, and the first is that protected and unprotected categories often unevenly overlap leading to unequal protection necessarily, and the second is that removal of certain ideas from public discourse moves it from areas where public rebuttal is possible into only private conversations. In no country that I am aware of, is it a crime to advocate genocide one on one (rather it is limited to publicly advocating such).

> But mostly, I just think that "sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me" is a fallacy.

But our country showed, in trying to ban Communism from our public policy discourse, that this more or less ensures that the political process which depends on our nation on the people being able to discuss appropriate directions for government ends up getting short-circuited.

In essence, I think our government has shown they cannot be trusted with such.

So in the US, how do you propose to deal with the fact that a Muslim will get punished under terrorism laws for advocating we kill Christians, but a Christian will not get punished for advocating we kill Muslims?

I mean, the 1st amendment is what it is; anything decided in accordance with it is constitutional. I'm just saying I don't really care for free speech when it comes to hate speech (e.g. genocide advocacy). I'm fine with people talking about alternative political ideologies like communism; discriminating against those is distinct from hate speech. Proposing that we burn all communists on principle? Sure, that's hate speech.

But, if you're saying the US government simply can't be trusted to enforce hate speech laws fairly with respect to different ethnicities, well, they can't really be trusted to enforce any laws fairly at this juncture.

I'm more just speaking in general: I believe placing limits on genocide advocacy is good for society (and the same for other comparably violent kinds of speech).

> So in the US, how do you propose to deal with the fact that a Muslim will get punished under terrorism laws for advocating we kill Christians, but a Christian will not get punished for advocating we kill Muslims?

Well, it is worse than that, unfortunately. I think the answer is to strengthen first amendment protections rather than erode them. We have fewer problems I think than we tend to see in Europe in this regard, but with Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, I think we have a real problem.

That problem is that now first amendment rights depend in part on who you are talking to. If you tell the KKK, "we will need to kill black Muslims" that's different from telling Hamas, "You are right, we need to kill white Christians." The difference is that fully domestic terrorism is protected while foreign organizations are not. I think Holder v. HLP should have come out the other way because I do not think that is just.

> I believe placing limits on genocide advocacy is good for society (and the same for other comparably violent kinds of speech).

But surely "Someday the workers must rise up and forcibly take control of the government" qualifies if anything does, right? So distributing Marxist literature would certainly be outside of the protections of the 1st Amendment. That is exactly what was at issue in Yates and what the court said there was that there was a difference between saying that something would be desirable, and trying to make that same thing happen through tangible steps of preparation. It's one thing to say "the 2nd Amendment protects a right to rebel." It is something very different to add "and that is why I am training my private army." The rules which protect the Communists protect the NRA and I think more voices are generally good for discussion.

Oh, when I say limiting violent speech, I just mean with respect to one of the classes identified under existing anti-discrimination laws (e.g. the laws about employment), i.e. the same classes that you would commit genocide against. The government is not such a protected class. At least some of the non-US G8 countries with hate speech laws don't limit violent speech against the government, as far as I know, and I do understand why being allowed to talk about overthrowing the government is important.

Minimally though, I still don't understand why we need to allow people to advocate genocide. It's pretty clear what genocide is, and it's pretty clear that it is never good. In some countries, if I remember correctly, this is the only form of hate speech that is forbidden.

Like, I get that the argument is that it's a slippery slope, but many other countries have demonstrated there's a workable middle ground (Canada, UK, France, etc.). If you read the hate speech laws for each country on Wikipedia you'll see that in some cases they are quite narrowly defined, and I'd be perfectly happy with those.

So, suppose the secular humanists get their way and we remove religion as a class but ethnicity and race are.

Would that mean that advocating violence against Jews would be a problem but against Atheists would be ok? But at that point, do we have a problem where people are not equally protected under the laws?

This may seem manufactured, as a hypothetical and it is, but one can come up with plenty of cases where such would not. For example, if one advocates killing anyone with a felony drug record, this would hit blacks much harder than whites. One could effectively advocate genocide by attacking proxy issues like this just as one can effectively discriminate in such a way (why the EEOC has generally held that blanket policies of not hiring convicted felons are racially discriminatory).

But if you go to such analogies, I think you have a problem.

I don't think that hate speech bans are compatible with equal protection under the laws.

> I don't think that hate speech bans are compatible with equal protection under the laws.

Ok, so I'll agree with this, but only because most / all laws work this way. I believe that in those instances some protection is still better than no protection, e.g. protection against murder is good despite the alleged ethnic prejudice in the acquittal of George Zimmerman.

I mean, even though it's unfair and far from ideal, you're not losing anything if it's illegal to advocate genocide against Jews but not against Atheists, are you? What's the advantage of it being shitty for everyone?