Political Science

I always do my best to write clearly and precisely, but it seems I don ' t always manage to get my meaning across. So let ' s try a couple of ideas again. Please read carefully, and think about what I actually write, not what you think I might think or what other people think. The First Amendment applies only to government. It constrains what government can do, it does not place any constraint of any kind on any other entity. The courts have interpreted it a bit more broadly than its literal language. If " congress shall make no law . . . " then the executive cannot have any legal authority to do what no law permits. The 14th Amendment extended the protections of the Bill of Rights to the states, so they are now also bound by the First Amendment.So, as a matter of fact -- and I don ' t think this is complicated -- it is true that the government cannot ban what some people would define as hate speech. However, it can indeed ban speech that is an element of some other prohibited activity, such as fraud, extortion, incitement to violence, terroristic threats, or criminal conspiracy. Much hate speech, as commonly defined, does fall into one of those categories.  Furthermore the courts have also held, at least so far, that the motivation for a crime can be taken into account in sentencing, which is where the idea of a hate crime comes in -- but it has to already be a crime.So, did some of the founders -- i.e. signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the Constituti...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs