Intolerance for Hate

For far too many years most of the anti-hate groups have preached respect and acceptance for abhorrent, corrosive and destructive beliefs. That is what free speech is all about, isn’t it? Where has that gotten us? Not to a good place - That is obvious. In our best effort to defend freedom of speech, we have instead enabled overt sectarianism in government, blatantly racist and hateful internet content, and social divisions founded on extremist propaganda. This is not the purpose of free speech, but here we are.

The twisted interpretations of free speech and freedom of religion that have been promoted by right-wing forces is as much a perversion of the founding father’s intent as Al-Qaida’s ethos is a perversion of Islam. For starters, free speech was never meant as a weapon against religious or social groups, but meant as a protection for speaking out against an unjust government. Equally, freedom of religion was meant to protect personal religious practice and never intended as a vehicle for imposing religious strictures on segments of society, groups or individuals.  Anyone saying freedom of religion is there to protect their beliefs at the expense of others is attempting to twist our founding principles for their own purposes.

Free speech in a government context is a law, which most U.S. jurisdictions have a fairly good handle on. In a civil context, free speech is a social contract agreed upon by fellow citizens as a foundation for frank interaction.

In a social context, free speech is not a law. It is limited by the society and, although it may extend beyond social conventions, it is not unlimited in itself.  In that sense, anyone who invokes free speech as an excuse to be dangerous, abusive or hateful surrenders their right to that protection under the social contract. Increasingly, interpretations of free speech laws are leaning in this direction.

Freedom works similarly and is yet more complex at the same time. “Love they neighbor…”, “Do unto others…” may not be the most important principles of religion for some people, but they are cornerstones of every major religion in some way. At the heart of the Constitution is the Amendment respecting the establishment and practice of any religion. As a nation we have always been committed to supporting the practice of religion in its full spectrum.  We accept that to have faith people to not need to follow rules defined by others; about the calendar, worship, clothes, food or sexuality. The implication by anyone that any practice invalidates a person’s religiosity is a negation of the denier’s freedom of religion. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is not called the "Golden Rule" for nothing.

Yet, in our efforts to defend free speech and freedom of religion, we have inadvertently allowed horrible hate, propaganda and incitement against our neighbors. In trying to prove sunlight is the best disinfectant, we have gotten burned. Extremists and hatemongers made the seemingly reasonable argument that censoring their hate would damage the principles of free speech or freedom of religion, while all the time, damaging the founding principles of our democracy was their actual goal. We blinked. We were not brave or bold. We erred on the side of caution.

The result has not been good.

Voicing intolerance to hate, bigotry, propaganda, distortions and falsehoods is the ultimate exercise of free speech. This challenge comes with great responsibility. We must be ready to know how to defend truth, how to define hate speech, how to define our principles and defend what we say. This is all new to most of us and we may get it wrong. We need to start teaching the children how to recognize and advocate truth. The need to acknowledge and celebrate honesty. We may now need to be intolerant of hate as never before so that there can be a future where free speech is not weapon but is embraced as the gift it was intended to be.