Philadelphia Court Censors 'Hate Site'

kerouac points out a Boston Globe story about a man charged with civil rights violations for his Web site, after a slow two-year investigation. He writes: "Okay... I don't want to start a race flame-war, but it looks like the courts are starting to regulate 'hate speech'. I take pride in the fact that my bleeding-heart liberalism makes me hate what this guy's site is all about, but the U.S. courts are regulating/censoring this person's right to be a jerk." As described, the Web page sounds like a death threat, which would not be protected speech. A Wired story has more detail. For some reason the DoJ has not filed criminal charges for the alleged threat, so the man is being charged under the Fair Housing Act for preventing someone from making use of the FHA.

Death threats are not protected speech

[Stevis]

I don't think Voltaire would defend to the death this jerk's right to animate someone's office blowing up. It's one thing to claim superiority for your group, and how everyone else will be under your thumb. But that is a specific threat to a specific person, and that is where the speaker's rights have ended and the victim's have begun.

Re:Death threats are not protected speech

[guran]

Amen

Free speech is not an absolute right. There *are* no such rights (except in a perfect world). The reason being of course that freedom used to its limit tend to invade someone else's freedom.

(or in a more Xenon-ish manner: I will not defend to the death your right to silence me.)

Re:Death threats are anti-socialists

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm assuming that the above message was a joke. If not, a serious response follows:

Libertarians are rarely what I consider the "far right"-- the extreme conservatives are insistent upon taking away freedom of speech (witness the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act), often in the name of morality (or, in flagrant disregard of separation of Church and State, in the name of "Jesus!").

Of course, it's not much better on the far left-- they want to take freedom of speech away from anybody rich, powerful, or expressing politically incorrect opinions. This is to make sure that by oppressing those who earn what they have, we keep those who sit around with thumbs up their asses on equal footing. God forbid somebody have something somebody else doesn't have.

As for military and governments: huh? The USSR was about as peaceful as vi vs. emacs holy war on Slashdot. Of course, we also have China, but we depend too much on their trade to really point out all their aggression towards smaller nations...

An ideal Libertarian government actually wouldn't have much of a military at all-- if the nation were attacked, contractors would probably be called in to defend the country. That, or it would be up to the citizens of the nation to defend their homeland. And since a Libertarian government would not be allowed to start programs designed to cram socio-political agendas down the throats of other nations, we probably wouldn't annoy the shit out of other nations by completely insulting their ideologies and ways of life. A Libertarian government also wouldn't be allowed to ban trade with a nation, so it would be tough to piss off a country by cutting off vital supplies.

But, I suppose when you look at it through communist-colored glasses, Libertarians are idiots for thinking that equality doesn't come out of making the government into an all-powerful being instead of a marginally powerful business. God knows that equality only comes when we create an absolute imbalance, away from those who are supposedly equal...

Re:Death threats are not protected speech

[DaveHowe]

I don't think Voltaire would defend to the death this jerk's right to animate someone's office blowing up. It's one thing to claim superiority for your group, and how everyone else will be under your thumb. But that is a specific threat to a specific person, and that is where the speaker's rights have ended and the victim's have begun.
Spot on! I can't see the most rabid free-speech protestor trying to support this guy - If he had done this sort of thing in the street, or put up a big banner outside his home, he would have been treated no better and no worse than this - and that is how it should be. There *may* be a fine line between protected, political speech and actual threats, but he can't even SEE that line from where he is standing - not even with good binoculars.....
--

The other side

[Brooks Davis]

Here's an article with a little more information on the effect this scumbag is having on his intended victem:

Woman given help at last in battle with hate group [seattle-pi.com] - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Notice, though....

[jaed]

...that he's charged under the Fair Housing Act, which seems just a wee bit indirect. No one seems to have charged him with assault or making a threat.

For threats to be illegal they need to be pretty immediate, not just frightening. Saying that someone will be executed at some highly indeterminate time in the future "after the revolution" doesn't normally qualify as a criminal threat.

Lets not stereotype here...

[killbill]

..."I take pride in the fact that my bleeding-heart liberalism makes me hate what this guy's site is all about"...

Agreed. But please note for the record that I take pride in my knee-jerk religous right conservatisim that makes me hate it just as much as you do...

I won't judge all liberals by nutty earth first terrorists and the unabomber, please don't judge all conservatives by nutty klan members and clinic bombers.

That being said, this does present an interesting delimma for both sides. My only beef with the ACLU is that they tend to leap to the defense of groups that tweak the noses of conservative Christians, but do little or nothing to defend groups that tweak the noses of liberal Democrats. I think they are an important organization, and perform an important role protecting the constitution.

P.J. O'Rouke had a great response to eliminate this type of delimma (constitutionally protected free speech versus offensive things being said).

He described a delimma faced by the newspaper at his old college where those loonies that pretend the WWII holocoust never happened wanted to place an ad. At first, the editors said they could not publish it because it was a lie. Then, they decided they had to publish it because they otherwise would violate the groups first ammendment rights.

His solution was elegant (if not mathmatically rigorous). He said they should throw the thing away because it was a piece of SHI*.

Cant argue with that logic...