Beyond the Campus? (Dee Speaking)
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					Vera

No. We've already been through this. There is harm done by hate speech. We agree on that. The question concerns how to deal with that harm. My view is that we have a commitment as a liberal society to reduce that harm using certain methods and not others. You can attack racism and racists and racist policies in a hundred ways; but NOT by limiting speech simply because it is indirectly harmful. To argue otherwise is to return to a pernicious tendency test like we had at the beginning of the century. A test like that throws out the whole idea of a right to free expression. The nature of a right is that it functions as a limitation on what can be done simply because it would make things better for someone.

The Supreme Court has, on the whole, moved away from the use of any simple pernicious tendency test for First Amendment protection. The First Amendment does not protect speech that is a constituent part of an illegal act or speech that has a very direct and tight causal connection with an immanent illegal action; but otherwise, it protects speech in spite of the fact that it may indirectly contribute to harmful or even illegal actions.

And besides, I'm not at all sure that a law against hate speech would make things better. That depends on a lot of unknown variables. It could easily be applied in such a way as to make things worse.

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