re: #94 Charles

I think it’s worse than that. Criminalizing speech doesn’t change the hatred that causes the speech. Instead, it acts as a sort of evolutionary pressure (connections!) and forces the haters to hide their agenda and work undercover to achieve their goals. Rather than wiping out hatred, it ends up making it much worse, by making the haters smarter.

Another effect is to spread the criminalization outward so that eventually dissent is outlawed because it can be construed as ‘hate’. Our recent presidential campaign is a great example of how ‘hate’ can be applied to criticism, thereby changing the argument and vilifying the dissenter. Make it a law and you’ve got people in prison for saying Barak Obama is a walking disaster in foreign policy.