You tell me what your model speech code would look like, and I'll show you how I could use it to shut your speech down within a decade.
I mean, the U.S. already has one of those, the whole "fighting words" exception, other countries have a few of their own. It is not entirely clear to me that banning say "open calls to organized violence or coordinated reprisals against members of an ethnic or religious group, on the basis of membership into such group" would be to the detriment of political discourse.
Don't get me wrong, as I said, I am more often on the corner of extreme free speech than its opposite, but saying that the only other alternative is broad censorship is a bit of a strawman. Even with things like eugenics, which I do find instinctively abhorrent, you can easily craft a clear line where things like "I believe group A is better at X than group B, here is my social science study about it and supporting evidence" are perfectly valid speech (and people can engage with that if they so wish and counter speech with speech until the truth emerges), but where continuing with "therefore we must get rid of all B" is considered axiomatically unacceptable. One is a question of facts, the other is a matter of societal ethics.
As for Mexico, by the way, since I am from there, let me point out that the issue with the safety of journalists in the country now a days (vs say in the sixties) has very little to do with whether we have freedom of speech as a value (we do, both legally and as a society, maybe not to the extreme of the U.S. but to a higher degree than many countries where this is not as big of a problem). The issue is the weakness and capture of the state, where no matter what the people want or the laws say, the state is not able to protect people or enforce laws (in part because it is materially incapable, in part because it is corrupt and colluded).
This isn't an exception to free speech protections.
'In 1942 the Supreme Court held that the government could prohibit "fighting words" — "those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace." The Supreme Court has been retreating from that pronouncement ever since. [...] the only remaining focus is on whether the speech will provoke immediate face-to-face violence. '
Quoted from https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-...
But, ok, if you want another U.S.-based exception: some information regarding nuclear weapons is considered to be 'born classified' in the sense that even if you develop it on your own without clearance or access to classified materials, you still are not allowed to divulge it. That is another government-enforced restriction to free speech, although admittedly a sensible one on the justification of the survival of the species.
Don't get me wrong, I think in any specific discussion about speech restrictions the bias should be huge in favor of free speech, given the obvious dangers of any too broad restriction and the incentives of people in power to put in place such restrictions. But we definitely don't currently enjoy, let's say "absolute information-theoretical freedom of speech" (e.g. including things like direct actionable threats, weapon blueprints, video-recordings of certain third-party crimes, etc). We already put up with some limits without falling into a slippery slope. 'No explicit calls for genocide' might not, on its own, be the restriction that opens the floodgates to pervasive censorship.
For example, antisemitism and homophobia are two concepts that the parent thinks should be banned. But that right away leads to contradictions. If I ask you a question, “Should orthodox rabbis marry gay couples?” your answer could be deemed as either antisemitic (“yes”), or homophobic(“no”). Your best bet is to stay silent on that question!
So, I do understand not wanting to allow directly threatening speech on a specific group. It’s just such a tricky thing to codify such a ban without inadvertently stifling freedom of thought and opinion. What you really do is hone the dog-whistling capabilities of those who would organize to commit violence.
Edit: But even with that said, I agree restrictions to speech should rather be too few than to many, and too narrow rather than too broad. Which is why I think the line should never remotely try to cover every degree of racism or xenophobia at all. I could be convinced of the need to restrict public calls for genocide, for example, though.
For what its worth, there are not small groups of people running around with Hakenkreuz flags and SS uniforms in the US. A dishonor to all the victims of the Third Reich. Please do not tell me you find this acceptable in any way.
I absolutely find it acceptable. It's proof that the 1st Amendment is alive and well. Consider these groups as the canaries in a coal mine. As soon as they're shut down, based solely on the content of their ideas, the whole point of free speech is doomed.
You may think that only certain categories of ideas should be protected speech, and strive to enact that into law. But when the political winds change and your ideas become unacceptable, you'll have nothing to stand on when your speech is criminalized.
What I meant was, I think the US obsession with freedom of speech is an important one, and helps society to challenge the ideas that underpin totalitarianism. I think the absence of an American Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini is in part a consequence of their historical attitude towards free speech.
This is the most chilling aspect of Trump's behaviour, in my opinion: his disregard for the importance of free speech.
Our values and principles in favor of free speech have been a protection for us. It's crucial to understand this, because as we see in this thread, there are groups that are working hard to criminalize speech that they dislike.
Sadly, this is seeing some success. Americans are forgetting who they are and where they've come from. For me, the question is not whether whether the U.S. will continue to succeed into the centuries ahead, but rather if the U.S., as presently constituted, will hold together long enough to be taken over by a despot or if it will just disintegrate into regional warfare first.
I recall a scene from Stefan Zweig's "world of yesterday", where he describes how a group of young men, armed with clubs, stormed a student debate and beat the speakers severely. The police, honoring an old tradition of never entering the debate hall, stood outside as it happened.
I guess I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure when and how this happened, who was behind it, and what it foreshadowed. Zweig is an exceptional writer, and this was an exceptional book. To everyone interested in this thread: please don't take a tl;dr from me on this. There's a lot of interest in Zweig these days, for good reason.
This passage from this book kind of haunts me, and has led me to think about what it means when civil law enforcement and rule of law stands down as politically motivated thugs use violence to shut down free speech, especially but not only in universities.
How 'not small', particularly in relation to a nation of over 300 million people?
>Please do not tell me you find this acceptable in any way.
I do not find such content acceptable in any way. But freedom of assembly and speech is baked into the United States' DNA, and rightfully so. Take a look at the Skokie case[0] - offensive stuff, but the ACLU stuck up for them anyways, and it ended up setting a legal precedent in the Supreme Court.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union...