Hate speech is not legal in many jurisdictions and it is perfectly possible to create a stable statutory definition of hate speech. See, for example, Germany: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung
In the USA, however, freedom of speech is an absolute right. There are some narrow limitations (Libel, Calls to Violence), however the legislature does not have the power to add limits without a constitutional amendment, which requires a super-majority.
That there are limitations means it isn't an absolute right. The fact that the First Amendment only limits Congress means private enterprise has the right to limit speech in ways the government can't - this right is also defined in the Constitution by the 10th Amendment (The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.)
We are separate sovereign nations, allies, do not present as threats to each other, we each have our own values but Germany’s values are close enough to ours to be basically compatible and isn’t trying to export its censorship regime to the United States. Why would we rock that boat absent a reason?
https://reason.com/2022/09/23/germanys-criminalization-of-on...
As a practical matter I'd guess that even civil-libertarian Americans don't spend a lot of time criticizing Germany and France for several reasons:
1) They're allies.
2) Some of us don't know where they are.
3) For the most part, they're obviously free countries. There's simply going to be cultural variation on some things - free speech, the death penalty, etc. - for historical and cultural reasons.Hate speech is mostly just hurting peoples feelings. It neither helps cause physical damage nor costs the victims money. You cannot, in the US, ban the expression of a thought just because you think somewhere down the line it could result in damage to someone.
So three guys conspire to burn down a church- that could damage someone. A guy writing on the internet that churches are full of pedos and someone who reads that decides to burn down a church? The guy who burns the church only committed a crime.
There could be grey areas between those two situations and that is for law to decide. But the crime cannot be essentially the thoughts and ideas expressed
If hate speech were to be made a crime, your exact same argument "the right to free speech does not protect your right to commit crimes" could and would be used as an argument why the First Amendment supposedly does not apply.
> It neither helps cause physical damage nor costs the victims money. You cannot, in the US, ban the expression of a thought just because you think somewhere down the line it could result in damage to someone.
That is exactly what your example of planning to rob a bank is. The planning to rob a bank does not cause any damage. The planning to rob a bank does not cause any victims any money. Actually executing that plan does that, but the planning does not guarantee that the execution will happen. Yet if I were to say "You cannot, in the US, ban it just because you think somewhere down the line it could result in damage to someone" you would rightly dismiss it as nonsense.
> Hate speech is mostly just hurting peoples feelings.
We may disagree on the "mostly", but even you are acknowledging that it is not limited to that, so let's focus on cases that can't be considered that.
> Libel is a tort because you lie (important) to damage someone's reputation and this could cost them money.
Okay, now consider for instance well-known conspiracy theories that the world is controlled by (insert group here). They are lies, they damage the reputation of many if not most members of the group, and this could cost members of the group money. They are not libellous if not said about specific people, they are generally considered hate speech if based on any of a specific set of protected characteristics, but despite the exact same reasoning applying to both, libel would not be considered protected speech, and, as far as I understand, this particular form of hate speech would be.
It is also easy to think up scenarios where supposedly constitutionally protected hate speech "helps" cause physical damage: if without the hate speech, a group of people would be left alone, but with the hate speech, other people become convinced that it is morally defensible or even necessary to commit crimes against those people.
I can see no distinction in the constitution to justify this. I understand that this is how US courts interpret the constitution, but everything I can see tells me this is an arbitrary distinction drawn up by US courts with no actual basis in the constitution.
No, its not, just as conflicting affirmative grants of government power are not absolute grants.
Were it an absolute right, there would be no such thing as defamation liability, for instance.
> There are some narrow limitations (Libel, Calls to Violence), however the legislature does not have the power to add limits without a constitutional amendment
That’s true in theory, but in practice whether an exception exists and what its boundary is not a question which is resolved until after a legislatige body (federal or state) creates a new prohibition, and it is challenged. So there are potentially infinite unknown limitations that exist, but merely haven’t been discovered because a legislature has not created a law which would require them. So legislatures can provide an opportunity for courts to discover new exceptions via normal legislation, even if they can’t create them.
And sometimes, courts discover new ones in areas previously thought settled, like the 1st Circuit “discovering” a broader defamation exception for private matters than was generally understood to exist: https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2009/04/feder...
Currently it seems asking for rights of indigenous palestinians is hate speech in Germany.
The real question imo is:
Is hate speech immoral?
The answer, imo, is no in most cases. If you are not harming another, there is nothing 'bad' occurring. (There will be exceptions to this.) Just like you ought to be free to indulge your vices (and you are free to choose to harm yourself if you like), you should also be able to say what you like. Words might be unpleasant, but they are not actually harmful.
If there are physical consequences to your behaviour, it is the consequences that are 'bad'. Eg, if you insult some group, and someone hears you and consequently physically harms someone in that group, the immoral act that has occurred is the violence that was inflicted, nor the initial words.
It's really pretty simple.
But no, the law does not (and cannot) reflect the moral reasoning.
Doesn't sound like it. If the washington post is saying you're going too far in this category, there's a good chance you've already gone off the deep end
> The raid Wednesday came a little over three months after he replied to a tweet from Andy Grote, the interior and sports minister for the city of Hamburg, describing him as a “pimmel.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/09/pimmelgate-g...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/13...
Many Americans called it hate-speech, yet the book was freely published in many countries with anti hate speech laws.
Publishers and distributors were more willing to sell the book in countries where hate speech is illegal. After all, it’s not like it’s hate speech.
One downside of having hate speech undefined is that anyone can claim your words are hate speech.
One downside of having hate speech defined is you can stay bad things, and as long as it’s not hate speech, it’s not hate speech.
Edit: I actually read this book. I would be horrified if it was outlawed or even boycotted.
It’s of uneven quality, and tries to take on too many topics.
In reality this is a backward residue from monarchy and the laws are just as old. If Germans would have had more inclination to freedom, perhaps less authoritarian governments would have formed in the past.
So empirically hate speech legislation doesn't really seem to be effective either.
The net result, of course, is inconsistency and absurdity (see e.g. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/erding/volksverhetzung-... for a recent example).
The US (and a fewer other countries) is a political definition merely circumscribing a geography—explicitly independent of culture. Laws governing social expression therefore are more challenging to define, establish and execute.