Comment by drinka40tonight on 31/01/2025 at 00:12 UTC

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View submission: Should we have freedom of hate speech?

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Ira Glasser is a guy, and it's just a popular piece, as opposed to an academic article. So, we shouldn't expect too much. The *legal* arguments are a bit different, though perhaps can be relevant to our philosophical assessment. The "fire in a crowded theater" phrase, for example, has a bit of an interesting history that I think some people are unaware of, e.g., https://www.thefire.org/news/reminder-about-shouting-fire-crowded-theater

I think some people are also sometimes surprised to learn that "hate speech" (in the way it's understood in many other countries) is not illegal in the US, insofar as many such instances of "hate speech" don't actually meet the relevant legal standard set out by the courts to qualify as unprotected speech.

None of this is to say Glasser is right, but I just wanted to highlight a couple of relevant points.

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There's nothing here!