Free speech doesn't need to be refined

The far left loves conservatives. They will bend over backwards to protect them.

Just as long as they're brown and don't come near them, that is.

Danish professor Lars Hedegaard was nearly locked up for two years for saying there is a serious domestic violence problem in the Muslim community, or as the authorities defined it, hate speech.

The case coming this close was a major victory for multiculturalists and cultural relativism. They don't dare pass judgment on the morals of a non-white culture, even if it's ripe with social conservatism. To them, dodging sticky cultural friction is more important than free speech.

This is a serious threat to human rights, but it could never happen here, right? National Review Online insists otherwise.

Four Democratic New York state senators have recently argued for a “more refined First Amendment,” declaring that speech should be “a special entitlement granted by the state on a conditional basis that can be revoked if it is ever abused or maltreated.” These legislators justified their proposed speech restrictions in the context of cyberbullying; there is always some hideous incident to use as the rationale for censoring speech.

Ouch! These vague anti-bullying bills require us to trust the government to apply them reasonably and not abuse the newly-minted power. No civil libertarian would ever fall for that.

It doesn't matter if it's cyberbullying or speech codes, attempts to stifle free speech are steps towards tyranny. Tolerating a little bit of that here will lead to the absolute travesty of the Hedegaard case happening again, this time in an American courtroom.

Hat tip to Nate for the link.