Because if you’re not willing to protect speech you don’t like then you have no recourse when you make speech that other people don’t like.

But we restrict speech all the time. Especially speech regarding sex and sexuality. So what we really do is make it highly illegal to talk about fucking in all but a small number of public arenas while loudly defending the right to be racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, homophobic, etc. So the idea that there’s any kind of free speech protection in the USA is a bit of a right-wing joke.

And ultimately letting hateful idiots say stupid things just makes it easier to identify and ostracize them.

That theory didn’t work in Germany. Or the Balkans. Or Rwanda. Or any number of other places. It’s a meme, and an insubstantial and incorrect one at that.

Would that be defensible as free speech, or not??

The Internet has done much to spread the American gold standard of free speech around the world, but societies coming out of dictatorships have a tough time grasping the concept.

How patronizing.

Similarly, they can butt out of free speech issues here in the US.

This is what we seem to be saying–

1) The people who committed the violence are assholes for committing violence.

2) The filmmakers are assholes for making a hateful piece of trash designed to offend. And saying it was made and funded by Jews is the hemorrhoid-cherry on the asshole-sundae.

I wonder if our freedom of speech, including the option to offend any and all at any time, is what has kept us civil and maintain and defend the right to quality of life all this time.

I have truly wondered when watching this is, really?  You hate us THAT much?  Or you hate what we have?

Laws limiting free expression are, like all laws, open to a certain amount of interpretation.  If the opinions of the majority were as I describe above then the interpretation that is dominant in society might swing in such a way as to actually prevent me from criticizing the Catholic church or the government without risking jail time.  Do you seriously not see how such a system is open to abuse by tyranny of the majority?

You keep saying that hate speech and free speech don’t need to be connected, but how can we objectively legislate the difference between good-faith critiques of the Catholic church and hate speech against Catholics?  I don’t think we can, but if you have any ideas I would love to hear them.

How many seats does the BNP have in parliament, by the way? No seats in the US congress belong to hate groups. (Unless you count the Republicans, hurr hurr.)

This is why you aren’t getting any value in discussion, despite your presence you aren’t actually participating.

I don’t think it’s as much the best you could come up, as much as it was the first thing that you came up. As I say I think our (UK) laws work quite well in this regard (don’t say that very often!) and attempt to draw that line, rather than ignoring it entirely.

I’ve never been entirely sure why so many Americans are willing to defend the rights of people spreading hate so that they can express non-hateful views.

Because it’s difficult to write a law that would forbid people from making a film like this one but allow (for example) an exposé on Scientology. It’s a trade off, but it’s the best we could come up with.

There’s a fundamental difference between opposing a political view and being objectively offensive though. From what I’ve seen it works OK here – I can protest the government to my hearts content (well, you know, until the police get irked, but that’s a different problem entirely), I can even protest publicly on religious grounds – what I can’t do is insight hate. It’s not really about opposing views – it’s how they’re expressed and the likely consequences of them.

This quote from a law website says it well:

“When, however, you begin to consider the possible range of expression — including, say, hate speech that incites violence — it becomes apparent that even a tolerant society has to put some limits on freedom of expression. Therefore, much of the law relating to free speech is concerned with trying to strike the right balance between freedom of expression and the use (or abuse) of that freedom in a way that harms society.” – http://www.findlaw.co.uk/law/government/constitutional_law/fundamental_rights/500150.html

Whether or not that would be successful as a legal defense depends on a ton of other factors, including jurisdiction, whether or not I felt your threat was a legitimate and life threatening one, the scenario (war zone vs. 7/11), the make up of the jury, etc.

But call me crazy… I tend to consider anyone pointing a loaded gun at me as fair game, and having no rights, to life or freedom of speech.

I’ve never been entirely sure why so many Americans are willing to defend the rights of people spreading hate so that they can express non-hateful views.  The two aren’t connected, you do not require one to be afforded the other.

Because if you’re not willing to protect speech you don’t like then you have no recourse when you make speech that other people don’t like.  For example, a lot of people seem to be just as offended by criticism of the US government or various religions as I am by racist rhetoric; if I want to be able to freely criticize the government or religious groups then it would be dangerous to set a precedent for laws against racist rhetoric.  Similar laws could easily be justified for “protecting religion” or “suppressing sedition.”

The right to free speech is the fundamental right.  If you don’t have that right then you can’t even talk about what other rights you might be denied.

And ultimately letting hateful idiots say stupid things just makes it easier to identify and ostracize them.  I can’t help but notice that explicitly fascist and racist groups seem to have a lot less support in the US than they do in many parts of Europe.

You confuse “freedom” with the ability of extremists to deliberately incite hatred and violence with impunity.  The “freedom” of those with power at expense of the freedom of the vulnerable.

To say more “advanced” you’d have to be able to prove that this absolutism has had some kind of easily shown, and tangible benefit to our society, which of course you can’t do…..unless you of course measure “advancement” by the astronomical number of hate groups in this country….imprisonment of citizens only rivaled by China…Guantanamo…3rd world level wealth inequality…

If their guilt attaches to the murders, how would the culpability of the film makers change if they had made exactly the same film no one had taken the bait to the point of murder?  How would it change if it turned out the murders were long planned and the protests were just a convenient cover?  Their actions wouldn’t have changed in the slightest, and yet the difference between their being murderers and non-murderers in the eyes of the law is immense.

If their guilt attaches to publishing the film itself, then they are equally guilty whether their targets take the bait or not – they are guilty by their own hands.