From The New York Times Books: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/books/review/the-harm-in-hate-speech-by-jeremy-waldron.html
‘The Harm in Hate Speech,’ by Jeremy Waldron
By MICHAEL W. McCONNELL
Published: June 22, 2012
Published: June 22, 2012
THE HARM IN HATE SPEECH
By Jeremy Waldron
292 pp. Harvard University Press. $26.95.
292 pp. Harvard University Press. $26.95.
In
his engaging new book, “The Harm in Hate Speech,” the legal philosopher
Jeremy Waldron urges Americans to reconsider that tradition. Although
he regards it as “unlikely” that hate speech legislation “will ever pass
constitutional muster in America,” he hopes to persuade Americans to
take more seriously the damage such speech does, and to overcome the
“knee-jerk, impulsive and thoughtless” arguments that, he says, “often”
characterize American debates on the issue.
Waldron begins with
the premise that in a “well-ordered society” not only must all people be
protected by the law; they are entitled to live in confidence of this
protection. “Each person . . . should be able to go about his or her
business, with the assurance that there will be no need to face
hostility, violence, discrimination or exclusion by others.” Hate speech
undermines this essential public good. “When a society is defaced with
anti-Semitic signage, burning crosses and defamatory racial leaflets,”
Waldron says, this assurance of security “evaporates. A vigilant police
force and a Justice Department may still keep people from being attacked
or excluded,” but the objects of hate speech are deprived of the
assurance that the society regards them as people of equal dignity.
Even
when the hate speech comes from isolated fringe elements, themselves
despised by a majority of the public, Waldron tells us, we should not
regard the harm as insignificant. “Precisely because the public good
that is under attack is provided in a general, diffuse and implicit
way,” he explains, “the flare-up of a few particular incidents can have a
disproportionate effect.”
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