"Freedom of speech always has to be balanced against other freedoms, such as freedom from racial vilification."

This really illustrates the idiocy of the writer. There is no right to be free of racial vilification. If there were, feminists would not be able to vilify white males.

"Nobody believes that racial vilification should be legal."

Call me nobody then - I find such speech disgusting; But, I do believe it should be legal.

Freedom of speech always has limits.
NO. It does not.
Nobody believes that racial vilification should be legal.
See Matt above. And a whole lot of comedians would need to be arrested.
Nobody believes that advocating violence should be legal.
Unless it's in your 'holy' book?
Nobody believes that harassment should be legal.
Who decides what is and is not harassment?
Nobody believes that publicly approving of terrorism should be legal.
Does this exclude 'radical clerics' and/or 'patriots'??
Nobody believes that threatening people should be legal.
Unless you are a government or government agency? Like the police?

Oh, Ms. Rosenbaum? Just because you thought it was 'hate speech' before and not now does not in any way mean it ever was. I find people who think my freedoms should be curtailed for their misbegotten sensibilities to be far more offensive than anything (save killing in the name of...).

Freedom of speech always has limits.

True. And the Supremes have given us good guidance in that regard.

Pretty much anything that is likely to incite imminent lawlessness is unprotected. What the writer wants is...blasphemy laws.

Let's call it what it is. This is just an convenient excuse to continue the gutting of the Constitution and the conversion of citizens into serfs.

Yes let's throw away centuries of progress and bring back blasphemy laws so that mad Mohammedans don't get their feelings hurt.

Was Ms Rosenbaum posting earnest articles demanding less freedom of speech when the Book of Mormon hit theaters, or when Christ was dunked in piss & the Virgin Mary was splattered in elephant poop all over the New York Times? Nope. It's Islam and ONLY Islam that has the magical ability to compel enlightened secular people to make the case for blasphemy laws in the 21st century.

"and that inciting religious hatred against Muslims in this manner was somehow an act of 'free speech.' "

There is no "somehow". There are no scare quotes. By definition, it is free speech. You cannot do the First Amendment halfway. Either freedom of speech exists, or it doesn't. If you don't believe in freedome of speech, say so. (And of course appreciate the irony as you are doing it.)

I expect this sort of confusion, this sort of "spatter" to continue so long as the common mind does not recognize the difference between speech and action. Idealists apparently think that speech is all that is required– for instance, that the Founding Fathers simply argued the United States into existence. The next step - the commission of actual violence in support of the ideas derived in the practice of free speech - might as well be on another planet for them. So, of course speech becomes the new violence. What did you expect would result from raising a generation of bedwetters?

To change the subject by way of example, people were similarly flabbergasted by the idea of flying airplanes into skyscrapers. They called it "cowardice", not once recognizing that the fear calling that word into existence was their own, NOT that of the hijackers.

The public does hold gross conceptual errors close to its heart. These have just been two of them.

Freedom of speech always has limits.

By definition, it does not.

You are free to speak and people are free to not listen.

There's a difference between socially-accepted limits and government-imposed limits.

As soon as you give someone the power to limit speech, you no longer have "free" speech. No matter how loose the limits (initially).

It's one thing for people to walk away from a demagogue spouting epithets in the public square. It's quite another for a government to censure or arrest a columnist for crossing a loosely-defined limit in an op-ed.

Even Oliver Wendell Holmes recognized the fragility of free speech: "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic."

If there is a fire - even if shouting about causes a panic - the shout is protected speech; even if the people in the theater don't want to hear about the fire and would have the government remove the shouter.

Nobody believes that racial vilification should be legal. [...] Nobody believes that publicly approving of terrorism should be legal.

I do. I believe both of those should be legal.

They're awful, and reveal the speaker as a horrible person to be reviled, generally speaking.

But they should be legal.

Stopping people from saying them doesn't stop them from, well, being racists or approving of terrorism.

Punishing people because they said something that the State decided was "racial vilification" or "approving of terrorism" is far more dangerous than the speech is.

(Note that on terrorism, that rule would mean that speaking positively of the Sons of Liberty, of the Revolutionary period, would be a crime, as by any reasonable definition they were a terrorist organization.

Similarly, any praise of the French Revolution would have to be tempered by a disclaimer against the Terror and the Committee for Public Safety, lest it be a crime.

Madness.)

There are a couple news stories today that help to illustrate why we need to protect ALL speech. Each one, I think, is sort of s stepping stone the next level.

First, it may seem minor and it really isn't censorship but it shows what some folks would want the rest of us to do if given that kind of power. An ultra-orthodox newspaper in Jerusalem has published the photo of world leaders marching together in Paris - minus the women leaders! They made the effort to Photoshop out the women leaders. (If my memory serves right something similar was done with the photo of white house staff and others listening in as US Special forces went for Bin Laden - Hillary and other women in the photo were photoshopped out). Sure, this is their right to edit the news the way they see fit; but, what's to stop them from imposing that view on the rest of us if we allow laws to limit speech or printing? Without unlimited freedom of speech others would not be allowed to mock their stupid backward ways for that would be seen as "hate" speech.

Second, and I find this rather disturbing. France has arrested over 50 individuals for "defending" terrorism. Now, if they took action such as helping someone commit terrorist acts then by all means arrest them But, it seems (news reports are kind of incomplete) all they did was speak or print what they were thinking. If true, so much for freedom of speech in France.

Lastly, and it goes to the heart of the nature of Islamic societies and those who want to impose their ideas on the rest of us. Recently a Saudi blogger was imprisoned and publicly lashed for "insulting" Islam. His sentence this time, he has been in prison before, is ten years and 1,000 lashes. His wife is speaking out and trying to get him asylum in Canada, which is where she now lives. (Obama where are you?)

It is this last news report where a lot of folks would like the rest of us to live. Speak, act and THINK like they do or pay the price.

(sorry, no links, I didn't want to get stuck in the spam filter)

The legality racial vilification has already been covered by several commenters. As I often say, the remedy for free speech is more free speech. If you don't like what someone says, you rebut. You don't lobby congress to make such speech illegal. Blabbity, blah-blah. Already covered.

But I will add, when Karen Rosenbraindead suggests that racial vilification should be illegal, she is, of course, exempting hate speech against whites. Whites bashing blacks should be punished by 30 days in the stocks on the public square. But just apply her standards to blacks bashing whites. "Oh, but they've been so oppressed! We must show compassion!..."

If I believed in oppressing free speech, hers would be among the first I go after. But as it is, I will follow Amy's link and see if there's a place I can post comments. If this woman's head were any further up her ass, she could crawl up inside herself and disappear completely.

The author's broad claims about what "nobody believes" marks this as an emotional rant devoid of reason and fact.

Consider her claim that "Nobody believes that advocating violence should be legal."

Churchill's stirring speech about Britain's resolve to destroy the Nazis come to mind. The most famous passage:

"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

I am pretty sure he was advocating violence and, for that matter, violence against a particular class of people.

Don't forget: run your mouth, all you have done is run your mouth.

Mao said, "Power flows from the barrel of a gun." Never forget that this is the next step after speech.

Let them talk. I want to know who they are.

"Mao said, "Power flows from the barrel of a gun." Never forget that this is the next step after speech."

This is very true. Remember that any time someone says "There aught to be a law," what they are really saying is that they want to put a gun to your head in order to make you do what they want. The fact that the gun is likely in the hand of a police officer makes no difference.