What an idiot.

One of the most admirable things about Europe is that most (if not all) of the right-wing rhetoric that you hear in the US is explicitly against the law there.

In other words, she wants the law to be used as a club to beat down people with whom she disagrees.

Right-wing hatemongers like Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Bill Maher, and Sarah Palin....

Bill Maher is a right-wing hate-monger?

In the United States, hate speech is often spewed forth by people with a great deal of influence, thus making it even more dangerous.

So, the real problem is that people with whom she disagrees have influence; and the only way she can see to counter that influence is to have the Speech Gestapo arrest them.

Not only is the US the only country without any laws against hateful or offensive speech, but it’s also the only country where the government cannot ban any movies, books, or video games....

Aren't these the same people who slammed Sarah Palin just for asking if the mayor had the power to limit what was available in the Wasilla public library system?

While America has always been far behind the rest of the world when it comes to basic human rights....

Is she mental? We set the bar for human rights. We were the first country ever to state in its charter that people have rights the government cannot impinge.

The US has a dismal record on human rights....

Where the US has failed in human rights, it has corrected itself (and continues to do so). Almost no other nation can make that claim.

The Supreme Court of Canada has also found that truthful statements can be classified as illegal hate speech, and that not all truthful statements must be free from restriction.

So, in Canada, the truth will not set you free. Good to know.

Each Canadian state has its own Human Rights Tribunal to investigate and prosecute people for hate speech and other human rights violations.

As someone else already pointed out, Canada is divided into provinces, not states.

Most champions of hate speech are straight, white, Christian males....

Most champions of free speech are too.

No country prosecutes hate speech strictly enough to truly protect human rights. For example, when Denmark failed to ban the infamous Muhammed cartoons, human rights groups around the world voiced their outrage, with Amnesty International releasing a statement saying that the cartoons should be prosecuted since they qualify as religious hatred under international human rights law (Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).

Yet, when Christianity is under attack in Muslim nations, these idiots are as silent as the grave into which those Christians will soon be dumped.

Until your outrage is applied fairly, you have no moral authority at all.

...Russia even focused on it in a report about Western Europe’s human rights failures.

Russia is, to her, an authority on human rights?

Let's ask Boris Nemstov.

America has always been very uncivilized, unenlightened, unfree, and backwards when compared to Europe....

Yeah, that American Holocaust with the ovens going all night was a real stain on our record.

Outside of the US, even the most dedicated ultra-libertarians and free speech activists acknowledge that hate speech must always be outlawed, and that hate speech is not free speech.

Can you be an ultra-libertarian and in favor of the government setting limits on free speech?

At a time when racism, fascism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and Islamophobia are surging in Europe....

Is that the very same Europe that has "always" been ahead of the US in respect for human rights?

Yeah, that American Holocaust with the ovens going all night was a real stain on our record.

How lovely that free speech wasn't a problem in Nazi Germany.

http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007677

The comments suggest she's doing this as satire. But her other two pieces on ThoughtCatalog are similar in topic and tone.

She actually appears to BELIEVE what she's saying. To steal a Biblical allegory. . .

. . . Jefferson wept. . . .

I'm seeing this article as a parody, to be honest. Really, really good parody.

The short answer to those types of people is "which part of Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech do you need me to explain to you?"

Also, we need to make stupidity painful, as it used to be.

"Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage." ~ Winston Spencer Churchill

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"Where there is a great deal of free speech there is always a certain amount of foolish speech." ~ Winston Spencer Churchill

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"It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more ... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so ... what." ~ Stephen Fry

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"All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!" ` Kurt Vonnegut

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"All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship." ~ George Bernard Shaw (Mrs. Warren's Profession)

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"We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence." ~ Daniel Gilbert

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"The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty." ~ William O. Douglas

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"I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves." ~ Peggy Noonan (Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now)

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"Truthfully, wicked people reveal themselves in words first, to inhibit speech would inhibit us seeing the wicked before they act." ~ Leviak B. Kelly (Religion: The Ultimate STD: Living a Spiritual Life without Dogmatics or Cultural Destruction)

Many years ago, in law school I stood up to this lunacy against a Con Law professor who equated hate speech laws to enhanced penalties for motive in criminal cases, and said they were therefore constitutional.

I argued that they were not the same thing at all because hate crimes laws attempted to criminalize speech alone without any underlying tort.

My argument persuaded the sensible members of my law school class, but I got an undeserved D on the next Con Law exam in retaliation.

We have since gone down that path even further. I suspect that he is still in full denial that it has evolved much the way I predicted it would.

I think she is dead serious. I noticed these pieces started popping up after "The Right To Be Forgotten" was a Lincoln Douglas (LD) topic last fall. Her first piece read VERY much like an LD debate case in favor of the resolution. She also used some of the same sources I saw in the brief packets. My guess is that she was a debater or she coaches debate at some level. This new piece is a slightly elevated form from what she first wrote, but has all the hallmarks I would expect to see in an advanced debate round.

I tell my kids all time that theoretical arguments like this one are fine for the classroom, but ideas like this would have serious consequences in the real world. Most LD topics posit some limitation on personal rights in favor of creating a utopia here on Earth that will be enforced by the coercive power of the state. What is scary is how many intelligent students see no problem with that.

I'm almost convinced that "Tonya Cohen" is a pseudonym for a troll. Almost. Not quite. However: I will point out that polls going back to the 1970s have consistently shown a majority in favor of limiting the First Amendment in some fashion. The particular "fashion" that different anti-speech groups favor is what has prevented it from happening, up to now.

"What is scary is how many intelligent students see no problem with that."

Remember the old saying: People who support dictatorship always assume that they will get to be the dictator.

Cousin Dave,
You are so right about that. I am sure she envisions herself as judge, jury, and executioner.

Also, I looked at her Twitter feed and she does admit that "Tonya Cohen" is not her real name. If she is serious about these ideas why does she her name? She should embrace all responses, but that is what all this is REALLY about. She lacks the courage of her convictions and therefore can't tolerate actual pushback, so she hides behind a false name. She isn't a social justice warrior, she is coward.

I'm not convinced that Tanya Cohen's writings aren't satire. She's been putting up a lot of pieces like this and they're just too dumb to be serious.

I hope.

So, you are an optimist Mike? Her writings aren't that far off from standard SJW stuff. Look up the 'I need feminism' meme. Makes Cohen look like a genius.

She's so explicit about her motives, too. "One of the most admirable things about Europe is that most (if not all) of the right-wing rhetoric that you hear in the US is explicitly against the law there."

She basically wants to silence an entire side of the political discussion. Dear God, this woman is an idiot. If she likes the laws in Europe so much, she should move there. She is not equipped to handle the freedom that America grants its citizenry.

The trouble Patrick is they are an invasive species. The fear that someone somewhere might be having fun is too much for such people to stand.