Hate Speech Laws and the End of Critical Thinking

Conservative demonstrators, who allege that the government pressured or colluded with social media platforms to censor right-leaning content under the guise of fighting misinformation, protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on March 18, 2024. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

Speech comes in many forms, of course, from news, entertainment, books, and movies, to singing protest songs, protesting in the street, or just having a good old chin-wag at your local cafe or bar. In a free society, the chances are that whatever anyone says, about half of the population will agree with that person and the other half won’t. Some may even be “offended.” So what?

In a totalitarian society, where no offending speech is allowed, there’s the official truth, and everything else is a crime. Who wants to live like that?

Our Rights Come From Biblical Precepts

Like it or not, America was founded on the values and precepts of the Bible. It’s a historical fact. But soon, even writing that could land one in jail.

But to the founders, free speech was a sacred right among many. That’s why the Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” It doesn’t come from Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, or Karl Marx. It comes from the Bible.

The assertion that our freedoms and rights come from our Creator, not our politicians, is a huge factor in the past success of America. In other countries, rights are given—and taken away—by government.

There’s a reason that the founders put the right to free speech as the first protected right in the Bill of Rights of the people of the United States. It’s because words convey ideas that can change the world for better or worse and free speech is the first right that tyrants would want to eliminate. Over the past 30 to 70 years, free speech has worked well in post-USSR and post-war Europe, too.

Thought Control Is People Control

Fast-forward to today, in the United States, Canada, and Europe, you can be prosecuted for what you say, or in some cases, even what you think, by so-called democratic governments under the guise of protecting us from “hate” speech. That’s because to control people, you have to control their thinking. To do that, you have to control what they can and cannot say and hear.

Being against hate provides the perfect cover for doing so, which is why the definition of hate speech has expanded so much that it supersedes the right to free speech. Censorship and canceling anyone who disagrees with government policies and the wokeness that has infected our culture is ramping up.

Corporations, academic leaders, and social media tech moguls have become laws unto themselves, enforcing hate speech codes that ban speech that is protected under the First Amendment.

For example, quoting the Bible might get you blocked on Facebook. Teachers who don’t want to read books about same-sex marriage to their students can be fired. These are just a couple of examples among many.

‘Oh (Dystopian) Canada!’

For example, not using woke pronouns can get you jailed or forced to attend some version of re-education to get you thinking “correctly.” Just ask Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson about that.

But Canada is going even further, with precrime laws now being proposed. Under them, you could be jailed if a judge thinks you’re about to say something illegal, such as use the “wrong” pronouns, i.e., refer to a man dressed as a woman as “he” or “him.”

Or, as the farmers and truckers discovered, protesting the Trudeau government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate can get you canceled and de-banked. Even if you gave the protesters a sandwich, you could possibly be de-banked as well. Canada is fast becoming the poster child for 21st-century North American dystopia.

Criminalizing Prayer and the Right Kind of Racism

In the UK, silently praying across the street from an abortion center will get you arrested and a lukewarm apology. But next time?

In Scotland, misgendering someone, or even calling someone an unpleasant name, could land you in jail.

In Germany, even quoting so-called hate speech attributed to someone else online is a crime worthy of a pre-dawn visit from the police seeking to arrest the guilty hate-speak quote poster.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

More Hate Speech Means Less Free Speech

As hate speech laws expand, free speech contracts. The consequences for free people and critical thinking are dire. By reducing speech, ideas are stifled, innovation is squashed, facts are obscured, and a kind of infantile feelings-based view of reality replaces a fact-based view. One of the many problems that come with such a society is that the powers that be have to go to greater and greater lengths of oppression and persecution in order to maintain the lies and suppress the truth.

Free peoples must demand freedom of speech from their elected governments and resist the infantilization of public debate that’s been reduced to calling every non-woke opinion racist, transphobic, and so on. Those terms stifle critical thought and encourage state control over everyone and everything. We must make our choice, or it will be made for us.

What will it be?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.