It was a chaotic time. The birth of a new American democracy was already causing political turmoil, and one man, James Madison, was tasked with creating a list of rights guaranteed to all Americans. The right to free speech was first to make the list and went on to be immortalized in the US Constitution as an inherent truth of life in America. Consequently, Americans today treat freedom of speech as a holy truth that must never be questioned, but laws are meant to change as times change. Hate groups, such as neo-Nazis and the KKK, are gaining more and more publicity in the United States, operating under the guise of \u201cexercising their First Amendment rights.\u201d Now, it is true that they are legally allowed to operate in the US, but this calls into question whether free speech should also protect those who abuse it and those who aim to spread hate and divisiveness throughout society.<\/p>\n
First, we should establish what \u201cfreedom of speech\u201d means in the United States. According to the Constitution of the United States, the government \u201cshall make no law\u2026 abridging your freedom of speech,\u201d which is frustratingly vague. As a result, the Supreme Court has had to step in on multiple occasions, defining exactly what \u201cfreedom of speech\u201d encompasses and what it does not. The consensus is that \u201cfreedom of speech\u201d does not protect incitement of imminent lawless action (Brandenburg v. Ohio<\/a>), false statement of fact (Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc.<\/a>), or extreme obscenity (Miller v. California<\/a>). It seems clear that freedom of speech isn’t a matter of absolutes but is better modeled on a spectrum of certain exceptions.<\/p>\n In the U.S., despite all the exceptions named above, free speech is surprisingly non-restricted. Many other countries that are considered the pinnacles of western values (like Germany, Denmark, or Canada) all have many more restrictions to free speech than in the U.S. People in these countries aren\u2019t pro-censorship or anti-freedom, they simply agree that some restrictions to their rights are worth preventing the spread of hate and violence, and are overall a positive force in their countries. For example, German law prohibits holocaust denial, saluting Hitler, and hate speech in order to prevent history from repeating itself (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany<\/a>). Restrictions like these may not be the best ways to combat hate and violence in the United States, but they are the best the citizens of the world have been able to come up with.<\/p>\n