The U.S. Protects Hate Speech But Not Cursing

Adam Liptak's June 12th, 2008 New York Times article "Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Hate Speech" discusses the United States decision to protect hate speech within the first amendment and compares U.S. policies to a number of European nations that have decided that hate speech, holocaust denial, and Islamophobic language are a crime. What's particularly pernicious about Liptak's article is that he fails to acknowledge the millions of people silenced by U.S. bombs, police, and prisons. He fails to mention that the media is dominated by five corporations that protect state and ruling class interests and deny the public a legitimate voice. He fails to discuss the role of the Federal Communications Commission in regulating what language and ideas get aired on television.

From the FCC website:
It is a violation of federal law to air obscene programming at any time. It is also a violation of federal law to broadcast indecent or profane programming during certain hours. (See definitions}. Congress has given the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the responsibility for administratively enforcing the law that governs these types of broadcasts. The FCC has authority to issue civil monetary penalties, revoke a license or deny a renewal application. In addition, violators of the law, if convicted in a federal district court, are subject to criminal fines and/or imprisonment for not more than two years.

The FCC vigorously enforces this law where we find violations. In 2004 alone, the FCC took action in 12 cases, involving hundreds of thousands of complaints, assessing penalties and voluntary payments totaling approximately $8,000,000. The Commission has also toughened its enforcement penalties by proposing monetary penalties based on each indecent utterance in a broadcast, rather than proposing a single monetary penalty for the entire broadcast. At the same time, however, the Commission is careful of First Amendment protections and the prohibitions on censorship and interference with broadcasters' freedom of speech. The FCC has denied complaints in cases in which we determined the broadcast was not indecent based on the overall context of the programming. Regardless of the outcome, the FCC strives to address every complaint within 9 months of its receipt.

Instead of acknowleding the diverse censorial roles our government engages in, Liptak indicates that the only time the government can censor is when a speech act threatens imminent violence. As indicated in the above FCC quote, the government is setting the standards for what it determines is indecent. This flagrant violation of the spirit of the First Amendment demonstrates that the government is perhaps more concerned with protecting hate speech than the indecencies of banal conversation.

I am a strong advocate for Freedom of Expression. Nonetheless, I do not believe that government can grant this right. The attempt of any hierarchy to protect any freedom also implies its rightful ability to take the right away.

Hate mongers must be confronted for the violence of their language outside a legal apparatus. The government must be confronted for the violence of its acts outside a legal apparatus. In the words of George Orwell, as relayed to me probably inaccurately a few years ago, "I'd rather shoot a man than take away his Freedom of Speech."