urderer!", is an instance of incitement to imminent violence, clearly grounds for criminal prosecution.
A very important, thorny, issue raised by the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case [Wikipedia-Cit] is whether contributions to election campaign funds by labor unions, non-profit corporations, and for-profit corporations should be treated as a form of expression protected by the First Amendment. Along with the thorny issue of general regulation of contributions to election campaign funds, this is a matter on which there is no consensus among civil libertarians. Rather than double the length of this essay, I plan to treat these problems in a future essay
Everybody is in favor of allowing the free expression of ideas that they sympathize with, or, at least do not consider harmful. Real advocates of civil liberties oppose suppression even of ideas that they consider most abhorrent. They believe that the proper response to such speech is counterargument.
An excellent example of this attitude was the 1970's Skokie, Illinois case [ACLU]. A group of American Nazis planned to march in uniform, complete with swastikas, thru a street in a town with a substantial Jewish population. An injunction was issued to prohibit the march in order to spare the feelings of the residents, particularly the many holocaust survivors include among them. The ACLU, on First Amendment grounds, succeeded in getting the injunction overturned by the Supreme Court. This victory cost the ACLU some 30,000 members, but is considered to be a landmark case defining the organization's principles.
The flourishing of free speech in the US is due to the fact that it is one of the few political principles that is supported by substantial numbers of Americans who agree on very little else [Malik]. It is also true that that efforts to suppress free speech for various reasons have been made by people with very diverse political views. Fortunately, the supporters have, thus far, prevailed.
ACLU>, "ACLU History", ACLU
David Carr, "Blurred Line Between Espionage and Truth", NY Times, February 26, 2012
FindLaw, "Speech Plus--The Constitutional Law of Leafleting, Picketing, and Demonstration", FindLaw
Glenn Greenwald, "The creepy tyranny of Canada's hate speech laws", salon.com, Mar 22, 2010
Adam Liptak, "Hate speech or free speech? What much of West bans is protected in U.S.", NY Times, June 11, 2008
Matthew Lopas, "European Court Upholds LGBT Provisions of Swedish Hate-Speech Law", hrbrief.org, May 18, 2012
Patrick Maines, "Some People 'Get It.'", Media Institute, July 7, 2008
Kenan Malik, "Why Hate Speech Should Not Be Banned", Pandaemonium, April 19, 2012
Jacob Mchangama, "Censorship as 'Tolerance'", National Review on Line, July 19, 2010
John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty", Bartleby.com, 1869
TalkTalk, "Official Secrets Act", TalkTalk
Stephen H. Unger, "Governmental Secrecy: Shield for Tyranny, Incompetence, and Corruption", Ends and Means, September 14, 2011
Wikipedia-Cit, "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission", Wikipedia
Wikipedia-Com, "Comstock laws", Wikipedia
Wikipedia-Esp, "Espionage Act of 1917", Wikipedia
Wikipedia-Pent, "Pentagon Papers", Wikipedia
Wikipedia-Mclib, "McLibel case", Wikipedia
Comments are welcomed and can be sent to me at unger(at)cs(dot)columbia(dot)edu
Don't forget to replace (at) with @ and (dot) with the symbol .
Return to Ends and Means to see other articles that you might find interesting.