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Fred White's avatar

I'm confused. I thought The Free Press was opposed to hate speech directed at Jews on our best campuses and across the country. Is The Free Press truly on the side of protecting the speech it hates, or only the speech it doesn't dislike as much? Nat Hentoff and the ACLU have been for protecting all hate speech, including antisemitistic speech. All praise to Bari for printing the great Nadine Strossen's piece on how antisemitic speech is fully protected by the Constitution. But will The Free Speech fight "to the death" to protect antisemitic speech, which I hate as no doubt the wonderful Jews Hentoff and Strossen have? To me, one of the great moments in our Constitutional history was the ACLU's victory for the American Nazi march in Skokie decades ago. I totally oppose American Nazis and antisemities and white supremacists in general. That said, nothing is more important in America than freedom of speech and expression.

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Michael Caruso's avatar

No freedom under the U.S. Constitution is absolute. That is true for freedom of expression, just as it should be true for the right to bear arms. The free speech exception is screaming "fire in the theater." The is speech that can cause harm to others. It would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that much of what former Pres. Trump says teeters right on the edge of this exception.

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