The Westboro Baptist Church should not have a right to free speech

FREE MARKETPLACE OF IDEASThe idea of a 'free marketplace' often refers to forms of unrestrained capitalism, where anything goes because what people want determines what goes and what doesn't. Here however, this has nothing to do with economics. Think of all ideas as existing in an economy of ideas. If an idea is insightful, useful, funny, or popular somehow, it will 'succeed' in the marketplace; in other words, many people will accept it. If an idea is not successful--that is to say, it is unaccepted because it is bigoted, hateful, stupid, or otherwise unpopular--then it will be considered to have 'failed' in the marketplace of ideas.The Westboro Baptist Church falls into the latter category. The Church forwards a very unpopular idea. It is not only unaccepted, it is repudiated. Counter-protests are springing up all around the nation[1][2][3]. The free marketplace of ideas beginning to censor the Church. Not only is their message being actively repudiated, but this repudiation is taking a toll on their membership. Within a decade, they've lost 20 of their 60 members[4][5]. This is understandable, as the Baptists are an extreme anti-gay group existing in a culture of increasing tolerance and sensitivity towards gay people.So they were already a tiny group, and now they're beginning to die off. Why would we need to grant the government power to deal with them when they're already being dealt with handily?THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF GOVERNMENT CENSORSHIPIt may sound alarmist to say, "We start with censoring the Baptists and next thing you know all conservative ideas will be being banned by Obama!"And it totally is--our country would never experience a shift in direction that insane within a time period small enough wherein Obama is still in office.However, I would still posit that giving the government the power to control what people say, even if it is with good intention, has the capacity for an unwanted slippery slope effect. Keep in mind as I go on what was mentioned in the previous section: the Westboro problem is becoming less and less of a problem thanks to the censorship of the free marketplace of ideas.So how do we conceivably move down a slippery slope path? Well, we start with censoring the Westboro Baptists in a fervor of righteous anger. After that people say, 'OK, that's far enough, we don't want to take this censorship stuff too far'. The next generation grows up with the idea of limited censorship as a perfectly commonplace thing. This acceptance of a form of censorship makes them more open to the concept of its expansion. So maybe they do expand the criteria for hate speech a bit, cast a wider net, censor more people. The next generation is more accustomed to this furthered version of censorship and is therefore more open to even further expansion. This goes on and on until the government has too much power in terms of saying who can say what; people are censored en masse, prevented from speaking out against their government; democracy begins to die.At this point I suppose I should admit that any mildly experienced debater will probably be pointing out that the outcomes slippery slope arguments posit aren't 100% certain to happen. I can't argue against that, but what I can do is show that we don't even need to tempt this slippery slope. When we combine the information in these two sections, here's what we're left balancing as our courses of actions:Allowing a virtual non-problem (Westboro) to exist for however much longer it has vs. tempting the possibility of a serious problem (too much government control)I'll rephrase the rhetorical question I used to end my first section:Why bother risking the slippery slope of restrictive government control and censorship when the problem it would solve is already being solved without taking that risk? Answer: there is no good reason.Thanks for reading.Sources:[1] http://www.gazettenet.com...[2] http://journaltimes.com...[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com...[4] http://en.wikipedia.org...[5] http://cjonline.com...