The Government Should Not Censor Racial or Hateful Speech

First of all, a quick parenthesis. When you say that allowing drugs would have negative effects as more people would be addicted to them, I'm not sure I buy this argument. If they weren't prohibited, maybe some company would take over a part of the cocaine industry to make money, but another one would compete by creating a less addictive cocaine brand, etc. Marijuana could actually be safer if regulated and put to sell behind a counter in Walgreens. But let's not make this a debate inside the debate so I apologize and come back to the topic. When you used your previous argument, you acted as if insults were not currently free to use. In the United States and in most free countries of the world, saying AS***** or F*** does not get you to prison, thanks to the freedom of speech. So they are already technically free to use, and we still know how to recognize whether they are bad or not. Sure, the word "midget" is very offensive for some people, but at the end of the day, do we have a natural right not to be offended? I don't think so. If that were the case, we would be living in a boring world. You might not agree, or even despise what one says, but this is what you should expect in a free society. And what about the limit? I mean, if offending signs and speech were to be rendered illegal, where would you, or rather the government, put the limit on banning speech? What about prohibiting people from using critics toward the government itself? If you agree that certain speeches should be banned, then there would be no philosophical or natural limit not to ban any other kind of expression. I don't know if you remember this case, but there was a Dutch journalist that was stabbed to death by an Islamist because he had written a piece about the lives of Muslim women. If such speech is found offending to the Islamic culture, what about we ban it too. And the caricatures of Mohamed that were drawn in a Danish newspaper: should the State also ban the representation of a religious leader or prophet with the excuse not to offend anybody? Finally, we must always remember the unintended consequences that always result from government action. When the European Union debated in 2007 on whether to ban the Nazi swastika, the greatest protesters were not racist skinheads but Buddhists, whose symbol is the same... swastika. What about, as you said, the formerly common word nigger. Since it is offensive, then we should as well ban it, but what would happen to all those African-Americans that use it not to offend but as a greetings. Imagine the consequences, with a Facebook police patrolling on everyone's profile, etc. "The freedom of speech and the freedom of the press have not been granted to the people in order that they may say things which please, and which are based upon accepted thought, but the right to say the things which displease, the right to say the things which convey the new and yet unexpected thoughts, the right to say things, even though they do a wrong." – Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), Seventy Years of Life and Labor, 1925 I advise you to watch the video on the side http://www.youtube.com...