By the time the New York radio station WABC fired its most popular talk show host, Bob Grant, he had spent a good 25 years vilifying Blacks, Hispanics and other minorities with impunity. Hate speech, as Americans call it, is a troubling matter for people who believe in free speech. It is abusive, insulting, intimidating and harassing. The USA, as the least censored society in the world, has held firmly to the First Amendment and to Article l9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has meant that attempts to make provisions against hate speech have almost all been disallowed by the Supreme Court.
International law appears more contradictory.
None of these statements have stopped the fierce debate on that difficult borderline between free speech and equality of respect. Free speech is thought of as sacred to a democratic society, as the freedom upon which all others depend. It is, of course, dangerous to suggest the possibility of more censorship. Censorship can kill and maim, for when people draw a cloak of secrecy over their actions, gross abuse may happen with impunity. In the United States, hate speech is typically defended as the price society has decided to pay for safeguarding free expression.