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Allow Offensive Speech --- Curb Abusive Speech?

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Abstract

Free speech can be limited. The Founding Fathers did not give it the high standing many liberals accord it. Moreover, the courts have often limited it for various reasons, thus adding trigger warnings and safe spaces is quite within the main stream legal tradition. This is especially true about speech that causes significant harm, objectively verified. However, the Trump assault on free speech, especially the Press, it should be our highest priority for now to protect this crucial freedom. 

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Notes

  1. Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949)

  2. Bachellar v. Maryland (1970), 397 U.S. 564, 567, 25 L. Ed. 2d 570, 574, 90 S. Ct. 1312, 1315, originally in Street v. New York, 394 U. S. 576, 394 U. S. 592 (1969

  3. Village of Skokie v. Nat’l Socialist Party of America 69 Ill. 2d 605 (1978)

  4. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989)

  5. Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443 (2011)

  6. Page xix, The Soul of the First Amendment by Floyd Abrams

  7. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/defamation

  8. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/libel

  9. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/slander

  10. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/obscenity

  11. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/perjury

  12. State v. Adams, No. 02CA171, 2004 WL 1380494, at *5 (Ohio Ct. App. June 14, 2004) (“The desire to

    reduce and control noise has repeatedly been held to be a content-neutral justification for laws that regulate the

    time, place, or manner of protected speech.”)

  13. Frisby v. Schultz, 487 U.S. 474, 484 (1988).

  14. Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77, 78, 89 (1949).

  15. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/liberal-media-scream-msnbc-expert-calls-us-a-white-supremacist-country

  16. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/31/how-the-resurgence-of-white-supremacy-in-the-us-sparked-a-war-over-free-speech-aclu-charlottesville

  17. Caplan, p. 3

  18. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/16/its-not-wrong-to-compare-trumps-america-to-the-holocaust-heres-why/?utm_term=.188dc4a68dfa

  19. https://www.newsweek.com/im-holocaust-survivor-trumps-america-feels-germany-nazis-took-over-876965

  20. Xx this reference can be to the shorter article: https://world-trust.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/7-Racial-Microagressions-in-Everyday-Life.pdf, or her 2010 book

  21. https://www.thefire.org/subject-facstaffdiscuss-statement-cere-faculty-re-laura-kipnis-freedom-project-visit-aftermath/

  22. Words as Weapons-When Do They Wound? Investigations of Harmful Speech

  23. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/the-harm-in-free-speech/

  24. https://www.uofmhealth.org/news/archive/201310/opioid-social?tidrss=research

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  28. Description of Heterodox find: https://heterodoxacademy.org/

  29. Ditto: https://www.thefire.org/

  30. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-speech-violence.html

  31. https://twitter.com/CHSommers/status/970506084472336384

  32. https://reason.com/blog/2018/03/06/christina-hoff-sommers-lewis-and-clark

  33. http://time.com/4955245/milo-yiannopoulos-berkeley-free-speech-week/

  34. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/31/us/politics/alex-jones-defamation-suit-sandy-hook.html

  35. https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebook-checks-facts-and-polices-hate-speech/

  36. R. A. V. v. St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 378 (1992)

  37. Matal v. Tam, 582 U.S. ___, IV (2017)

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  1. The George Washington University, 1922 F St. NW, Room 413, Washington, DC, 20052, USA

    Amitai Etzioni

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Etzioni, A. Allow Offensive Speech --- Curb Abusive Speech?. Soc 56, 315–321 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-019-00373-6

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