Does freedom of speech excuse preaching hate?

You have to understand Max, speech is not a protected freedom in the UK, and izzy being the sort of chauvinist Brit that can't stand American chauvinism, thinks that's just the way it should be.

Any defence of freedom of speech is meaningless when lies
are given the same amount of respect as the truth.

When push came to shove, during the run up to the Iraq war,
the American Media caved in to the demands of the Bush administartion and towed the party line.

Battered by accusations of a liberal bias and determined to prove their conservative critics wrong, the press during the run-up to the war -- timid, deferential, unsure, cautious, and often intentionally unthinking -- came as close as possible to abdicating its reason for existing in the first place, which is to accurately inform citizens, particularly during times of great national interest. Indeed, the MSM's failings were all the more important because of the unusually influential role they played in advance of the war-of-choice with Iraq. "When America has been attacked -- at Pearl Harbor, or as on September 11 -- the government needed merely to tell the people that it was our duty to respond, and the people rightly conferred their authority," [That is a liberal lie; the federal government HAS Constitutional authority to wage war. Article I, Section 8. David] noted Harold Meyerson in the American Prospect magazine. "But a war of choice is a different matter entirely. In that circumstance, the people will ask why. The people will need to be convinced that their sons and daughters and husbands and wives should go halfway around the world to fight a nemesis that they didn't really know was a nemesis."

It's not fair to suggest the MSM alone convinced Americans to send some sons and daughter to fight. But the press went out of its way to tell a pleasing, administration-friendly tale about the pending war. In truth, Bush never could have ordered the invasion of Iraq -- never could have sold the idea at home -- if it weren't for the help he received from the MSM, and particularly the stamp of approval he received from so-called liberal media institutions such as the Washington Post, which in February of 2003 alone, editorialized in favor of war nine times. (Between September 2002 and February 2003, the paper editorialized twenty-six times in favor of the war.) The Post had plenty of company from the liberal East Coast media cabal, with high-profile columnists and editors -- the newfound liberal hawks -- at the New Yorker, Newsweek, Time, the New York Times, the New Republic and elsewhere all signing on for a war of preemption. By the time the invasion began, the de facto position among the Beltway chattering class was clearly one that backed Bush and favored war. Years later the New York Times Magazine wrote that most "journalists in Washington found it almost inconceivable, even during the period before a fiercely contested midterm election [in 2002], that the intelligence used to justify the war might simply be invented." Hollywood peace activists could conceive it, but serious Beltway journalists could not? That's hard to believe. More likely journalists could conceive it but, understanding the MSM unspoken guidelines -- both social and political -- were too timid to express it at the time of war.

Any defence of freedom of speech is meaningless when lies are given the same amount of respect as the truth. When push came to shove, during the run up to the Iraq war, the American Media caved in to the demands of the Bush administartion and towed the party line.

Prosecutor Julian Knowles QC told the court that Walker, of Walnut Drive, Fareham, should not be protected under Article 10 of the Human Rights Act – which concerns freedom of expression – to protect the public and because the letters constituted “hate speech”.

He said: “You can campaign to get Britain out of the EU, you can call Gordon Brown a liar, but you can't do it in such an extreme way that you’re actively promoting dislike of other races or faiths – and that's what Mrs Walker has done.”

I think it's a step to say we no longer have freedom of speech just because we're not allowed to spread hate.

I think it's a step to say we no longer have freedom of speech
just because we're not allowed to spread hate.

I accept that you don't have those restrictions,
but as my above posting on the run up to the Iraq war shows, freedom of speech
is a bit of a misnomer when your media outlets are all pressed to tow the party line.

Whatever way you look at it, spreading hate and lies
is an abuse of freedom of speech, and not something to cherish.

Don't be silly David.

But there were protests against the run up to the war in the US with no arrests and if the media had been critical of the President, that would have been allowed.

Speech that isn't offensive doesn't need to be protected.

If you take away to the right to spread hate, then what does the right of freedom of speech protect?