Via Virginia
‘Hate’ is such an ugly word. And such a juvenile word. It calls to mind the stereotypical eight-year-old girl who screams “I hate you!” to her mother when she is not allowed to join the local sleep-over. The word is most often used half-jokingly—“I hate the Yankees!”, “I hate broccoli!”, etc.—or to describe some detested task (“I hate cleaning the bathroom”). Or it can be used for rhetorical effect. But the use of the term in the context of ‘hate speech’ is silly, juvenile, and formally meaningless. We may dislike someone or some group, or be repulsed by them, or wish to dissociate from them. But to hate them? Seriously—what mature individual today is willing to openly and earnestly say “I hate you” to anyone? Only a highly insecure or severely distressed person would do such a thing. It’s a sign of weakness.
And yet today, hate seems to be the ethos of the moment. More specifically, we seem to be surrounded by talk of ‘hate speech’ in the mass media. To judge by various headlines and liberal pundits, hate speech would appear to be among the greatest dangers of modern existence—on par with racism and “White supremacy,” and greater than political corruption, international terrorism, global pandemics, financial instability, environmental decline, overpopulation, or uncontrollable industrial technology. Most European countries have legal prohibitions against various forms of hate speech, however ill-defined, as do Canada and Australia. Even in the US there is increasing pressure to create legal sanction for some such concept, the First Amendment notwithstanding.
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