View source for Talk:Abuse of hate speech laws

I teach children the rule, "No teasing". By this they understand no [[name-calling]] of course. So calling someone an "English b****" would earn one of my students a 5 minute [[time out]]. 

The truck driver in the quoted story was not prosecuted for the b-word but for calling a Welsh woman "English". 

This turns the definition of [[hate speech]] on its head. The point ought to be that it's rude to say things to hurt other people's feelings. If we want to legislate politeness - outside of grade school - let's do so. But to set up certain words as ''de jure'' more derogatory than others is absurd. 

In fact, I'm sure that's not the real point of [[hate crimes]] legislation. They don't want people to be more polite. They want ordinary speech criminalized, so that no idea which offends liberal ears or merely opposes liberal ideology can be expressed. It's turning into an [[Orwell]]ian exercise in [[thoughtcrime]], with [[political correctness]] filling the role of [[Newspeak]]. --[[User:Ed Poor|Ed Poor]] <sup>[[User talk:Ed Poor|Talk]]</sup> 12:14, 1 December 2007 (EST)