Who Hates Speech ?

This subject does not seem to make friends for anybody, but here goes.

Increasingly it has become clear to many of us that those who busy themselves with identifying and criminalizing "hate speech"  have one glaringly obvious characteristic in common:

They hate speech.

As this is written, a cabal of politicians in Louisiana is dedicating its efforts to prevent those attending school in the fourth-to-sixth grades from daily reading and reciting the Declaration of

Independence... Most specifically  that portion which reports that the Deity / Creator  made us all equal and endowed with universal "rights".

This is all incontrovertible evidence that there is no limit to the perversity of humans in search of  justification of their ill intentions.

The punishment of hurtful or  hateful words began on college campuses, where we all agree undeveloped mushy brains  of those budding citizens are comparatively unwrinkled.

It has always been a wonder to me that the terms "Dago", "Kike", "Bohunk",  "Mick", "Polack" and

"Limey" persisted in use as Non-Hate appellations long after the "N" word and "Towelhead", and "Spic" or "Beaner" were proscribed as actionable hate speech. Then, finally  I realized it was a "shades-of-white-and-color" sort of thing.

As a child in Georgia, I was not allowed to use any pejorative racial or ethnic slurs. I suffered both oral Lye soap and physical punishment for my  nasty Monkey-See-Monkey-Do lapse.

I had a cousin who was always referring to classes of  humanity he viewed contemptuously as "Guineas" and I confess I was a college graduate before I knew what he was saying.

The point of all this is a certainty that when it comes to name-calling, we all are closet sinners.

And just as in almost every other historical case, criminalizing  a  tribal failing is counterproductive.

Punishing people for outbursts of nastiness may be a good intention. But it's still speech and thought policing.

As noted above, it is evidence of a hatred of free speech and free thought.

It is more alarming than a camel's nose under the tent-flap.  It is a Cobra's or Viper's fangs in the coverlet.

Again: Would-be  judges of speech are probably haters of speech, regardless of the self-righteous smirks.

We all tend to stare at horizons  as challenges on occasion.

So, at the other end of the speech-spectrum, will we ever be allowed to stop  calling bloody thugs "dissenters" and rioting racist mobs   "protesters" ?

Let us  name them what they are: 

Unregistered subversive agents of a foreign government.