"Hate Speech is not Protected Speech"

Oh yes, they're literally going there.

On Saturday evening, before the bodies had even been cleared from the Buffalo shopping center where ten people were murdered, New York Governor Kathy Hochul wasted no time in declaring that “speech” was the new intended target.

She couldn’t go after the gun used in the crime, being that it was legally purchased in the state of New York, which already has the harshest gun laws in the country. Notwithstanding the fact this “legal purchaser” had a “history” of mental illness and disturbing behavior with police involvement, he was able to legally purchase a Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic rifle, which he then “illegally modified” by putting a “high capacity” magazine into it.

For my readers unfamiliar with the design of such weapons, the magazine drops out at the push of a button, enabling rapid reloads with fresh, fully loaded magazines - it’s not a “modification” to the gun, it’s a feature. But it probably sounded trite on the heels of a mass-murder to publicly cite the perpetrator for violating New York’s ban on high capacity magazines. Facing ten consecutive life sentences for murder, I doubt the assailant was much intimidated by the prospect of an extra 18 months on the magazine charge. And this demonstrates the whole silliness of these “high capacity magazine” restrictions, doesn’t it? It’s not like someone planning on using such a magazine to facilitate uninterrupted killing of innocent people gives much of a damn about what other rules he’s breaking. These rules only exist to harass and intimidate the law-abiding.

So he was in possession of a prohibited item (the magazine) which is illegal to purchase or own in New York. He also had two backup guns in his car - a shotgun he’d purchased (again, legally) and a rifle his father had given him for Christmas. And I’d assume a lot of ammunition for all the above. In New York! Well, so much for the “toughest gun laws in the nation”. Perhaps if they had “the toughest gun laws in the galaxy”?

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say, this one’s probably not going to be about the evil, dangerous looking black gun so much. Cue the fascist overreach on speech.

Yes Kathy Hochul really did say, on live TV, and in subsequent remarks “hate speech is not protected speech.” She’s going there. Or rather, she’s gone there.

For the reader’s benefit, let me connect the “dots” Hochul wants you to follow. The kid had composed and posted online a 180-page disquisition, or “manifesto” as it’s being called, that is nearly incoherent and widely contradictory in its rambling nonsense. But an unmistakable conclusion is America would be a lot better off without all the non-white people here - it’s crazy racist on that point.

And so, according to Hochul’s logic map, we’re supposed to believe this screwed up monster (and I don’t use their names because infamy is what they seek) was otherwise a normal, well-adjusted high school kid until he became “radicalized” by exposure to crazy and violent ideas on the internet. Sort of a turn on the old “violent video games” theme - but you need to see where they’re going with this one.

Among Democrats on Twitter (and all of them are on Twitter), the proximate cause of this mass shooting is traceable to that day when the kid was surfing the cable channels and accidentally encountered one Tucker Carlson on Fox News. I’m not making this up. Seriously, even the Babylon Bee couldn’t make this up. That brief exposure to “white supremacy” then drove him ultimately to a murderous rage and an attempt to purge America of non-white Europeans. Tucker made him do it.

So now you see where they’re going when they say “hate speech is not protected speech” - after all, as literally everybody on Earth knows, “you can’t shout fire in a crowded theater” - and that’s practically what Tucker does every night on his show. So QED.

The Democrats are certainly drunk on power, but they’re not stupid. So watch where they’re going with this next. They’re not going to take Fox News or Tucker Carlson to court, or enact new laws to ban Fox News. There won’t be a Hochul v Carlson Supreme Court case - that’s not their angle with all this. They’d lose if they had to prove it in a court of law, so they’ll move it to the court of popular opinion instead. In fact, they already have - and declared themselves righteous from the start.

So what’s next? My money’s on speech restrictions (ala Twitter) enforced by social media and internet service providers to “silence” the voices of “hate”. And presumably sanctions against cable networks that carry Fox News Channel, OANN and Newsmax to boot. Anybody that “profits in hate” is now vulnerable.

Which naturally ushers in the question of what’s hate speech? I think, definitionally, in Hochul’s mind - in Democrats’ minds, it’s “whatever we don’t agree with”. More specifically, any Republican or Libertarian idea - that’s hate. If you think that’s a stretch, look at the new Disinformation Governance Board at the US Department of Homeland Security, headed up by a nasty progressive whose mission is to target any opinions contrary to the Democrat party’s official talking points.

You might think, “But the First Amendment…” They’re already ahead of you on that one, remember - “crowded theater”? In fact, the First Amendment explicitly protects speech you don’t agree with - that is literally the whole point of that constitutionally protected right. True, one may not “incite violence” and the U.S. Supreme Court drew that fine line in the 1982 unanimous free speech decision in Claiborne v. NAACP:

“To impose liability without a finding that the NAACP authorized — either actually or apparently — or ratified unlawful conduct would impermissibly burden the rights of political association that are protected by the First Amendment.”

And so this is why Hochul and the Democrats are going after the media and social media corporations . Not to shut down actual incitement to violence (most of what Democrats already do is just that - see their “flash mobs”), but to silence speech of their opponents. They’re just going to bypass the judicial system entirely.

If I’m wrong, it’s only for not guessing at a greater audacity. After all, anybody so bold as to create a Disinformation Governance Board would just as likely create a whole new agency for the definition and enforcement against “hate speech”. Biden and the clown car that comprises his staff would likely go along with just such a move - it fits with the whole campus radical theme park of the administration.

Whatever the result will be, it won’t bode well for free speech, if that was ever their intent, nor “safety” - a Democrat shibboleth at best. The Democrats have been looking for their Great White Nationalist Whale for some time, and this time, I suspect they think they’ve found it.