Sorry, didn't see this comment earlier and it deserved a decent response. For the record, I live in a country with anti-hate-speech laws. It doesn't seem to mak

Sorry, didn't see this comment earlier and it deserved a decent response. For the record, I live in a country with anti-hate-speech laws. It doesn't seem to make much of a difference. There's still plenty of people peddling racist viewpoints who aren't anywhere close to violating said laws. Equally, some of the things I've mentioned _are_ already illegal in the US, if not heavily enforced. The question of liberty is a fundamental one, but I'm going to ask you the converse question: what are you prepared to do when your liberty is threatened by someone exploiting your system to do it? This isn't theoretical: Chavez' Venezuela demonstrates a good example where a democratic result was used to plunge a country into authoritarianism. I'm sure you can find authoritarians in your own country that are staunch supporters of the first amendment, they're not as incompatible as you might think. The Snow Crash example is extreme, but there will always be (and have always been) bad actors. Some of these people will be exploiting the laws as they exist to cause harm. Some of these people will be lawmakers exploiting situations to gain greater control. We need to be on our guard against both.