DEBATENATE

Topics / Free speech

The challenge

“Words are violence”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

No. Words are words and violence is violence, and mixing them up gets people hurt. If a guy insults your mom, you answer him. If a guy punches your mom, you stop him by force. Call the insult violence, and you've just made the punch look like self-defense. The law already draws the line. In Brandenburg versus Ohio, the Supreme Court said speech loses protection only when it's aimed at inciting imminent lawless action and likely to cause it. Everything else gets answered with an argument. You'll say stress harms the body. So does a brutal final exam, and nobody arrests the professor. Let me ask you this: if words are violence, is it okay to hit back? The whole point of arguing is that nobody has to swing. Answer words with words, and fists stay out of it.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

  1. The law already handles speech that works like violence, the kind that incites it right now. Everything past that is persuasion, and persuasion gets answered with persuasion.

    In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court held that speech can be punished only when it is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to produce it.

  2. A threat is already treated differently from an insult. We can protect people without calling every hurtful word violence.

    In Virginia v. Black (2003), the Supreme Court held that true threats, statements meant to communicate a serious intent to commit unlawful violence against a person or group, are not protected by the First Amendment.

  3. Once speech you hate counts as violence, somebody gets to decide which speech that is. Sooner or later that somebody is your opponent.

    In Matal v. Tam (2017), the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a federal ban on disparaging trademarks, with Justice Alito writing that free speech law protects the freedom to express the thought that we hate.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Chronic stress physically harms the body, so constant abusive speech can cause real bodily damage, which makes it a form of violence.

Nate: Stress can hurt the body. So can deadlines, breakups and getting laid off, and none of those are violence. The word has to mean physical force. Stretch it to cover opinions and it stops protecting anybody and starts excusing force against people whose words you don't like.

What he grants the other side

Cruel words do real harm, and they're wrong even when they're legal.

The lines

Sources

  1. U.S. Supreme Court, Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969)
  2. U.S. Supreme Court, Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003)
  3. U.S. Supreme Court, Matal v. Tam, 582 U.S. 218 (2017)
  4. The Bible, Proverbs 18:21

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