I agree that hate speech is often the bad side of free speech. What I disagree on is who should decide what hate speech is.

Taking away the right for someone to speak their mind is too much power for one individual or group, and is ripe for abuse, so it's better to not do it at all.

>What I disagree on is who should decide what hate speech is.

It is a risky business, but so are many others: food and drug regulation, road regulation, flight regulation etc. - the case must be made why freedom of speech is such a special right as opposed to any other action, such as selling food, driving cars, or building planes.

>Taking away the right for someone to speak their mind is too much power for one individual or group

We already do this globally, with copyright law, or less controversially, laws against threats, assault and child pornography. This at least shows that there is some scope, and unless that scope is a dogma, it should be open for questioning - either in broadening or narrowing.

Indeed, that's a power you'd have to be comfortable having in the hands of your opponents. Because at some point it will be and then they'll be the ones defining what speech is restricted.

If you want, you can think of it as a continuation of laws that cover other crimes.

If I describe to you exactly how you might go about murdering someone, and they get murdered, I'm likely to be a suspect, and if you're charged, I'll be charged as an accessory. If I rouse a group of people into flipping over cars, breaking windows, and hurling rocks at the police, I'll be charged with incitement. If I yell fire in a crowded theater... I can't recall what the charge is but it's not good (endangerment?). If I con the police into arresting you for something you didn't do, I can be charged for that as well (and you probably ought to also sue me for civil penalties).

If all of that is criminal, then it's not much of a stretch to include escalation to hate crimes as a prosecutable offense. Grooming people toward these activities might be a grey area, but it's a grey area, not an unassailable one.

> If I describe to you exactly how you might go about murdering someone, and they get murdered, I'm likely to be a suspect, and if you're charged, I'll be charged as an accessory.

IANAL, but this doesn't sound quite right. I think they need to be able to show mens rea on your part, that is, that you actually believed the person might commit murder and deliberately helped them.

if you agree with my nitpick, then all of your examples show a clear intention to incite others to do specific material harm.

on the other hand, if someone says "X group doesn't deserve to live", it's hard to say whether they are deliberately inciting violence. if X is saints fans, you might reasonably assume the person is joking. if X is a marginalized group, it's still hard to say whether it's an incitement of violence or a gross opinion that lacks actual intent to incite violence. if it were easy to show that it was a deliberate incitement of violence, then it would already be illegal under current laws.

> If I describe to you exactly how you might go about murdering someone, and they get murdered, I'm likely to be a suspect,

False, see Anarchist's cookbook and similar cases such as MIT's lockpicking guide

> If I rouse a group of people into flipping over cars, breaking windows, and hurling rocks at the police, I'll be charged with incitement

Incitement is a crime. It requires specific, actionable intent. "Screw the police" is not incitement, "go hang group X" is.

> If I yell fire in a crowded theater

Not a crime

> If I con the police into arresting you for something you didn't do

That's making a false statement to police

> If all of that is criminal, then it's not much of a stretch to include escalation to hate crimes as a prosecutable offense

Thank goodness it's not

What do you mean by "free speech" if not that which is protected by the first amendment? I have seen statements like "hate speech is not free speech" quite often (as opposed to "hate speech _should not be_ free speech"), so I get the impression it is common to argue the law does not already protect it.

"Free speech" is an abstract liberal legal concept, it is not tied to any particular law. Even under countries which do implement "free speech" as a constitutional right, their legal systems have declared that some restrictions can be implemented: threats and child porn are two big ones. 1A enshrines a particular conception of freedom of speech, but it is not equal to freedom of speech in abstract (unless you want to claim that freedom of speech was only invented and only truly implemented in the U.S.)

My question was not rhetorical. If someone doesn't mean constitutional law, _then what do they mean_? You seem to be simply arguing there is no universal concept of freedom. Is that the answer then? Because we have a precedent for redefining words in various ways already, we can choose to add whatever else we desire to the list? I rather assumed it had something to do with redefining "hate speech" (e.g. as violence or something) not redefining freedom.