"First, the issue is not the thought that we hate, as though defenders of hate speech laws wanted to get inside people's minds. The issue is publication and the harm done to individuals and groups through the disfiguring of our social environment by visible, public, and semipermanent announcements to the effect that in the opinion of one group in the community, perhaps the majority, members of another group are not worthy of equal citizenship. ... Second, the issue is not just our learning to tolerate thought that we hate—we the First Amendment lawyers, for example. The harm that expressions of racial hatred do is harm in the first instance to the groups who are denounced or bestialized in the racist pamphlets and billboards. ... The question is about the direct targets of abuse. Can their lives be led, can their children be brought up, can their hopes be maintained and their worst fears dispelled, in a social environment polluted by these materials?"
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Freedom for the Thought That We Hate
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