Empower Wisconsin | Dec. 1, 2020
Did you know the First Amendment has a “design flaw” in it?
That’s what a member of Joe Biden’s transition team believes.
Richard Stengel, a former state Department bureaucrat in the Obama administration and speech code pusher on the former vice president’s team of advisers, wrote an op-ed last year arguing that “America needs a hate speech law.”
The piece, which ran in the Washington Post, asserts “the First Amendment protects the ‘thought that we hate,’ but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another.”
That’s a “design flaw” in the primary amendment protecting citizens and curbing the powers of government, Biden’s guy insists.
The idea is all the more chilling in the knowledge that Stengel is “team lead” for the United States Agency for Global Media, according the transition website.
To Stengel, the First Amendment was written in a simpler time, free from the ubiquitous internet and its many lies — or, as some like to call it, “Fake News.” Of course, Stengel, a Trump hater, might tell you anything coming from the president and his supporters is Fake News, or worse, hate speech.
And therein lies the problem with this Biden adviser’s ideas about hate speech. In Woke Land, hate speech is too often speech liberals don’t agree with, and more often political speech they disagree with.
Be very wary of speech bans proposed by people who believe the First Amendment has a “design flaw.” Their fix would ruin one of our most prized liberties.
Read more at Campus Reform.
