UNLIKE OTHERS, U.S. DEFENDS FREEDOM TO OFFEND IN SPEECH June 13,
2008 In the United States, under the First Amendment, newspapers
and magazines can say what they like about minorities and
religions -- even false, provocative or hateful things --
without legal consequence. The United States, in its treatment
of hate speech, as in so many other areas of the law, takes a
distinctive legal path, says the New York Times. "In much of the
developed world, one uses racial epithets at one's legal peril,
one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic
hatred at significant legal risk, and one urges discrimination
against religious minorities under threat of fine or
imprisonment," Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F.
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in a recent essay
called "The Exceptional First Amendment." "But in the United
States," Professor Schauer continued, "all such speech remains
constitutionally protected." For example: - Canada, England,
France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sou