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Constitutional Law

Mar. 10, 2011

The Best Antidote to Hate Speech Is More Speech

Staying true to the First Amendment requires that we allow all kinds of speech, even those which society deems offensive.

Stephen F. Rohde

Email: rohdevictr@aol.com

Stephen is a retired civil liberties lawyer and contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books, is author of American Words for Freedom and Freedom of Assembly.

Many of the U.S. Supreme Court's most important decisions upholding free speech involve the most hateful speech imaginable, testing our national commitment to the First Amendment.

Five years ago, in their hometown of Westminster, Md., Albert Snyder attended the funeral of his son Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.

About 1,000 feet away on public property, members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., founded by Fred Phelps in 1955, conducted a ...

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