Speaking on a Tea Party Unity conference call last week, Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber predicted that the U.S. is “five, six years at the most” away from enacting unconstitutional hate-speech laws and claimed that President Obama was “testing the waters” for such laws when he criticized LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s racist comments.
Discussing anti-gay activist Peter LaBarbera’s recent detention in Canada, Barber claimed that the U.S. is at most six years away from enacting hate-speech bans, which he claimed are “already happening informally” with backlash to Sterling’s comments and to former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich’s anti-gay campaign donation.
Anti-gay activists frequently bring up the specter of hate-speech laws in criticizing anti-discrimination laws and public pressure campaigns, although hate-speech laws are clearly unconstitutional, and existing laws preventing discrimination based on gender, race, religion and disability have not resulted in the outlawing of hate speech.
We’re probably five, six years at the most, I think, behind Canada in terms of enacting such hate-speech kind of laws and crackdown. It’s already happening informally, as we saw, again, with Mozilla, with Eich, as we’re seeing with Donald Sterling.
And it’s easy to do with Donald Sterling. You know, they can test the waters because, I think, universally people agree that what he said his horrible and he’s just kind of a not a very appealing guy and his words were reprehensible. So, they’ve already banned him for life from the NBA, they’ve already banned him from having anything to do with the team that he owns, which may or may not be appropriate, but people are clamoring and saying, ‘That’s not enough!’ And I don’t know what else they want to, do they want him tarred and feathered, do they want him drawn and quartered? They certainly want to force, and confiscate his property, and that’s what we’re talking about, and that’s what happened with Brendan Eich, they confiscated, essentially, his livelihood, his means of carrying out a living and feeding his family.
Barber went on to blame President Obama for the fact that Donald Sterling’s girlfriend had possibly broken the law in recording his comments, which he said was “indicative of the lawlessness that we’re living under under this Obama administration.”
He then alleged that President Obama was using his criticism of Sterling – which came in response to a question from a reporter – as a way of “testing the waters” for an executive order to “go after hate speech” in private conversations recorded by the NSA.
Obama’s plot would mean that “they can come after any of us for things that we have said or things that we would say,” Barber added.
President Obama did not mention that, hey, a law was violated in the taping of this, yet they are using that illegally gained fruit of the poisonous tree in order to go after this guy, to excommunicate him from the NBA, and now to try and confiscate his property. This is scary stuff, but it’s indicative of the lawlessness that we’re living under under this Obama administration.
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He knows he can get away with the GOP, regrettably, at this point – the go along, get along Republican Party establishment who doesn’t want to be called racist – he can get away with murder. So the only thing that would stop it would be their own cost-benefit analysis determining that the American public would not be ready for such an act.
This is why I believe they’re testing the waters, with Mozilla, with Brendan Eich, President Obama weighed in on that and exacerbated and fanned the flames, with Donald Sterling, President Obama weighed in on that, fanned the flames.
I think they’re testing the waters to see what they can get away with. And if they feel like the political climate is ripe for this kind of Orwellian executive order, I would not be surprised to see him essentially through executive fiat reinstate the Fairness Doctrine over the talk waves and go after hate speech even in the context of private conversations, that as Rick points out, are apparently, have all been recorded and are on record, so they can come after any of us for things that we have said or things that we would say.
