Portland Mayor calls for the End of Freedom of Speech.

by Tom Rhodes, 5/30/2017

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said Monday that those not expressing approved views had no right to Freedom of Speech. Saying unapproved speech was not protected by the constitution.

In as much as elected officials are charged with protecting the Constitution of the United States, and their states, Ted Wheeler should be prosecuted and removed from office for malfeasance and failure to protect the Right of all Americans to Freedom of Speech.

Hate speech is specifically protected by the Constitution and repeated Supreme Court rulings. Even speech that the vast majority of Americans feel has little or no redeeming social value. Even though hate speech insults, it demeans, it traumatizes, it silences and there is a consensus in American society that it is valueless at best and dangerous at worst. Because hate speech is at it's root political in nature the government is not be allowed to prohibit it.

The Supreme Court’s rulings have made it clear that because even hate speech contains political ideas, however horrible these ideas may be, the government may not regulate such speech. When you regulate such speech, you are also regulating ideas. Think of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and forbidden words. The Supreme Court has also made clear that just because speech offends people, this is never a justification under the First Amendment for punishing it. Furthermore, we are justifiably suspicious of government when it attempts to regulate speech and ideas. After all, government may have its own political agenda in regulating hate speech—which groups would be protected against hate speech and which not?

Any person or group calling for the suppression of speech they find hateful, should be suspect. Silencing ideas you don't approve is subversive, propogandic, and clearly anti-freedom, anti-liberty, and totalitarian. Only totalitarians call for the suppression of speech they don't approve. If you think the government should outlaw the expression of ideas you don't approve, you are a totalitarian and should be ashamed of your hateful tyrannical ideology.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler on Monday proclaimed himself to be a totalitarian who believes a few ruling elite should have the power to control the ideas others may publicly express.