The problem with this slippery slope is that anyone can designate something they don’t like as ‘hate speech’ or ‘bigotry’. In essence, it becomes impossible to criticize groups of people because someone can just call it ‘hate speech’ and get you censored for it, or worse.

Freedom of speech is just that: freedom of speech. You can say what you want about anyone you want. It makes sense to have exception for things like yelling ‘bomb’ in an airport or ‘fire’ in a movie theater, but that’s really where the exceptions should end.

Someone saying, “I hate and want to kill all x” should be allowed under free speech. It might not be pretty, but that’s why we, as competent adults, have our own means of shutting them out of the conversation. We don’t need to rely on the law for this.

Case and point: If it’s acceptable to say “I hate and want to kill all nazis/pedophiles”, it should also be acceptable to say “I hate and want to kill all people of color and homosexuals.” I know it’s not pretty and you may not like this, but that’s what freedom of speech is. Once we start censoring beyond that, it becomes a political tool to push an agenda and silence those who go against it.

On a lesser-scale, a lot of people have been trying to brand posts they don’t like as ‘trolling’ just to discredit them and get them removed. Same thing goes for ‘hate speech.’ Where is the line drawn? Usually wherever most people think it should be, regardless of if it’s accurate.