Pressure Valves and Bloodied Chickens: An Analysis of Paternalistic Objections to Hate Speech Regulation

Abstract

Our contribution to the debate about hate speech, Pressure Valves and Bloodied Chickens analyzes a group of objections to hate-speech regulation that originate from the liberal side and take the form of asserting that if minorities knew their own best interest they would not demand rules limiting hate speech. Paternalistic in nature, these objections have in common that the objector pretends to knows better what is in minorities' best interest and include the best-friend and reverse-enforcement argument that hate-speech rules are invariably turned against minorities when, in fact, they are not.

Keywords: Hate speech, speech codes, free speech, minorities, civil rights, universities, campus conduct codes