Relaciones internacionales.indb - HOMINES

THE DISUNITING OF AMERICA: A SECOND LOOK
individuals. But identity politics regards groups rather than individuals as
the basic constitutional units and would therefore curtail individual rights
in order to protect group rights. “The law of equality and the law of freedom
of speech,” Catherine MacKinnon writes, “are on a collision course
in this country.” Professor Kathryn Abrams of the Cornell Law School
deplores “the constitutional habit of considering rights-bearers as unaffiliated
individuals.” She argues that “expression is overprotected” and that
“we need limits on free expression in intellectual life” in order to enhance
“respect for and recognition of politically marginalized groups.”
This novel theory of the Constitution is driven by potent group emotions—the
emotions of holocaust survivors in Skokie, the emotions of
women long subjected to harassment and abuse, the emotions of all oppressed
and persecuted minorities. “Civil liberties,” Professor Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., writes, “are regarded by many as a chief obstacle to civil
rights.... The byword among many black activists and black intellectuals
is no longer the political imperative to protect free speech; it is the moral
imperative to suppress ‘hate speech.’”
The case for suppression of hate speech has great appeal. Democratic
governments, with memories of the holocaust and apprehensions about
growing ethnic tensions, are naturally and honorably concerned to arrest
the spread of ethnic and racial hatreds.
Hate speech is especially offensive in educational settings, and university
administrators after a while ask themselves the question: which
is more important—protecting hate speech or cracking down on racial
persecution Does not the tolerance of racism prevent minority students
from joining the life of the university of equal terms Does not the Constitution
protect equality as well as liberty As Mary Ellen Gale reminds
us, the Fourteenth Amendment “is no less part of the Constitution than
the First.” Does not hate speech destroy equality and thereby undercut the
very premises of education
An obsession with ‘insensitivity’—saying something that might hurt
someone’s feelings—is a major source of the attack on free speech. Unquestionably
slurs and insults can upset and intimidate defenseless individuals.
But is the injury words inflict on sensibilities sufficiently weighty
and enduring to require so drastic a remedy as limitations on the First
Amendment
If we continue down this insensitivity road, we will end by endorsing
Ayatollah Khomeini and his crusade against The Satanic verses. Does
the fact that The Satanic Verses hurts the feelings of devout Muslims really
justify the fatwa, the sentence of death pronounced against Salman
Rushdie Bernard Shaw said, “All great truths begin in blasphemy.” The
hurt-feelings standard, if imposed in the past, would have silenced Mark
Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Mr. Dooley, H.L. Mencken and so many others
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Vol. XX, Núm. x - xxxxx de 2005 • HOMINES •