Better be careful how this one's worded or the U.K.'s seen its last screening of "The Passion..."

Funny joke?  Beware of "the law of unintended consequences"!

Don't ban hate speech, it drives them underground, I really believe this very strongly, I think it is a major part of the incredible wisdom of the First Amendment of the US Consitution.

Watch them. With public hate speech, the public gets to watch them! And debate with them. And eventually hopefully, dis them. That's the only way to change culture, you can't do it by law or force. Put someone in jail for hate speech or thought crimes, and you will get out someone with his views doubly reinforced and doubly angry.

Liberals and libertarians are often bothered by the watching by Federal agents. But it's a necessary evil. There is no alternative except to do the stupid thing the UK is about to do, which will make the situation worse. Just because J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Milhaus Nixon abused surveillance and infiltration of groups doesn't mean it can't be done correctly with oversight. (After all, aren't many internet fans for "open source everything"? Well, what does that mean? There's an underlying thing you give up with "open source": privacy. One man's privacy is another man's secrecy. I am a privacy freak in my personal life, but even I can see that.)

You prevent violence by allowing speech. You prevent it by having the public discourse cause "self-policing" and you prevent it by being able to know what they are up to.

That said, a few U.S. laws and prosecutions are probably too lax about plotting as far as burden of proof is concerned. I don't think that's a major flaw though, here it's more about prosecutorial competence and the lack of support for improving it and the F.B.I.'s competence. Instead we spent money on "pre-emptive," some gaga idea of winning over hearts and minds in the Middle East. Whatever the good side of that argument might be, it does nothing about Timothy McVeigh's and David Koresh's.

David Koresh is a perfect example of the problem. Theoretically, to libertarians, he was doing nothing wrong; there was no act of violence, it was all provoked. Well, how long is it that you just sit around and wait for it to happen? Where does one draw the line?

one of the few, is that Sheik Rahman of the first WTC bombing is in prison. It can be done. Of course, there's all kind of stuff on the internet how he was "framed."

....Sunlight is more important than you think. Those who spread hate do not like to be exposed, noted Yigal Carmon, the founder of Memri, which monitors the Arab-Muslim media. The hate spreaders assume that they are talking only to their own, in their own language, and can get away with murder. When their words are spotlighted, they often feel pressure to retract, defend or explain them.

"Whenever they are exposed, they react the next day," Mr. Carmon said. "No one wants to be exposed in the West as a preacher of hate."

We also need to spotlight the "excuse makers," the former State Department spokesman James Rubin said. After every major terrorist incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed. When you live in an open society like London, where anyone with a grievance can publish an article, run for office or start a political movement, the notion that blowing up a busload of innocent civilians in response to Iraq is somehow "understandable" is outrageous. "It erases the distinction between legitimate dissent and terrorism," Mr. Rubin said, "and an open society needs to maintain a clear wall between them."

There is no political justification for 9/11, 7/7 or 7/21. As the Middle East expert Stephen P. Cohen put it: "These terrorists are what they do." And what they do is murder.

Finally, we also need to shine a bright light on the "truth tellers." Every week some courageous Arab or Muslim intellectual, cleric or columnist publishes an essay in his or her media calling on fellow Muslims to deal with the cancer in their midst....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/22/opinion/22friedman.html