Attorney General Pam Bondi has had a few missteps as the nation’s top cop, but that’s to be expected. It’s a big stage, a big job, and given how the Trump Administration is taking on the largest pruning of the Federal Kudzu beast ever attempted, there are lots of legal things that would find their way to her desk.
Trump has given the DOJ a lot to do and look at, but some things are just inherent and need not be explained. Sadly, the Trump DOJ has, in its second term, announced hate speech crimes, complete with charges, to which we’ve protested in the past. There’s no such thing as hate speech “crimes.” This is an Orwellian construction of the left, a social construct if you like, and anyone who uses the term Hate Speech is professing either ignorance or how much they hate speech.
There is speech that is hateful, but the people who want to use that idea to silence other opinions hate speech. Intransitive Verb: ‘To feel a strong dislike for or hostility toward.’ The laws they want or pass are about hating speech, not hateful speech. Free speech is what they hate.
The idea of it in law needs to be pruned along with the sweeping overreach of government. But Pam The Blondi Bondi keeps bringing it up, like it’s a real thing.
Bondi made the remarks in an appearance on “The Katie Miller Podcast” on Monday.
“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” she said. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
The new media right was appropriately outraged at both the reference and the notion that the DOJ has the authority to police any speech that isn’t defamatory or incites violence, two very narrow exceptions. [Related: MACDONALD: Does Trump’s FCC Need to Back “The F” Off?]
It does not have that power, even when the Proglodytes control all the paddles on the swamp boat, so why are Republican administrations (including one that tried it right here in my home state of New Hampshire) trying to use Newspeak to undermine free speech?
Ignorance is no excuse, and malice aforethought makes you a constitutional threat. The only thing Republican administrations and majorities ought to be doing is ferreting out any incident of the words ‘hate speech,’ or ‘hate crime,’ and removing them from rules, procedures, training materials, and, if present, statutes.
If you would like some help, consider Hate Speech an ugly, malformed rock in the DEI orbit. Right there next to CRT and They/Them, and permission structures, and micro-aggressions. Mr. Trump has already banned DEI nonsense, which makes it easy enough to say, Okay, no more of that hate crime hate speech nonsense. There is speech. There are crimes. There is hateful speech, and very rarely, there are speech crimes, but there is no such thing as hate speech or hate crimes.
And no, I don’t think Bondi needs to resign. People make mistakes, and it is not worth the nightmare of another Senate Confirmation to replace her over a few missed steps. If and when the missteps become policy and practice, well, that’s another matter. But if she’d like to help herself out, maybe stop talking about hate speech like it’s a crime. And not just because it’ll never survive Constitutional scrutiny in the nation’s Highest Court (it won’t). You’re pissing people off who have more productive things to do with that energy.
