Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Hate speech laws are going in all around the world, and progressive activists in the United States want to use these kinds of laws to destroy free speech in America. You see, the truth is that these hate speech laws that are being implemented all over the planet are not just about preventing speech that promotes violence or genocide against a particular group of people. Instead, these laws are written in such a way that anyone that says something that “offends” or “insults” someone else is guilty of “hate speech”. Even if you never intended to offend anyone and you had no idea that your words were insulting, in some countries you can be detained without bail and sentenced to years in prison for such speech. Today, there are highly restrictive hate speech laws in Canada, in Mexico and in virtually every single European nation. The United States is still an exception, but the truth is that our liberties and freedoms are being eroded every single day, and it is only a matter of time until “hate speech laws” are used to take away our freedom of speech too.

If you don’t think that this could ever happen in America, you should consider what the American Bar Association has to say on the matter. This is the national organization that represents all of our lawyers, judges, etc. So when the ABA speaks on legal matters, it carries a significant amount of weight. The following is how the American Bar Association defines “hate speech”…

Hate speech is speech that offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits.

Did you catch that?

If I say something that offends or insults you, there is a very good chance that I have just committed “hate speech” according to the ABA.

And support for these kinds of laws is growing. In fact, one survey found that 51 percent of all Democrats now support hate speech laws. It is only a matter of time before progressives start pushing for them in a big way.

Sadly, many of these progressives don’t even understand that our Constitution protects free speech. Just consider what CNN anchor Chris Cuomo recently had to say about this…

Hate speech is not the same thing as free speech, wrote CNN anchor Chris Cuomo on the ultimate forum for public discourse: Twitter . Amid debate about free speech after a shooting at an anti-Muslim protest in Texas , a user tweeted at Cuomo: “Too many people are trying to say hate speech (doesn’t equal) free speech.” In response, Cuomo, who has a law degree, said, “It doesn’t. Hate speech is excluded from protection. Don’t just say you love the Constitution … read it.”

No, I think that it is Cuomo that needs to read the Constitution. The fact that he gets to deliver “the news” to millions upon millions of Americans is absolutely frightening.

But without a doubt, we do need to have a conversation about “hate speech” in the United States. If I offend or insult you, that does not mean that I “hate” you. And if I disagree with you, that does not mean that I “hate” you either.

Some of the things that are considered to be “offensive speech” these days are absolutely ridiculous. For example, just consider the following excerpt from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson…

Here’s an actual list of things that according to the University of Wisconsin are racist: – Asking someone where they are from or where they were born. – Telling someone they speak good English. – Telling someone that you have several black friends. – Saying that you’re not a racist. – Complimenting an Asian person by telling them they are very articulate. – Asking an Asian person for help with science or math. – Uttering the phrase “There is only one race, the human race.” – Saying that you think America is a melting pot and that when you look at someone you don’t see race. – Believing that the most qualified person, regardless of race, should get the job. – Thinking that every person, regardless of race, can succeed in society if they work hard enough. – Telling a black person who is being too loud to be quiet. – Telling an Asian or Latino person who is too quiet to speak up. – Mistaking a person of color for a staff member when you’re in a store. – Calling something “gay”. – Doing an impression of someone’s dialect or accent.

Could you imagine going to prison for any of those “offenses”?

But this is where our country is heading if we don’t stand up for our rights.

Right now, the progressives are on a roll. In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision on same sex marriage, some progressives are already talking about going after the tax exemptions of churches that oppose it. In fact, the New York Times recently published an article entitled “Now’s the Time To End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions“.

But of course the ultimate goal is far more insidious. In the end, they want to shut down all speech that offends them in any way…

The American Unity Fund is a heavily funded new super-PAC looking to blanket the country with LGBT anti-discrimination laws. In effect, those laws aim to wipe out any alternative voice to the LGBT agenda. The effort is being spearheaded by billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer and another wealthy hedge fund manager, Tim Gill. Gill’s operations—the Gill Foundation and Gill Action—have been dedicated to “nonpartisan” gains for the LGBT lobby on the legislative and judicial fronts.

Those that do not believe that this could ever possibly happen in “the land of the free” should consider what has already happened in our neighbor to the north…

Anyone who is offended by something you have said or written can make a complaint to the Human Rights Commissions and Tribunals. In Canada, these organizations police speech, penalizing citizens for any expression deemed in opposition to particular sexual behaviors or protected groups identified under ‘sexual orientation.’ It takes only one complaint against a person to be brought before the tribunal, costing the defendant tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. The commissions have the power to enter private residences and remove all items pertinent to their investigations, checking for hate speech.

Of course the same kind of thing is already happening over in Europe as well. For instance, one Christian pastor in Northern Ireland is being prosecuted for calling Islam “a doctrine spawned in hell”…

An evangelical pastor in Northern Ireland is under fire and will be prosecuted after calling Islam “satanic” and claiming that its doctrine was “spawned in hell” during a controversial 2014 sermon that streamed over the Internet. Pastor James McConnell, 78, of Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle in Belfast, Northern Ireland, made his comments — which included calling Islam “heathen” — in a sermon delivered last May, the BBC reported. “The Muslim religion was created many hundreds of years after Christ. Muhammad, the Islam Prophet, was born around the year A.D. 570, but Muslims believe that Islam is the true religion,” he preached. “Now, people say there are good Muslims in Britain. That may be so, but I don’t trust them.” McConnell continued, “Islam’s ideas about God, about humanity, about salvation are vastly different from the teaching of the holy scriptures. Islam is heathen. Islam is satanic. Islam is a doctrine spawned in hell.”

Once such laws are in place in the United States, it won’t be difficult for the government to find you if you are committing “hate speech”. As I have written about repeatedly, the U.S. government already monitors virtually everything that is said and done on the Internet. The following is an excerpt from an article that was recently authored by Micah Lee, Glenn Greenwald, and Morgan Marquis-Boire…

The sheer quantity of communications that XKEYSCORE processes, filters and queries is stunning. Around the world, when a person gets online to do anything — write an email, post to a social network, browse the web or play a video game — there’s a decent chance that the Internet traffic her device sends and receives is getting collected and processed by one of XKEYSCORE’s hundreds of servers scattered across the globe. In order to make sense of such a massive and steady flow of information, analysts working for the National Security Agency, as well as partner spy agencies, have written thousands of snippets of code to detect different types of traffic and extract useful information from each type, according to documents dating up to 2013. For example, the system automatically detects if a given piece of traffic is an email. If it is, the system tags if it’s from Yahoo or Gmail, if it contains an airline itinerary, if it’s encrypted with PGP, or if the sender’s language is set to Arabic, along with myriad other details.

And as I wrote about yesterday, western governments are already using paid trolls to identify and combat “extremists” on social media websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

We are rapidly becoming a “Big Brother” society, and if we don’t stand up for our freedoms and liberties now, it is inevitable that we will eventually lose just about all of them.

Unfortunately, most of the population is absolutely clueless about all of this. In fact, as Mark Dice demonstrated the other day, many Americans don’t even know what we are celebrating on the 4th of July. As a society, we have become extremely “dumbed down”, and we have lost connection to the values and principles that this country was founded upon.