The Wall Street Journal has a piece reacting to a call from U.S. News and World Report to crack down on hateful speakers who supposedly encourage murders like those of the abortionist, the security guard, and the soldier over the last several weeks.

“If [last week’s] Holocaust Museum slaying of security guard and national hero Stephen Tyrone Johns is not a clarion call for banning hate speech, I don’t know what is. . . .” writes Bonnie Erbe in U.S. News and World Report. In response, James Taranto says,

This is not Islamist Iran or communist Cuba or some tin-pot military dictatorship. Our government does not simply round people up. It cannot deprive people of their liberty without a legal basis to do so, and it has no authority to punish people merely for expressing political views, no matter how odious.

This is not even a close call: The expression of prejudice and hatred is protected by the First Amendment. In America, neo-Nazis have a constitutional right to hold a parade in a neighborhood full of Holocaust survivors (National Socialist Party v. Skokie, 1977). That’s about as hateful as you can get.

I surprised at emotional responses like Erbe’s, and I can only assume she doesn’t know the law or founding principles of our country. Of course, I’m not a legal scholar either, but what kind of philosophy leads one to advocate making hateful ideas a crime? A disjointed one, I’d think, one based in feeling, not truthful reason.

I like the way President Bush said it. Murder for any reason is hateful. There’s no need to specify punishment for some motivations over others.