About hate speech, one thing is to allow disagreeing and open expression of ideas, which is fine, and another entirely different to see as benefitial the flaming and intentional verbal attack in order to incite unrest and, well, hatred. That is NOT right.
I really do not trust people generally to be able to have any reliability in how they distinguish between "speech that is hateful towards me" and "speech which is offensive towards me."
Many people are deeply offended by beliefs and statements which are not hateful. Sure, many of us can distinguish those to some of the time, but I think the damage from restricting speech too much is far greater than the damage from allowing too much hateful speech.
Regarding death penalty: I pretty strongly disagree with apparently all of ya'll. You have no right to kill a person who is no danger to you. Lock'em up, sure. I'm not even in principle opposed to the idea of non-rehabilitative imprisonment; i.e. I don't think that the "vengeance motive" is everywhere and always wrong.
But killing the person is too far. Even if they're guilty. Killing in defense is acceptable, and I'm even willing to countenance a pretty broad definition of defense– but the death penalty is socially worthless, and I don't know anybody who felt that the crimes committed were sufficiently paid for by an execution. You can't balance the scales of blood.
