Fox News Legal Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano doubled down on First Amendment rights Tuesday, saying the beauty of America is being able to “say whatever you want.”
“One of the beauties of our system is that you are free to go right out on that street corner and say whatever you want,” Napolitano said in a Tuesday interview on “Fox and Friends.”
“Hate speech is protected,” he said in response to how much protection the First Amendment affords people when violence breaks, like in Charlottesville. “The speech that we love, and we welcome doesn’t require protections because we welcome it. It’s the speech we hate and fear that the constitution protects.”
Napolitano reiterated his comments from Monday that those who organize contentious events and spew hateful speech cannot be held responsible for any outbreak of violence.
“If the person that organized this white supremacist rally stood up and said something incendiary and encouraged the crowd to commit violence, and there is time for someone to rebut what he said … then his speech is protected and he’s not criminally liable,” Napolitano said.
“Bottom line is, the first amendment was written to give the broadest, widest, most possible protection to speech. Even speech we hate. Because the best remedy for hateful speech is not to suppress, it but to rebut it. To challenge it,” he concluded.
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