Don’t use Charlie Kirk’s death to stomp on the freedoms he defended

 https://nypost.com/2025/09/16/opinion/dont-use-charlie-kirks-death-to-stomp-on-the-freedoms-he-defended/

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday started trying to walk back her embrace of a “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, as well as an equally foolish “businesses cannot discriminate” stance against private rights of conscience.

This plays right into lefty charges that the right is rushing to suppress legal dissent in the wake of the horrific Charlie Kirk assassination.

Here’s Charlie Kirk, posting in May 2024: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.”

That nicely sums up the American position going back at least to Thomas Jefferson (though Constitution-haters like Woodrow Wilson saw things differently): We have no “free speech” right if the government pushing words it deems “hateful.”

Hence Bondi’s reversal to arguing only that “speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment” and free speech “does NOT and will NEVER protect violence.” Right, and irrelevant.