When Did Insults Become Illegal?

Published: August 16, 2007, 2:16 am

Tags: libertarian thought, society amp amp culture, controversy, breaking news, crime

Patrick Syring, a Virginia resident and outspoken Arab hater, is being charged with sending threatening e-mail messages and leaving threatening phone messages at the offices of the Arab American Institute last summer. Apparently free speech in the United States has hit another new low, at least as it applies to speech directed toward minorities — in this case, Arab-Americans. According to news accounts, Syring has been indicted by the Federal Government (the office of the Attorney General of the United States) for “threatening” and for “violating civil rights laws.” Those charges are, in this case, sheer nonsense. Syring reportedly said and wrote things like The only good Arab is a dead Arab and wrote in an email: “You wicked evil Hezbollah-supporting Arabs should burn in the fires of hell for eternity and beyond, the United States would be safer without you. The backdrop of these phone and email messages was the period of time when

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