How could so much press call for ending hate speech when it published the hatred of President G.W. Bush for eight years?

The reason is that a national consensus accepted the bad side of free speech as the cost of freedom. Today, the cost of irresponsible free speech is suddenly too high for society.

Our founders drafted the U.S. Constitution to account for human nature, which is flawed, not perfect. The hope was that free, creative, contrarian speech would be helpful and that irresponsible speech would be recognized and corrected by public opinion.

On and off again extremes in our body politic are evidence of mistakes humans do and can make. The Constitution accommodates the strengths and weakness in human nature. Bad experience can be a good teacher, but this point is entirely forgotten when the press reports without any perspective on human behavior.

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