Law

Should the government regulate hateful Billboards? I once saw a billboard that said the pope is the anti-Christ. I shrugged it off as a matter of free speech. But then someone pointed out that someone could advertise a billboard that expressed hatred for blacks. For whatever reason this has never happened. Most billboard owners dont want to accused of racism. So arguably society polices itself well enough without government intervention. Yet I suspect that there is another factor which is that billboards are owned by a very small amount of people because the high expense involved and the limited number of billboards. These folks don't want any bad attention. The same observation could be made about all aspects of the media. It is very difficult to get controversial or even outright racist materials despite the fact that many people are racist. (I suppose The Bell Curve is a notable exception) It seems like one "benefit" of concentrated wealth is that it promulgates political correctness to protect its...

Much depends on how one construes freedom of speech. Often one finds it defined very poorly as being the right to say (or display) whatever one likes - whether it is offensive, ill-informed, false, and so on - an "anything goes" attitude towards speech: you're free to say (or display) whatever you like! But that definition is indeed a poor one, and one way to show why is to ask why we value freedom of speech. A good argument to value freedom of speech is so that we can hear the considered and articulate views and arguments of others and then assess them - views worth hearing, worth taking seriously, worth changing one's life in response to - and one could then ask whether the content of those hateful billboards fulfil those criteria. My two cents. [I am happy to accept Eric's criticism - and am happy to be corrected! IJK ]