MICHAEL WALSH: Hate the New Irish ‘Hate Speech’ Law.

To begin: freedom of speech is not a “God-given” right; no rights really are. We may hold certain rights to be “self-evident,” but that is simply a comforting fiction derived from the American Revolution. Rights must be taken, not given and, once won, any attempt to nullify them must be resisted by (in the Communist Left’s favorite phrase) “any means necessary.” Among the rights enumerated in the American Bill of Rights is the First, which stipulates that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Nor are the enshrinement of rights in a nation’s constitution any guarantee of perpetuity. Countries come and go; regimes change. The populace undergoes a philosophical and ethnic shift — a quiet revolution — and no longer feels any loyalty or allegiance to even bedrock cultural notions from hundreds of years ago. Constitutions become “living,” which is to say, dead. Even nation-states like those of contemporary Europe burn their ways through multiple constitutions (bonjour, France, buon giorno, Italy!) or amend their constitutions so fundamentally that the document no longer bears any resemblance to its original self. Now it’s Ireland’s turn[.]

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