Ben Shapiro told the California legislature that its job was to preserve the First Amendment, not undermine it, at a Tuesday “hate speech” hearing.
The conservative author had only two minutes to make his address during a public comment period, reported The Daily Wire. The California legislature’s meeting was entitled “Combating Hate While Protecting The Constitution,” and Shapiro informed those assembled that it was not their responsibility to legislate what is and is not hatred.
“Let me suggest that as a legislature, your chief job is to ensure that my taxpayer dollars in this state go toward making sure that people like me and people with whom I disagree get to speak in places like college campuses, and not toward regulating what speech you find good and what speech you find bad, because it’s a really dangerous business,” Shapiro told the legislature.
WATCH:
“One of the reasons groups like antifa show up is not because they know who I am, it’s because they’ve been told by people that I am promulgating hate speech, which is utterly false and utterly untrue,” the conservative commentator said, implicating the California legislature in the advancement of this assertion by describing “the problem with a legislative body…trying to draw lines specifically about what hate speech constitutes.” (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Ben Shapiro Talks Berkeley, Campus Culture, And Political Correctness)
Shapiro noted that security costs at his 2017 UC Berkeley speech amounted to $600,000, while they cost nothing just one year earlier. He alleged that this was due to the presence of antifa.
“I don’t believe there will be any outcome [for the hearing],” Shapiro told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “I think it was virtue signaling on the part of California Democrats, who wanted to link violence on campus to alt-right hate groups as opposed to antifa.”
John Moorlach, vice chairman for the committee which conducted the hearing, invited Shapiro to speak. The hearing differed from a July hearing on college campus free speech, in which the author also participated, that time as a full member of the panel. (RELATED: WATCH: Ben Shapiro Slams Identity Politics And Violent Protests)
BEN SHAPIRO ON FREE SPEECH IN COLLEGE CAMPUSES, THE ‘MICROAGGRESSION MENTALITY’:
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