By Bill O'Reilly
If you surf the net or listen to talk radio you know there's plenty of hatred being spewed. Facebook having a terrible problem with that and recently hatred against women has caused a major controversy. Postings have encouraged violence, rape, and other atrocities against women.
Facebook acknowledges it has not been able to control the hate speech problem and all you've got to do is go in there and you'll see the most vial personal attacks imaginable. The problem is this is becoming commonplace even acceptable in some quarters. The net even encourages disturbed people to do these things because they can vent hatred and remain anonymous.
Segue to the IRS scandal. At this point, there is no doubt that one of the most powerful federal agencies abused the Tea Party and other conservative entities. There is no question about it. Why? Because some people inside the IRS apparently hate conservatives and want to hurt them.
Remember, there are two kinds of hatred; the internal kind which all of us struggle with and the actual demonstration of malice, trying to hurt other people because you hate them. That's what's rising in America. Facebook is making one major mistake, however. It is limiting its campaign against hate speech to specific groups. The Facebook corporation says, quote, "While there is no universally accepted definition of hate speech, as a platform we define the term to mean direct and serious attacks on any protected category of people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or disease", unquote.
So what Facebook is essentially saying is those groups are protected but everybody else can get smeared. No. That's wrong. Hate speech is not a difficult thing to identify. It's based on personal attacks designed to injure. That's hate speech and Facebook knows it.
The sad fact is there is an audience for that but in a noble country, hate speech and those who traffic in it should be rejected and shunned. And in a just country, the abuse of federal power to punish conservatives or anybody else should be a crime.
And that's "The Memo."
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