Michigan is criminalizing opinions

To say that Michigan has lurched to the left under the leadership of Gretchen Whitmer and the state’s liberal majority would be a significant understatement. But with a new bill passed in the state House this week, they are taking things to a cartoonish level. If (more likely “when”) House Bill 4474 is signed into law, you will literally be able to be thrown into prison for hurting someone’s feelings. This is being hidden under the guise of protecting people from “hate speech,” and includes standard liberal online tropes about “feeling threatened.” To be clear, you don’t have to actually threaten someone with violence. They simply need to “feel” threatened by something you say or post online. There is no word from Governor Whitmer yet as to whether the State Police will be directed to establish a new “thought police” unit. (Washington Examiner)

Michigan’s Democratic House passed legislation on Tuesday that enables attorneys to shut down “hate speech.” The new House Bill 4474 is a vague and unconstitutional censorship law that determines “feeling threatened” as reasonable grounds to prosecute offenders.

The punishment for making someone “feel threatened” in Michigan is five years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

An alternate sentence proposes “community service” in order to “enhance the offender’s understanding of the impact of the offense upon the victim and wider community.”

I can’t wait for this to be challenged in court. And if the courts can’t find a way to strike this down immediately, we may as well simply set the Constitution on fire. (Something that many Democrats would doubtless be thrilled to see.)

If someone claims that they feel threatened by your speech, you can be fined ten thousand dollars and locked up for five years. As a reminder, that’s a prison sentence that is roughly three times longer than the ones that two attorneys in New York City received for literally firebombing a police cruiser and distributing explosive devices to rioters in 2020. If you’re lucky, you may receive a smaller fine and be sentenced to community service so you can ponder your evil ways.

So how will the state determine if you are guilty of this crime? They are defining the violation as a “willful course of conduct, involving repeated or continuing harassment of another individual that would cause a reasonable individual to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested.” There’s that word “feel” again. So in essence, the supposed victim winds up defining the crime.

To be clear, you are not allowed (and should not be) to threaten people with physical violence. But there’s a huge difference between saying ‘I know where you live and I’m going to come burn down your house‘ and ‘I refuse to put a pride flag on my Twitter account.’ The problem is, too many liberals today view the latter example as something hateful or threatening.

This shows up constantly on social media and they’ve managed to convince some of the larger platforms to censor people on this basis. The actual underlying definition of “hate speech” or “threatening” comments is essentially anything that doesn’t conform to current liberal narratives. Under this proposed law, being thrown into Twitter jail will look like a picnic compared to being literally thrown into jail.

There’s still a chance that the bill will fail or that Gretchen Whitmer will suddenly develop a streak of common sense and veto it. But given her track record, what are the chances of that?