How should a liberal democracy respond to hate groups and others that oppose the ideal of free and equal citizenship? The democratic state faces the hard choice of either protecting the rights of hate groups and allowing their views to spread, or banning their views and violating citizens' rights to freedoms of expression, association, and religion. Avoiding the familiar yet problematic responses to these issues, political theorist Corey Brettschneider proposes a new approach called value democracy. The theory of value democracy argues that the state should protect the right to express illiberal beliefs, but the state should also engage in democratic persuasion when it speaks through its various expressive capacities: publicly criticizing, and giving reasons to reject, hate-based or other discriminatory viewpoints.

Distinguishing between two kinds of state action--expressive and coercive--Brettschneider contends that public criticism of viewpoints advocating discrimination based on race, gender, or sexual orientation should be pursued through the state's expressive capacities as speaker, educator, and spender. When the state uses its expressive capacities to promote the values of free and equal citizenship, it engages in democratic persuasion. By using democratic persuasion, the state can both respect rights and counter hateful or discriminatory viewpoints. Brettschneider extends this analysis from freedom of expression to the freedoms of religion and association, and he shows that value democracy can uphold the protection of these freedoms while promoting equality for all citizens.

COREY BRETTSCHNEIDER is professor of political science at Brown University, where he teaches courses in political theory and constitutional law. He has been a visiting professor at several law schools, including The University of Chicago, Fordham, and Harvard. Brettschneider was also a fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values and the Harvard Safra Center for Ethics. Brettschneider received a PhD in Politics from Princeton University and a JD from Stanford University. He is the author of Democratic Rights: The Substance of Self-Government (Princeton University Press, 2007), When the State Speaks, What Should it Say? (Princeton University Press, 2012), and Constitutional Law and American Democracy (Wolters Kluwer/Aspen 2011).