Canada has long been a bastion of cowardice where free speech is concerned, and it appears that our neighbor to the north has now infected the border state of Michigan.

Last week, the Democrat-controlled Michigan House passed an alarmingly vague, restrictive, and punitive package of bills to reclassify certain offenses as hate crimes. As the Detroit News reports, the bills would “designate the defacement of synagogues, churches or cemeteries as a crime separate from ordinary destruction of property.”

So far so good, right? No one wants to see our houses of religious worship targeted and defiled, right? But wait. There’s more. The Detroit News continues, “The Michigan Hate Crime Act, which passed 59-50 in the Democratic-controlled House, would replace Michigan’s 1988 ethnic intimidation law so that more categories of people fall under the law’s protections.”

Hmm … more categories of people? What categories might those be? Were there certain races or ethnicities that weren’t covered by the 1988 law?

As it turns out, no. The proposed new law would expand the original law to include protections based on — wait for it — sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity, or physical or mental disabilities. (Religion, ethnicity, and race were already protected under the original law.)

It gets worse. As The Daily Wire reports:

The bill, HB 4474, is part of a package of legislation that would replace Michigan’s existing Ethnic Intimidation Act and make it a hate crime to cause someone to “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened.” Under the bill’s framework, “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” are included as classes protected against intimidation. If passed, the hate speech legislation would make violators guilty of a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000.

Republicans who voted against the package were well short of stopping it. HB 4474 passed 59-50. Now it’s on to the Democrat-controlled Senate, and then to Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s desk for passage, despite the vagueness of some of the terms left undefined in the bills — terms such as “intimidate” and “harassment.”

“We are setting our citizens’ disagreements up to be criminal prosecutions,” said Hillsdale-based State Representative Andrew Fink.

Another vocal critic, former federal judge William Wagner, offered this grim prediction: “Make no mistake about it. Those advocating for this legislation will wield these policies as a weapon capable of destroying conservative expression or viewpoints grounded in the sacred. … Proponents use these laws to silence and financially cripple those who dare to adhere to a different viewpoint and oppose their agenda.”

Needless to say, free speech in Michigan has never been more imperiled. And the state’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, must be feeling downright giddy about it. Nessel, a hard-left lesbian, was among those testifying in support of the legislation, arguing that by restricting people’s right to express their opinions, the legislation will reduce crimes that are perpetrated out of bias toward the victim. “These hate crime laws are murder prevention,” she hyperbolized.

In other words, Nessel thinks taking away people’s constitutional rights will make them less angry and less dangerous.

She couldn’t be more wrong. Speech is more than merely a means of communicating thoughts and ideas. It should also be seen as a pressure-relief valve, a means of venting and blowing off steam instead of resorting to violence.

We made this point a couple of years back when Twitter was being run by Jack Dorsey and having a field day with its censorship of conservative opinion. At the time, we wrote: “If we seem a bit obsessive about Big Tech’s efforts to selectively silence political speech and thereby restrict the marketplace of ideas, it’s for good reason. Media censorship breeds frustration, because it eliminates what we might call a pressure-relief valve. When we as citizens have no voice, we stew and we simmer, and sometimes we boil over.”

That same reasoning, of course, holds for state censorship — and even more so, we would argue, because of the stakes. Whereas Big Tech can do little more than kick inconvenient truth-tellers off its platforms, the state can fine us or put us in prison.

As frustrating as it is, Big Tech firms aren’t barred by the Constitution from censoring or shadow-banning speech that they deem hurtful to their sensitivities. Remember: The First Amendment begins, Congress shall make no law, not, Big Tech shall impose no restriction.

The Founders understood the importance of free speech — and especially free political speech. Because in its absence, and even more so in its suppression, we ultimately get political violence.

Which is why Michigan’s HB 4474 is not only unconstitutional — it’s idiotic.

POSTSCRIPT: A recent ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court brings a bit of good news, as it makes it more difficult for a state to convict someone of making a threat. As liberal justice Elena Kagan wrote for the seven-justice majority, “The State must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence.”