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It's really hard to tell the difference between what is genuinely offensive and what is not.

No easy answers. In this case, maybe there is a relatively simple rule: Supporting democracy must not in itself be regarded as offensive...

It is hard to tell, that is true. And that reality is exploited to silence opposition and control others.

That’s why language policing, hate speech laws, Twitter mobs, and bully-the-bully efforts are abominations. So really, the answer is easy: everyone has the right to offend, and has no right not to be offended. Your simple rule doesn’t go far enough.

Hate-speech laws exist because people are programmable.

Try and tell me your opinions are your own and the books and media you consume do not own some portion of them.

Hate-speech laws exist to prevent the programming of people to systematically hate and exterminate other people, a lesson that has been learned many times over in history.

If hate-speech laws exist to deal with people that are programmed, wouldn't it also follow that hate-speech laws might exist because programmed people want to control the speech of others?

It would go like this: hate speech is first yelling fire in a theater, then it's espousing bigotry, then it's holding the wrong opinions, until it's finally speaking ill of the Party. That's also a lesson that has been learned many times over in history.

Too far down that philosophical rabbit-hole you find "There's no such thing as good and evil," which is a philosophy a person can have but not one I'd want to see a country's government embrace as a core tenant. It'd be a pretty shitty place to live for anyone who doesn't have the money or power to enforce their will.

And too far down the other hole is the ambiguity of definitions and other postmodern gobbledygook that will eventually expand the umbrella of what we call 'hate speech' far beyond what we might both agree is reasonable. It's probably already happened.

That's an awful place to live as well.

The postmodern gobbleygook in this case is the notion that there are no bad opinions and all speech is valid.

And you can't successfully legislative bad opinions and the validity of speech. Because an opinion being bad or speech being valid isn't something the government should concern themselves with.