You may not know this, but there are people out there whose mission in life it is to reduce, destroy, limit, deface, and minimize your individual liberties.
The one most frequently under attack is one of the most basic: your freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is very simple: it means you have the right to say WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT.
Or to write and publish WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT.
The Founding Fathers knew, when they drafted the First Amendment, that under the aegis of its protection, it was inevitable that people would say, and write, offensive things.
But the purpose of the First Amendment was to prevent - forever - the banning of unpopular points of view. It was to prevent the government from being able to decide what constituted an "acceptable" opinion.
Along with political speech, artistic speech, your general conversation on the street, your blog, and dissent with the government, other things are protected as well.
Pornography is protected. You have an absolute right to NOT BUY porn; an absolute right to NOT GO TO ADULT STORES, or order adult movies, or go to adult websites. But you do NOT have the right to "ban" pornography.
(I will note here, before my rant really gets under way, that email spam - specifically pornographic spam - is a separate issue. You have the right to say anything you want; you do NOT have the right to say it TO ME. Implicit in the right to say whatever the hell you want is my right to ignore you. Porn spam comes to my email whether I want it to or not; that makes it something other than a "free speech" issue, because I wasn't given an opportunity to choose not to see it.)
And something else is also protected. Something that - despite the Constitutional protection of the First Amendment - we have tried and tried to legislate out of existence. That would be so-called "hate speech."
Personally, I find racists - and any other kind of bigot - to be pitiful, stupid, undereducated, ill-bred, snaggle-toothed, retarded jackasses. And I can say that, because it's a statement of my OPINION - which is specifically protected. I have an absolute right to my opinion, and to state my opinion, no matter how stupid or offensive it might be; just as you have an absolute right to ignore me.
But here's the trick: racists and other bigots have that same right, and that same protection. They can say WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT, and unless they're twisting your arm to force you to listen to them, under the Constitution of the United States, you can do nothing to stop them. You can ignore them until they go away - which is the proper response - but "Hate speech" laws are, de facto and de jure, unConstitutional.
We keep passing them, but all it will take is one lawsuit to overturn them, across the board.
At any rate, in keeping with this fine tradition, is the following story. A blogger from Canada wrote - last year - a story about the huge Muslim riots that erupted across Europe and the Middle East following a Danish newspaper's publication of some cartoons depicting - among other things - "the Prophet Mohammed" with a bomb in his turban. (Some of you might recall my own reposting of those cartoons.)
Said blogger, by the name of Ezra Levant, was then dragged in by the Canadian government for "questioning" following a couple of complaints being filed claiming he had offended "the prophet Mohammed."
Despite the government demanding that it be a closed session, he brought recording equipment; despite their order not to publish the recording he made, he did.
Witness the awesomeness of an angry Canadian who understands his rights - and yours - standing up to a representative of his increasingly fascist government.
Now, my personal favorite moment: "he's dead, by the way, so I don't think I've offended him."
