Ed > Freedom is the almost absolute right to say what you wish whenever you want to.
That's licence to do as one pleases -- an extraordinary and, indeed, an imaginary state. Freedom, at least as I see it, involves responsibility because if one doesn't protect it one will lose it.
> The exception is where one uses speech to endanger people....such as, yelling fire in a crowded theatre
Which was precisely the effect of the Prophet Mohammed "cartoons".
> the Dane who penned the cartoon could've and perhaps even should've been more discrete
Without any doubt, but it's clear, at least to me, that there was an agenda. The "cartoons" were not just a bit of innocent and tasteless fun as, for example, when Prince Harry put on an SS uniform to go to a fancy dress party. And, even that reverberated around the world as deliberate act of antiSemitism where none, in fact, was intended.
talkleft.com
Furthermore, although it's clear that the newspaper knew that religiously directed cartoons would be offensive to certain people, they nevertheless chose to publish the Mohammed "cartoons".
guardian.co.uk
>>The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny.<<
> freedom of speech gave him the right to publish it anyway.
bendib.com
I have to tell you that what upsets me about all of this is that the casualty is, in fact, going to be freedom of speech because now there will be little opposition to "hate speech" legislation, in its broadest context, both in the US Congress and the UK Parliament. |
