If my neighbor calls my wife a whore and I go over and punch him in the face,
I am not stifling his free speech. I am violently paying him back for his
crude, slanderous insult.
Free speech is curtailed by governmental action, not by individuals acting
sometimes imprudently or illegally. The right to free speech is not
absolute and is rightfully and hopefully judiciously curtailed by legal
instruments enforced by the state, hate speech being the best example of
properly restricted expression which does not deserve the protection of
constitutional imprimatur.
Individuals may not feel the state has done its job and either challenge within
the legal framework the perceived oversight, or take matters into their own
hands. The deplorable killing of the journalists of Charlie Hebdo is a
heinous example of extralegal overreaction __ of violently taking
matters into ones own hands.
I don't condone violence. But whether I condone it or not is irrelevant.
Ugly shit has been happening for thousands of years. A lot of people oppose
it and it keeps going on. Some of it is sponsored and promoted by the
very state that we depend on to maintain some sanity in society and the
world at large. Humans are a very violent species, the only one to
inflict pain and death on its own purely for amusement and pleasure.
But with the latest relatively minor incident in Paris __ I contrast the handful
of deaths there with the tens of thousands the enlightened West inflicts
on other countries as a matter of policy, day after day, month after
month, year after year __ we see the epic confrontation between two vast
cultures shaping up.
Isn't that just what theywanted? __ a "good reason" for the world to erupt in
total war. Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, North Korea,
Ukraine, Russia, and China aren't quite enough kindle to get the conflagration
going. But now, yes NOW we've got some serious shit going down! NOW
we've got millions of people in the streets doing the dirty work that
our presstitute media and propaganda machines couldn't quite get right.
Finally, the people will demand total war!
The mob has spoken.
Long live the mob!
[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]
