Bigmouth

[Bionca]

Originally Posted by Ogryn1313

Bionca, I feel the point I was trying to make might not have been adequately articulated on my part and thus you misunderstood me. In your reply there you seem to be drawing a moral equivalency between the two men. I'm not interested in which one is the worst person. That's a whole other issue.

The point of my post was to illustrate how people are abusing freedom of speech and being irresponsible in their application of it. I only cited those two as examples. In this case the hate thrown at Falwell after his death as an example of the hatred and irresponsible free speech of one group of people. In the case of Churchill the nature of one man using free speech for promoting himself at the expense of the victims.

The thrust of my point, which I failed to convey, is that free speech is being used as a blanket to condone irresponsibility and hate speech. I never defended Falwell nor attacked Churchill. I am simply trying to show that freedom of speech is a precious gift we shouldn't abuse and use to spout hate speech.

And part of my point is an attempt to show the nature of some liberals and most of the far left are being hypocrites. These are the main bunch who champion free speech and yet look how many (mostly in the left not the libs) use it for hate speech. I know the right does it too. But the right doesn't present itself to Americans as the intellectual elite who wish to save the nation. The far right, in general, shows an ugly face to Americans.

I'm sorry I couldn't articulate this better. And I've probably not done any better this time. But to try to make comparisons on who is the worst (Falwell or Chruchill) is getting off course and away from what I intended to point out.

I understand what you were trying to do. I also missed my point I think, by taking your example and running too far with it. The issue of Free Speech is accountability - say something messed up = getting called out. Because of the Internet it is harder to say something and then take it back later. Falwell say some shitty things about innocent people and he got called out for it. Falwell had a history of saying shitty things about dead people, his politicization of religious issues made LIVING difficult for lots of people, so he got some back when he died. Accountability.

Ward Churchill said insesnitive, incorrect, hurtful, probably ant-semetic crap. He got called out, discredited, and ultimately ignored. Any potential insight that he may have contributed to discussing international terrorism (if any) was negated. Accountability.

Hipocracy thrives every place. The "pro family" Congress man who visits a brothel, the "progressive" blogger who thinks it's great fun to mock Ann Coulter by pointing out she has some physical features that could belong to a trans*woman. Political involvement is more than supporting a party or an ideology, it is supporting a philosophy and holding your side to higer standards. The people who parrot the party talking points are just shills.

I'm a Liberal, always have been (socially more than fiscally). I'm way way harsher with my fellow Lefties than I am with any Conservative.