On stupid and such

Kathleen Parker had a nifty column the other day. All about free speech etc and etc and she made the following point.

"Do they have the right to express them? Absolutely, but the obvious consequences make my point. This isn’t a matter of government oppression of free speech but of private citizens condemning their neighbors for expressing thoughts that have been historically harmful."

The problem is this.

It is easy to walk down the street and apologize. Or it is easy to just say, "No I won't apologize."

Either way the situation is a small ripple in the pond.

But these are not neighbors

When the remarks are analyzed, commented on and amplified and then used to destroy someone for “speaking their mind” then we have the government who has condemned such remarks by supporting diversity and a host of other “rights” effectively instituting censorship. How? By insuring that we all must always carefully consider what we say PRIOR to speaking/writing and then using words that will not offend anyone.

That’s censorship.

Now you may claim that this is helpful. Society is merely expressing its rules and enforcing them. But don’t go around bragging about how we have free speech.

We don’t.

And while the Left celebrates the rights of an author to write a book that is flooded with the F word and thus draws the ire of a school board, it goes nuts over the comments of an elderly white man opining that he doesn’t want his black girlfriend showing up with black males.

To paraphrase Mark Cuban: I don’t want stupid people shut up. I want them to talk so I can know who’s stupid.

There should be a conclusion someplace in there. Maybe I’ll come back and tell you dumber ones what it is. And then maybe I won’t.


"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." - Karl Popper

“It’s the presumption that Obama knows how all these industries ought to be operating better than people who have spent their lives in those industries, and a general cockiness going back to before he was president, and the fact that he has no experience whatever in managing anything. Only someone who has never had the responsibility for managing anything could believe he could manage just about everything.” - Thomas Sowell in Reason Magazine