Sunday, September 28, 2014

Speak with candor

Roger Kimball: "The fate of free speech."  "What are the major threats to free speech today? Perhaps the overarching condition that threatens free speech is the spread of political correctness. This has sharply curtailed candor about all manner of contentious subjects.  It is no longer possible, in polite society, to speak frankly about race, about differences between the sexes, or a hundred other topics — so-called “climate change,” for example, or the relationship between Islam and free speech."

1 comment:

Sid Dition said...

PJ Media’s Roger Kimball:
The hard truth is that, with the exception of certain modalities of sexually explicit material, speech is much less free today than it was fifty or a hundred years ago.

Kimball is retarded... pardon me, cognitively challenged. Fifty years ago, Lenny Bruce’s career was in ruins, the FBI was investigating the song “Louie Louie,” Berkeley protesters were being arrested by the hundreds, and the Smothers Brothers were being ousted from their network.

A hundred years ago, individual cities were editing and banning movies and books, union advocates were being beaten by Pinkertons, the Supreme Court ruled that films did not enjoy First Amendment protection, and Eugene Debs was running for president from a cell.

But today, most chillingly of all, the constitutional right to deny climate change without being branded a moron or an asshole is in grave jeopardy. How can free speech possibly survive, if people we don't like use rhetorical excess or rudeness?

Weepy, butt-hurt conservatives really need to grow a pair... if such a shocking colloquialsm is still permissable in Dear Leader’s new Amerika.