“I am here to defend the right to offend” - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Of course there’s no ‘right to offend’ in the constitution but it doesn’t take much to equate the right to free speech to mean the right to say that which offends. Is the converse also true? Is there a right not to be offended? In short, no. One sure-fire way to determine if you live in a truly free society is whether or or not you can be offended without recourse.
We all know that free speech is under attack, the examples are legion. There are facists among us and when they are given power they are quick to impose their version of Big Brother upon us. Group-think is their friend, hyperbole their weapon of choice and facts are the unspeakable enemy.
And we submit.
It makes me angry to no end that loud-mouthed Brown Shirts so easily impose their facist agenda on huge swaths of the country under the approving eyes of the similarly minded media with not a peep from the elected ‘protectors’ of such rights. If anything, the so-called defenders of the Constitution applause as the Brown Shirts go marching by.
The famous quote says “This is how the Republic dies, to thundering applause.” Wrong. It dies the death of a million cuts under the indifferent gaze of the contented masses.