So the future must not belong to people like Bertrand Russell, or Sarah Silverman, George Carlin, Penn Jillette, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and others like them including whoever came up with The Flying Spaghetti Monster?
I almost feel like I am being gaslighted here but I didn't have any problem finding Reasonable voices on the internet who disagree with what Obama said. Maybe I am thinking more along the lines of libertarians who would have the greatest problem with what Obama said, and not Democrats who seem to go along easily enough with wanting to ban people from saying anything someone might find offensive, except conservatives who are fair game to offend and slander such as with numerous fake hate crimes accusations, so they can escape to their safe zones and avoid getting triggered. Come to think of it, that is exactly like the Muslims, in a way.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/09/25/president-obama-says-we-must-condemn-tho"...So many things wrong in so few words. Why this video, and not Theo Van Gogh's Submission, or Lars Vilks' animation of Mohammed wanting to go to a gay bar, the "Super Best Friends" episode of South Park, or Funny or Die's "How to Pick a Pocket"? Is it the degree of the insult, the craptasticness of the production values, the size of the release, or the vociferousness of the outrage expressed?
Given the track record of our past two administrations, I think we know the answer to that question, which suggests another thing terrible about this sentence: As Eugene Volokh recently pointed out, "Behavior that gets rewarded, gets repeated." If all it takes to earn a White House call for global condemnation of a single piece of expression is some violent protests outside a dozen or two diplomatic missions, then the perpetually aggrieved know exactly what to do the next time they pluck out some bit of cultural detritus to be offended by.
It is not any politician's job, and certainly not any American politician's job, to instruct the entire world on which films to criticize....
... "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."
Not your call, dude. Also, not my "prophet."
Even though you can see what the president's getting at in terms of equivalent outrage, he's still way off base here. It is not our job to condemn blasphemy of any kind, period. As individuals we might criticize a few bits here and there, but we mostly ignore the vast ocean of what various people may consider "hateful" or "offensive" speech, and rightly so.
There was much else to criticize in Obama's speech today, most notably a deeply incoherent depiction of America's role in the world. But it's certainly worth noting that a president who thought he was making a profound defense of American freedom of speech has continued his administration's two-week assault on the very notion."
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That was very well put. That is my point. I'm still confused by how many people, and the people one might least expect, support Obama's notion of stifling freedom of speech. But again, I suppose within the context of triggering and safe spaces it starts to make a little more sense. I should be more careful in the future not to confuse libertarians with Democrats. I always say that I'm not really very libertarian for a number of reasons, but I do agree with them quite often, and this happens to be one of those times.