People always say that freedom of speech means you can say anything you want to SO LONG AS IT DOES NOT DO HARM OR OFFEND SOMEBODY.

Every slave on every plantation in the Old South had that kind of freedom. He could say anything that did not offend anybody. He could do anything that did not offend anybody.

His only problem was that the list of things he could not say or do because it would offend somebody was very, very, very long.

Every citizen of a Communist country or the average African country has exactly that kind of freedom. The Soviet Constitution of 1936, the one Stalin wrote, guaranteed freedom of speech. But under Stalin, the list of things that would offend or infringe on other people was a bit long.

The Nazi Gestapo under Hitler genuinely believed that if you said something nice about Jews you were doing an evil thing that hurt people. So they arrested you. The German government of today genuinely believes that if you say anything bad about Jews you are not only being offensive, you are evil. So they arrest you and the minimum prison sentence is one year.

So they have freedom of speech, but there are little “exceptions” you serve hard time for.

To repeat, everybody says,
“Freedom of speech means you can say anything you want to SO LONG AS IT DOES NOT DO HARM OR OFFEND SOMEBODY.”

And only Ole Bob will tell you how ridiculous it is for an adult to say something as silly as that.

Freedom is the right to offend or harm others. There is no such thing as a harmless freedom.

Like every other freedom, a slogan won’t give you freedom of speech. Freedom is BALANCING your rights with other people’s rights, and giving your own rights a LOT of space.

Yes, it sounds nuts.

But I remember that from the 1970s through the early 1990s, Fashionable Opinion said that. A person would look you straight in the eye and say, “Men and women are just alike,” just as people will look you straight in the eye today and say, “Race doesn’t exist.”

Every professor of biology or genetics who hoped to get tenure or get published or get promoted would have to say: “Women and men are just alike.”

As I said in the book you can find at

READBOB.COM

“If Political Correctness needs for frogs to have hooves, ten thousand professors will line up to testify that frogs have hooves.”

During all those years, because of Women’s Liberation, you had to BELIEVE that if you gave dolls to little boys and toy guns to little girls, boys would act like girls and girls would act like boys.

That fad ended about ten years ago and I am the only person on earth who remembers it. It had nothing to do with Iraq. It has nothing to do with how evil Clinton is. It has nothing to do with Bush.

So it’s gone.

It’s too damned silly for anyone to remember it was once Gospel.