Free speech and LGF
The beauty of weblogs is that they represent free speech uncensored by corporate interests or political correctness. But the comments on Charles Johnson's LGF site go too far. The hatred of Arabs and Muslims is often not all that different from the mullah rants against Crusaders and Jews which LGF documents so well.
Charles Johnson has finally addressed the criticism of his site, but it begs more questions than it answers. Take this email, which he sent to one of his detractors.
Yeah, there are stupid comments too. So what? It's called free speech, and any time a person expresses a strong opinion, there will be a certain number of other people who take it the wrong way and say dumb things in response. But I'm not a policeman, and I'm not going to start deleting comments and banning people based on your (or anyone else's) standards. If someone crosses *my* line completely, yes, the comment will be deleted -- and I *have* deleted more than a few comments. My Last Word on the Subject [Charles Johnson]
Two questions: first, how exactly does one cross the line on LGF; what kind of comment does Johnson delete? [When the comments that remain up are often wild enough.] Second, if one is going to use the free speech defense to xenophobic LGF postings, doesn't that apply equally well to the mullahs whom Charles Johnson condemns? Strong opinions, to borrow Johnson's words: the mullahs have those too. Maybe they, like the outer fringes of LGF, are just indulging in rhetorical overkill, and everyone is just taking it the wrong way.#
