The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 3 of 11)

You can't show child pornography online because it's an industry that destroys the lives of children. But citing hate speech and sexual harassment puts us on a slippery slope, Ben, and you are slippery for using these in your lax argument. Ignoring the many abuses of the hate speech and sexual harassment laws, laws that by simple extension cripple speech in much of Europe, you embrace them here for your convenience and use this "logic" to criminalize a form of expression, vile though it is.

You're an influential man, Mr. Stein, and if you don't embrace the idea that it is always and only speech that is offensive that requires protection, then you coarsen us as a people to the extent that your views are adopted by others. It's just that your ox got gored here, so you thrash around for a logical way to prove a point. If everyone's hot-button issues were enforced, we would live in a police state.

p>In this argument we all get to choose which is more important, the flag or the Bill of Rights. It's a test. Choose wisely. br> -- Gerald Brennan br> Ann Arbor, Michigan /p>

While I share many of Ben Stein's sentiments about our flag, I have to come back to the fallacy of a symbol mistaken for the thing it represents.

Then as one who has experienced authoritarianism and totalitarianism both on the right and left, I can appreciate the wonderment in a society where you will not be arrested for stupid act of burning the flag of your country, or where a police officer is generally not authorized to arrest you for being an illegal alien waiting at a street corner to be offered a day job. And I could go on with other examples.

Recently, The Opinion Journal from The Wall Street Journal, expressed this sentiment best, and I quote:

p>"Burning the flag is a stupid and ugly act, but there is something lovely and enlightened about a regime that tolerates it in the name of freedom. And of course it has the added benefit of making it easier to spot the idiots." br> -- Thomas A. Edelman br> Santa Monica, California /p>

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