Well, gee, I thought I had subjunctivized my statement well enough by saying "I guess one could blame Obama for giving new life to right-wing extremism."

On this side of the pond your statement implies strongly that you are according at least some legitimacy to that view. That you are not dismissing it out of hand. Don't blame us for scratching our heads wondering whether you actually believe that it could be true. That's how it looks. Nations divided by a common lingo, eh? There's nothing in the rest of your lengthy post containing the statement to counteract it. I know you don't blame Obama. But you didn't say it until you were challenged, did you? It isn't bloodthirsty idiots, Joe. It's legitimate efforts to encourage you to clarify what appeared to be puzzling indecision on your part.


But on the other hand, it seems wrong to me for a hate-filled group to be allowed to march across a campus and in front of a synagogue, carrying torches and guns and chanting hateful slogans. I understand the court decisions and I understand the need for freedom of speech - but when that free speech causes fear in the heart of another person, then something's not right.

So, I think that's a question that hasn't been resolved yet. I don't want to see repression of speech, but I also don't want to think people have a right to cause fear in others in the name of free speech.

You are saying the same thing as me. All freedom has boundaries, otherwise it negates someoone else's freedoms and disappears up its own backside (I'm not as sophisticated as some philosophers, sorry). I'm free to grow a crop on my field. But if I douse the field with every known legal biocide in order to achieve it, resulting in pollution of rivers, the deaths of millions of fish and the poisoning of drinking water downstream, I'd be negating the freedom of those fish to live and the freedom of the people to trust to the safety of their drinking water. I have to rein myself in at the point (which may be difficult to define precisely) at which I get a reasonable, if slightly smaller, crop. I get to make a living from my farm (though a slightly more modest one), the fish continue to thrive and your coffee won't be poison. The maximum available amount of freedom has been fairly shared out. That's how real freedom is exercised. Recognising limits. When it comes to speech, if you say something to deliberately make someone feel insecure, or frightened, or intimidated, or if you're trying to whip up hatred directed at a group of people, or if you are publicly trying to persuade people to exercise violence against other people, you've crossed the red line in my book. A remark may be undeliberate or clumsily expressed. It may have been made from ignorance. There are people who will pounce when that happens and it's all to the good. But agenda-driven hate speech is usually easy to identify. I think that, by employing it, you are trampling all over others' freedom to feel safe, secure and a worthwhile part of society. Ironically, you may end up strangling your own freedom while you're at it. Having the right to free speech never meant having the right to say what the hell you like.