I've been thinking about this one for a while.

If I may drift a little here - My experience is that Americans have a different view of personal freedom, and individual rights, than citizens of most other nations. I am not trying to be offensive, and in fact am trying not to be offensive - I am not trying to generalize to all Americans, but to speak from personal experience. I find that in my experience, Americans tend to minimize the impact which exercising their rights can have on others. That is the Europeans, Asians, Canadians, Africans, and Ozzies I've known might know they had a right to do X, but they wouldn't, because just because it's your right to is no excuse for some behavior. Anyone see those current commercials, about just because you have the power doesn't mean you have to use it? I guess that's how I feel about deliberately offensive speech - just cause it's true is no reason to say nasty things. Maybe Americans self-censor less, so the need for external censoring gets exacerbated. Take the US attitude towards gun ownership, and whether it's legal to insult somebody. Sure it's legal - so what? Why do it? So I guess my take (to get back to the question) is that yes, we should allow all opinions to be voiced. No, we shouldn't censor, but rather Yes we should ignore, those we feel ought not to be voiced, or those we wish we hadn't heard (same thing?). If that title offendeth thee, click not on the thread. If reading a thread offendeth thee, stop reading, click back, and find thee something else.

Now, that doesn't mean that if an INADVERTANT insult is delivered, the poster ought not be corrected, of course I want to know if I've P'd someone O. Preferably by PM. If I meant what I said, I'll apologize for offending, again in a PM. If I mistyped and was misunderstood, I'll correct the misapprehension, publicly in the thread (since if A PMs, that doesn't mean that A is the only person I misled) AND apologize for offending. And in order to minimize such things, whenever I'm writing of my opinions, I hedge a lot, like with this post, all pasted over with I'm Not Trying To Be Rude. Because I'm not (trying to be, anyway). And it is opinions that bother folks the most, not facts... right?