Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Leftists just don't get it

Susan Estrich is a fairly moderate Leftist. She is even defending John McCain and criticizing the NYT in the excerpt below! But she still thinks that free speech should be used "responsibly" -- i.e. that it should not really be free. Muslims say the same thing.

That what seems "responsible" to me may seem "hate speech" to others is just not addressed. If we avoided saying things that others might not regard as "responsible", we would soon be struck dumb.

"Maybe there should be an asterisk in the First Amendment's protection of the freedom of the press making the point that most of us who are parents of teenagers do on a regular basis: that freedom is not simply a privilege but also a responsibility, that just because you have it doesn't mean you need to push its limits, much less abuse it.

I'm certainly not a McCain partisan. And I don't think I've ever met his old friend, the lobbyist Vicki Iseman, as she is described beneath her smiling picture in Thursday's New York Times. I do know that the definition of all the news that's fit to print has changed if it includes a collage of anonymous anecdotes proving nothing more than that some of the senator's aides might have been troubled by the appearance that he was too close to a woman lobbyist at a time when he was running against the influence of big money in politics."

Source