Preface:
Freedom of Speech
versus Freedom from Speech

by

Len Kennedy, Esq.

What do we have in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of dew lies on it?

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
“On Reading and Writing”

Everyone has the right to free speech, but no one has the right to not be offended.

     Too many people have become too sensitive—too sissified . . . too pussified.  Anyone should be free to believe and say whatever they want to believe and say (though not necessarily in every social context—at work, for example).  But no one is free to go through life demanding that nobody else ever say or do anything that might offend them.

     We adults shouldn’t have to censor and simplify our speech and writing just to pacify the weak and the stupid.

     Many prissy prigs and prudes try to act as though they’re too refined to find scatalogical humor amusing—even though most of them are far too ignorant and uneducated to actually be sophisticated.

     And as long as I’m being a petulant prick, I might as well put forth another one of my unpopular propositions: Other people’s viewpoints don’t need to be respected—they merely need to be tolerated.  After all, “respect” that’s spread too thin doesn’t really deserve to be called respect at all.

     So there.

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© Copyright 2007 Len Kennedy.  All Rights Reserved.

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