Possibly The Dumbest Thing You'll Read All Day

From the "politics make strange bedfellows" department, I picked up this LAT opinion piece on Innocence of Muslims and free speech from Glenn Greenwald on Twitter. Here's his take, with which I wholeheartedly agree:

The author of this moronic Op-Ed is a former NPR reporter: journalist takes the lead demanding free speech restrictions is.gd/e7Gnu0

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 18, 2012

You can see more in his Twitter feed as he's been swatting down idiots defending prior restraint of political speech all morning.

Look, if you seriously try to make the argument that producing a film about Islam is equivalent to yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, you are a ... hmmm, what's the technical term ... oh, yeah ... "f*cking idiot"!

I mean, I get the connection with fires and Islam, because they certainly seem to appear in the same place a lot.

But saying that we need to steer clear of certain expressions of opinion because the person on the receiving end may become enraged and react negatively couldn't be more different than holding someone culpable for intentionally inciting a panic in a crowded space.

There are far too many people willing to grant militant Islamists a blood-soaked heckler's veto. This must be resisted on all fronts, and while I may disagree with Greenwald 99% of the time on other things, he's right on target here.

posted by Andy at 01:21 PM

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