Quote Originally Posted by John2 View Post
I'll never understand why some people cannot understand the difference between "free speech" and "consequence free speech^.

Free speech is not being able to say anything and not face any consequences.

It doesn't surprise me for a second that some of the characters on here agree and think she should be stripped naked in public and have excrement thrown at her. He'll hide behind a joke for that wording, but when he says that many people his age agree I think he's deadly serious.

I can't help but wonder what happened to those people of his generation to become so bitter and mysoginistic?

Feel free to agree with him here everyone, I encourage you. Don't worry, you're not being denied that right, but you are telling people a lot about the way your mind works.
you raise good points, but we have to be careful when we look at the area of law, as I am sure you know there are differences between common law, rights and legislation. By consequence I assume you refer to associated slander legislation, as an example. However the flaw in the argument comes when the lawmakers themselves are corrupt or tyrannical, if our government passed a law that stated it is illegal to make a rude remark against people who are left handed, and that is punishable by 50 years in prison, how would we feel about that? We cannot support the creation of laws that attack our rights, and free speech should fall into the area of rights (it is partially covered in the Bill of Rights, but no where near the way it is in the US constitution). Unfortunately in the UK our constitution is not designed to protect the people it is focused on the crown and follows the 1689 revolution, although Jefferson and others based the US Republic constitution on English common law and the English bill of rights and the work of Locke, Hume etc, we do not share the protection as do our US cousins. The sadness is that in the US now the federal government abuses its power and attacks the constitution at every opportunity, same happens here in Germany. If people are really interested in free Speech it is worth looking up the Free Speech Union they carry out some good work in the UK.