“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” – Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Milo Yiannopoulos is a despicable, disgusting human being.  His words only contain hate.  My disgust has no bounds.

I couldn’t decide which was the better way to start this posting.  But the reality is this posting is about the defense of freedom and my support of the ACLU.  So what does this have to do with Milo Yiannopoulos?  It seems that the ACLU has decided to defend his right to free speech.  Yep, that ACLU.  The so called bastion of the liberal elite is defending a man whose words are mostly about hate.  And the ACLU has a long record of doing this.  Look at what they did about that thing in Skokie a few years ago.  The ACLU defended the rights of Nazis.  OK, I want to say something here.  I graduated from college in 1986.  I’m pretty sure the first contribution I made to any organization was to the ACLU.  I’ve been a member since then.  After 09/11 I didn’t contribute to the relief fund.  I sent money to the ACLU.  The biggest threat I saw was to our freedom was from our government and the laws they’d enact, not Al Qaeda.  I wanted the ACLU to be prepared to fight the tyranny of domestic and international spying that the Bush administration was about to unleash on us.  And the USA Patriot Act was exactly that, an attack on our freedoms in the name of “protecting” our country.  The revelations of Edward Snowden showed what the NSA did with the powers granted to them after 09/11.  BTW, the second contribution was to WGBH (producers of Nova, Frontline and much more).  WGBH says I’ve been a member since 1987.  And today I’m writing to support the ACLU and, well, hate speech.

To be clear, no part of me respects hate speech.  But go back to the first line of this posting.  If we suppress the words of Milo the scumbag then we open the door to suppress the thoughts of all, we let #fucktrump open the door to stifling a free press, our marches, our rights to post our thoughts on Facebook, of me to blog.  Each and every day we try to prevent publication of an idea, no matter how offensive, we support the ideas of #fucktrump, the idea that there is no freedom of thought for those that don’t agree.  So I support the ACLU as the first defense in the right to not only protect the rights to speak of those who say things I despise, but to protect me as well.

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” – George S. Patton Jr.

Resist

P.S.  And I do support limits.  Some have claimed that repressing child pornography is suppressing free speech.  I don’t agree.  The pain to the child way outweighs the so called “free speech”.  And you also don’t get to yell “fire” in a crowded theater (or as a comedian once wondered, “is it OK to yell ‘theater’ in a crowded fire?”.