British cheek (and a rant)...

British cheek (and a rant)...  A London coffee shop was ordered to take down its sign, because it was “offensive” (a word that's beginning to offend me all by itself!).  Look what the coffee shop did in response – it's hysterical, cheeky, and most likely very good for their business.  I wonder how the originally offended people are feeling about this development?  Passed along by reader, friend, and former colleague Simon M...

The notion that we have some obligation to avoid offending others is about as un-American as you can get.  There's a very large distinction between choosing not to offend someone else (a choice I make frequently around my predominantly Mormon neighbors :) and being obligated to do so.  The former is your free choice, and should you offend someone else (either deliberately or inadvertently), that's a great example of the exercise of America's key (and nearly unique) freedom of speech.  You don't have to think very hard to come to the understanding that our freedom of speech is all about that freedom to offend someone else (or the government) if we want to.  There's really no other purpose for that freedom.  “Freedom of speech” and “freedom to offend” are really one and the same thing.  You cannot have one without the other.

When I was a much younger lad, the liberals – what we'd call “classical liberals” today, but back then they were the only kind – were the ones defending our freedom of speech, and the conservatives wanted to curb it.  I can't think of a better example than the desecration of the American flag.  In the '60s, laws were on the books, and enforced, that made it illegal to (for example) burn the flag, or stomp on it on the streets.  Personally I find such behavior offensive, and I would never do that myself – but the Supreme Court held (correctly, in my view) that such behavior was a form of speech, a symbolic way of protesting the U.S. government's actions – and as such it was protected by the Constitution.  Liberals promoted that freedom; conservatives opposed it.  Today the situation is completely reversed.  The liberal-dominated institutions (especially, at the moment, our universities) are doing their level best to create, impose, and enforce speech codes that would make particular kinds of speech illegal.  Naturally it would be the kinds of speech that they decide is offensive.  This is not happening without controversy and without resistance, but nevertheless the liberals are making “progress” toward their newly-acquired goals of limiting freedom of speech. 

That moves us toward the European norm, where speech is limited in ways that I suspect would surprise and dismay most Americans.  It's not a norm I want to live under, and it's my fervent hope that the liberals in America fail in their efforts.  I'm afraid, though, that they're succeeding ... and there aren't many other places I'd care to live that have anything like our (alleged) freedom of speech...