I Support It

The Right to Offend

When I wrote over the weekend about the trial of Australia's most prominent columnist for expressing his opinions, I did not expect it to be quite so immediately relevant to the United States. But perhaps what's most disturbing about Lindsey Graham's dismal defense of his inclinations to censorship is the lack of even the slightest attempt to underpin his position with any kind of principle. He all but literally wraps himself in the flag, and, once you pry him out of the folds of Old Glory, what you're left with is a member of the governing class far too comfortable with the idea that he and his colleagues should determine the bounds of public discourse.

I'm sick of that. I'm sick of it in Canada, sick of it in Britain, in Australia, in Europe, and I'm now sick of it in America – in part because, as Senator Graham has demonstrated in his fatuous defense, guys like him aren't smart enough to set the rules for what the rest of us are allowed to think.

Hat tip: Vox Popoli