Thought for Today: "Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art." - Claude Debussy, French composer (born this date in 1862, died 1918).
"...and French composers should stick to writing music". Sheesh.
Besides, do they even have free speech in France?
We don't have it here, why should they get to have it over there?
We have it here, the problem is most people don't actually understand what it means.
What's there to not understand? Do I need to pay for it? No? Then it's free.
I would call getting your ass kicked for expressing an opinion paying for it.
Just because he's free to say it doesn't mean he's free from consequences of it.
Hence not free. Thank you.
See, you're obviously one of the people who doesn't understand how free speech works. Free speech simply means the government can't make any laws prohibiting free speech. At some point, people started interpreting that as you can go around saying any damn thing you want with no consequences. Not sure how or why that happened. Probably #fakenews, somehow.
It happened because the SCOTUS keeps protecting the first amendment. You can say any damned thing you want. There may be consequences, but the consequences can't be for the expression itself if they come from government. Someone can be jailed for inciting to riot, but that gets a pretty narrow interpretation.
Pornography, the signs carried by members of Westboro Baptist Church, the ravings of racist and fascist organizations, caricatures of Jesus or Mohammed...all protected expression.