on speech
When something happens, like when a millionaire radio show host denegrates a group of hard-working young women who are in the top of their game, figuratively in the classroom and more literally in the gym, and is summarily fired from his high-paying prominent position in entertainment, some people start crying about "free speech".

"What about free speech?" they ask. "What about defending the right of someone to say something, even if you disagree with them?"

There is a difference between what they see as free speech and what free speech is. Free speech means "free from government-enforced consequences". It means you can stand up and say "The government here is shit" and you won't spend the rest of your life in jail for it.

What these people want free speech to mean is speech free from consequences. This comes up over and over again. Someone says something inflammatory, on a blog, or in their column in a newspaper, or wherever, and when there is outcry and people are outraged, here come these free-from-consequences folks demanding that we respect the beliefs and statements that are so heinous.

I don't have to respect you or your beliefs. If I choose to, that is my choice, but it is not my obligation. The best part about free speech is that I get to have it, too, that I get to respond and let you know that you're wrong, that you're an idiot, that you're racist and sexist and classist and you are blind to all of it.

Someone powerful and rich picked on a group of people who have done nothing but work very hard to get to where they are, and now he's facing ramifications that he may actually understand -- his big fat paycheck is being taken away.

A-fucking-men.