The news today is the bozo who made the video which supposedly ignited the riots in the middle east is being investigated by the Justice Department and may go to prison. The claim is that this guy, an Egyptian Coptic Christian who lives in California, violated his parole by using a device that connects to the internet without the approval of his parole officer.
I have not seen the video and do not care to do so. It may be a total denunciation of Mohammed done in a way that would offend most Moslems. So what! This used to be America. How many times have you heard a denunciation of the Catholic Church? In the last year I have seen video on HBO that showed priests as vampires preying on the innocent. I have seen video on other cable channels that showed Catholic priests who molested little boys and other priests who covered that up. I have seen Mormons depicted as racists who also hate women. Joseph Smith who founded the Mormon church was shown in a tv series in ways that were worse than what is in the video about Mohammed. I have seen Jews shown in all sorts of unflattering ways. The last one was in a story video which explained that the goal of Israel was to bring down the United States and Christianity. These were all on my television, not just on youtube.
Have you ever listened to Bill Maher talk about religion and the religious? Have you been to see The Book of Mormon on Broadway? The truth is that Americans used to have free speech. There were always a lot of buffoons who said stupid and even hateful things, but that is the price of our all being free to say what we want.
If the current middle eastern rioting results in the federal government putting the filmmaker in jail for parole violations, we will all have lost something extremely important: the freedom of speech. Obama and Clinton should pay less attention to whether or not some people in the middle east are offended by what gets said by a private citizen here in America and more attention to keeping our embassies safe.
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