> That makes no sense. I am not elevating their speech above anyone else's.
> I am merely affording them the same platform as everyone else. Because I
> assert that they have a right to speech does not mean that I endorse their
> speech or believe that what their speech advocates should be put into
> practice.
> I am merely saying that they have a right to speak no matter how silly,
> dangerous or provacative their speech may be.
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If the German left had succeeded, as it desperately tried to do, in breaking
up Nazi meetings and preventing them from using "the same platform as
everyone else" to gain power, would your objections still hold? Does free
speech elevated to the level of a principle - "no matter how dangerous or
provocative" - take precedence over what resulted, in part, from its
exercise: the subsequent wholesale massacre of Jews, gypsys, homosexuals,
the disabled, and political dissidents? Not for me. Of course, like
everything else where abstract principles are concerned, there is a slippery
slope, which is why I think all principles have to be rooted in context.