Toronto Star: Freedom of speech casualty of a new war. “Even as the White House preaches tolerance toward Muslims and Sikhs, it is practising intolerance, signalling that anyone who challenges the leaders of an embattled America is cynical, political and – isn’t this the subtext? – unpatriotic,” wrote Maureen Dowd in the New York Times.
Many people have been outraged by some speech they’ve heard and read since the Sept. 11 atrocities. But the urge to censor is an even bigger outrage, and much more dangerous than what offends.
Yet there’s a mood in the land to stifle the speech of people who don’t agree with prevailing views. This is, in the end, more un-American than the speech the majority would stifle.
It’s sad that we have to remind people, again and again, of the purpose of free speech. Your right to say what you think, even when what you think is unpopular, depends totally on your defense of that right for other people.
The White House efforts to control the media are just what you’d expect. Let’s hope that journalists stand up to the pressure. A supine media is a press not doing its job.
The newspaper managers who fired the columnists had the right to do so, but they are spinelesss. They demean journalism. They won’t lose any sleep over what I say, but if they someday lose the right to publish their newspapers because they’ve offended some government official, they may look back on their kowtowing as an early step down a sorry path.