What's childish is the notion that there's no cost to offending people, or that the cost must not matter because there's a principle attached to it. You have free speech whether or not you choose to use it to offend Muslims. Muslims will tolerate your free speech, because that's the social contract, and we enforce the social contract with the enormous, virtually unstoppable resources of Western Civilization.
We knew that before this demonstration, we'll know it afterwards. The only thing that's going to change is that many tens of thousands of people will be pointlessly alienated so that people like you can feel good about themselves.
The only thing that's going to change is that many tens of thousands of people will be pointlessly alienated
I disagree with that. I hope that -- and the reason I support this movement is that -- we will all feel stronger as a society which values freedom of expression.
It certainly was not about feeling good about myself. I feel bad about offending anyone, but I think demonstrating our belief in free speech is more important.
Thanks, you've put exactly into words the idea I've been struggling to sketch out for the last few days.
(I acknowledge that many idiots on the Facebook page were intentionally offending people)
But what this is really about is intentionally defending our freedom of speech whilst at the same time accepting the necessary, but unintentional, side effect of offending people.
But frankly, who cares? These people can choose whether or not to be offended by this. If they think we're stupid so be it, they don't have to engage with us.