Americans have seen what speech codes do to freedom in other countries, past and present. But not to be outdone MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, a man who encouraged voter fraud, said he’d urinate on Hugh Hewitt, and admitted to wanting to kill a former Vice President, says its actually Rush Limbaugh who should be penalized in some way for exercising his freedom of speech.
Schultz again used his hardly watched MSNBC timeslot to demonize conservatives by taking clips out of context. He plays a couple clips from Rush Limbaugh’s show where he points out that the House Democrats are attempting to push the highest ranking black official in Congress out of his leadership post. In making his point, Limbaugh used similar language to President Obama’s statement that the GOP has to sit in the back of the car.
It wasn’t enough for Schultz to simply hit back at comments he disagreed with, he says they should be illegal. What he fails to do is see this in reverse. If I had pointed out statements like I did above, followed by a call to take Schultz off the air he would smother himself in the 1st Amendment, and with good reason.
To any liberal commentator who has such a thin understanding of the 1st Amendment, here’s a crash course: The provision was implanted first into our highest governing document because it’s the bedrock of freedom. The right to free expression and speech is meant to protect all speech, even offensive speech. How can this be allowed? Because freedom is a two way street. While I disagree with Mr. Schultz I am free to come on this site and use the same rights to counter him. That’s the genius of the Constitution.
But therein lies the disparity between Constitutionalists and Mr. Schultz. To him, the Constitution is living, breathing, and as liberal as he is. It bends to a changing culture that he aims to shape. I wonder whether he’d feel that way if, let’s say, John Boehner were regulating his show and not Nancy Pelosi? Thankfully no person that’s true to the Constitutions settled beliefs wants to stop Schultz, or anyone else from talking. We are more than happy to take his argument apart every time he opens his mouth.
And that’s good. It’s fine for Keith Olbermann to attack Bill O’reilly, and it’s equally okay to have Rush Limbaugh attack even the President of the United States. If Ed Schultz can’t seem to grow a thick enough skin to handle freedom, he should find some other place to do business.
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