“Lacey needs to step down.”
Disagree. Strongly. He’s a drunken bum, awash in his own sense of entitlement, but if the First Amendment is to mean anything, there can’t be this stupid sword hanging over everyone’s head who utters words. The words are offensive; not as offensive as his continued presence on earth, but still...
They’re only words. We need to be able to speak freely. At least we’ll know who the Laceys of the world are. But not only that. Meting out punishments for uttering criminal words only leads to the sort of double standard we see today. Replace it with a single standard that already exists in the form of the First Amendment. Once we began messing with that, we paved the way for the inevitable double standard. And anyone who whines about such a hypocritical standard needs only thank himself for permitting the concept of criminalizing words to continue.
The departure from common sense and principle, and resort to reactionary emotionalism, in the media, in politics, across the contemporary US, and even on FR, has made me view our society as the saddest of times. Hopefully this is an erroneous perception.