I suppose I am trying to get to the most basic principles.
As I said in my original reply, I do not think that the offensiveness of the speech is the test we should employ in determining what political speech is protected and what political speech we will not protect. For example, it is easy for us conservatives to condemn anti-Semitic bigotry but some fellow Freepers would be a lot less exercised upon hearing, under the same circumstances, anti-Semitic bigotry directed against Semites who happen to be Muslims.
Is there any political speech which is not in itself illegal such as pornography or inciting a clear and present danger of violence, which we should permit a bureaucrat to censor? Let us assume that the woman in question under the same circumstances had said that we ought not to permit illegal alien children to attend our schools who do not speak English because they disrupt the class and inhibit the progress of teaching. Further, she says these illegal alien children should be immediately deported. In doing so she clearly identifies herself as a substitute teacher of the district. Should she be fired?
If we censor her speech are we not losing the input of someone who has experience on the ground? Is the input of her free speech worth offending a class of foreign speaking illegal immigrants such as Mexicans? Are we to grant or withhold her the right of free speech based on whether a bureaucrat thinks her speech is worth bearing? Are we to permit ourselves to be deprived of the information by the same bureaucrat?
Do the circumstances change because she is offering an opinion beyond the realm of presumed competence? Does your right to free speech very depending on whether people are offended and if so does it matter which group is offended? Do Jews who suffer the Holocaust have a lower threshold of offense than white males? To Mexicans have the same right to be offended as Jews? Who makes this determination? A bureaucrat?
Do we want our rights of free speech to depend on whether one group or another subjectively takes offense? What will we name our sports teams?
Should the decision whether to fire her belong to an elected bureaucrat who has no judicial jurisdiction over the matter but only the position of a bureaucratic superior? Who is he to judge the value to society of public political speech? When we ask the question, "should she be fired" are we not asking the question, should we permit the state acting through a bureaucrat, in this case a school superintendent, to impose sanctions for exercising political speech in public?
We assume that anti-Semitic utterances are abhorrent and therefore many Freepers on this thread justify the firing by citing the repugnance of the utterance. But I have tried to bring to our attention a couple of hypothetical examples in which reasonable Freepers might differ. My point is that even abhorrent speech like anti-Semitism is beyond the reach of the state to punish.
Because we are not proceeding from basic principles we resort to very fine distinctions such as whether she presented herself as a teacher. Is that the real problem? What harm is it to children in the classroom if she identified herself in the public square as a teacher but harmless if she does not identify herself as a teacher?
Is her offense not potential harm to the children that that she tainted the reputation of the school district? Do we really think that free speech should be censored to protect the government's reputation?
Do we or do we not have the constitutionally protected right to be obnoxious?
