With Rights Comes Responsibilities

With the maelstrom over the bloggers hired by the Edwards '08 campaign a few things should be clarified over the First Amendment's Right of Free Speech.

1. You may have the right to say it, but you don't have the right to be heard. You can say all that you want, but nobody has to listen to you. In fact, if you look at Air America as an example, when one is shrill and obnoxiously offensive to others beliefs, nobody will listen to you.
2. When you do say something and it's heard, be prepared for consequences - good or bad. Too many people only want the good consequences for their actions, none of the bad. The young 'ladies' that blogged for Edwards (even in their free time) should have understood that there would have been a backlash for their ugly diatribe. One can civilly disagree with another's opinion. If they did that, there would have been no call for their resignation by their opponents. It was the ugly language they used that got them in trouble.
3. Tolerance is a two-way street. The young 'ladies' expected conservative Catholics (and Christians as a whole) to put up and shut up about their views on Catholicism and Christianity. When people spoke up for themselves and ask that the Edward's campaign to fire these 'ladies', charges of censorship rang out loud and clear. Meanwhile these 'ladies' and others of their ilk do what they can to squash those that dissent from their point of view.

Most of Americans do want a more civil tone in the political arena, but with people like Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan it is difficult. These 'ladies' and their allies don't care for tolerance or civility. They attack movements they don't like in vial and violent term and drag the people that lead those movements through the mud. They use the tyranny of Political Correctness to badger opponents and stifle debate. The tolerance they demand for their point of view is never extended to those that disagree with them.

Voltaire, for all his detractors, at least gave people a fair chance in the arena of ideas (a chance that these people do not wish to give their opponents). Those that need to debase the debate with personal attacks and vulgar demeaning of another's beliefs should expect to be impugned, ridiculed, and ostracized.