Peanut gallery is better than no gallery

Those who say that Wespeaks like Evan Carp’s should not be printed are totally ridiculous. This is especially true because many, many Americans (unfortunately more than we are willing to admit) who feel the way Carp does, associate Islam with terrorism, and have pejorative views of many Arab states in general. If (and let’s underestimate) 25% of Americans feel the way Carp does (and for my home state of Texas I am pretty sure the number is a lot higher), then merely trying to silence such views is both counterproductive and counter progressive. To change topics a bit, this is one of the reasons I am uncomfortable by the fact that Holocaust denier David Irving has been imprisoned in Austria. As long as we tell people they can’t express their offensive thoughts, we stand accountable to a) encouraging violation of civil liberties, a slippery slope to a fully non-democratic society, and b)the choice by those individuals to move out of the public forum and attempt social change behind closed doors. This is a far scarier thought.