Your post is long and I don't disagree with much really, except maybe your flirtations with some restrictions on speech. Certainly we all understand, even in th

Your post is long and I don't disagree with much really, except maybe your flirtations with some restrictions on speech. Certainly we all understand, even in the USA, the concept of a "provocation". And on it's face a provocation is something that is hard to allow. My problem with that is that criminalizing the provocation has lead in all liberal countries except the US into the criminalization of things that offend the sensibilities of the powerful. I'd allow Charlie Hebdo to continue swimming in the cesspool of mediocrity it belongs, and I'll put up with blasphemy, if in exchange I have the full unrestricted freedom to argue for my conscience.