Concerning freedom of speech.....

"It is not just the right of person that speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen and to hear, and every time you silence somebody you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear somebody."

From Christopher Hitchens, from a debate at Hart House, University of Toronto.

In the same speech, he talks about Samuel Johnson. After finishing his compilation of the first dictionary of the English language, some ladies commended him for not including indecent or obscene words, to which he replied "Ladies, I congratulate you on the ability to look them up."

Anyway, after listening to the whole speech I realized much of what he said was in defense of David Irving. David Irving is a historian that at first asserted that Hitler had no awareness of the gas chambers and other things going on at the concentration camps. Later in life he denies Jews were killed by the thousands, arguing that a lot of it simply doesn't make sense. He was tried in Austria in just a few years ago for his denial of the holocaust, and he went to prison. He was eventually released, and continues to preach holocaust denial. There are those that adhere to such ideas too.

The point is, freedom of speech isn't really concept practiced if that freedom is only allowed to those that parrot the general consensus. It is relevant now because people in this country STILL do not understand it. Every time someone says dissidents are unpatriotic, they expose themselves as ignorant to the meaning and intent of our Constitution. Any time you silence someone, you lose any authority and claims you make for protection from the very same actions against yourself.