Free Speech?

Our Supreme Court has issued its opinion:It is ok to shout obscenities and slurs at the funerals of fallen soldiers as long as the screaming is done from public spaces.

At the same time as this ruling is being issued, the French government is prosecuting John Galliano, the top designer at the House of Dior for allegedly making anti-Semitic slurs at two women who were not Jewish. He could face up to 6 months in jail and be fined up to $31,000.

Does anyone see the irony in this?

Speech is not free-it comes with a price tag. Just ask those kids in school who are bullied incessantly with insults and put-downs. What about those bosses who bully their employees, and create an environment of anxiety and hostility.

We have always understood the impact that bullying has on its victims; yet it took the deaths and suicides of bullying victims for our society to take notice and implement consequences to those acts.

Speech is not free in those instances, so what makes hurling slurs ok if they are done by a different group to a different audience.

I guess then it's ok for Holocaust deniers to have a legitimate claim to spew their venom in our country. Yet in Germany it is illegal...and France prosecutes those who are found to be uttering anti-Semitic insults.

There are limits to "free" speech. And we put ourselves in terrible danger if we do not realize that there are boundaries to everything we do.