Freedom of Speech or Poking the Bear?

You may have noticed I try to see both sides and many perspectives on a subject.  Well this post will be no different.  I won't be giving the extremists very much of my time, but I want to sort of shoot some ideas out there.

I'm for freedom of speech.  Without it, my 'writing as therapy' wouldn't be as much fun or effective. Yet I have a problem with limitless freedom of speech.  We can't be going around offending people just because we want to, can we?

Since the extremists attacked that newspaper office, the world is alight with banter on holding up this right to offend others.  We act like we're so for it, like we're invincible to it's harm.  As though if slander were thrown at us, or slander upon one of our beliefs, we'd 'shake it off' as quickly as dear Taylor can shake her pink tutu!  I highly doubt it.

If you ask me, the ladies on the View totally contradicted themselves on this subject today.  They were applauding free speech, then went on to diss online interactions as being offensive and like a 'cesspool'.  So if it's anonymous, is it not free speech?  That's a dangerous slippery slope eh?  Maybe we can stop the ban on tobogganing and ban slippery slopes!

Imagine that some clever cartoonist on a whole other continent decided to draw Jesus hanging off the cross bloodied and torn apart with something awful happening to him.  There would be a shit-storm of Christians pissed right off.  Christians would be crawling out of the woodwork.  It's like when the right to say "Merry Christmas" was taken away in some areas of North America, there were suddenly so many more Christians out there.  Made me laugh then, makes me laugh every year I see the memes.

Our skin is as thin as theirs ... our beliefs as close to our hearts.

Now the big diff here is that most of those Christians would not likely raid a building and kill anyone in their way.  But at some point, we have to ask ourselves:

Are we just being offensive ... to prove that we can?