Juan Williams, the African-American journalist who is often the token liberal on Fox News, was fired by National Public Radio for saying that passengers in Muslim garb on airplanes make him nervous. This was in the context of arguing with Bill O’Reilly that he should be careful about stereotyping all Muslims as extremists. See Williams’ self-defense: FoxNews.com – JUAN WILLIAMS: I Was Fired for Telling the Truth.
Other public figures have been getting pilloried for saying that they do not approve of homosexuality or masturbation or evolution or whatever. These are things that lots of people think, but it’s not socially acceptable to say so. Is freedom of speech just something for the government to not infringe, or should it be a value that the culture as a whole upholds, if it is to actually be a free society? That is to say, if people lose their jobs for stating their opinion, do we really have free speech?
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In