I find myself struggling with free speech ideals sometimes. Savage, Limbaugh, and Coulter are all examples of talking heads that, personally, I wouldn't shed a tear for if they all went down in a small plane together. I'd probably do a dance, actually.
They are prime examples of the double-edged nature of freedom. True freedom permits all voices to be aired. And some of those voices are shrill, hateful, and stupid.
I was having a discussion about welfare recently with someone who insisted that there were too many welfare mothers in our city. I argued that since most people would rather avoid the indignities of being on SS, that the problem was mostly self-regulating.
Allowing idiots to blow their horn is also a sort of self regulating tactic... give 'em enough rope and they'll hang themselves is a pretty sensible way to go.
The only problem is when you get areas that are truly dominated by a narrow ideology. When all media and culture is seized by hardliners, and there's no counteractive to it, you get intellectual wastelands like the American midwest, or those areas that have been held by the Taliban long enough. Put a population under the double whammy of internal persecution and xenophobia and you seriously upend the whole formula.
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