The First Amendment-- Not About Politeness

When I was attending my right wing college, I heard a lot about relativism and creeping relativism. Lefties were accused of having no standards and of not believing in anything and therefore having no moral compass. This was apparently because lefties had applied the first amendment to their own lives in some illogical fashion--moving from all speech should be tolerated to I shouldn't firmly hold to any one idea.

As a lefty and a lawyer, I'm a firm believer in the first amendment. That means you should be able to pick your religion and your ideas--no matter how loony--until you actually become imminently dangerous to other human beings. That does not mean you have to politely sit there when somebody is deciding to go off in some repulsive direction. And that doesn't mean you have to withhold comment on other people's religion, pornography, morally relativistic play or whatever.

So, although I am not religious, I comment in this blog about religion. The marketplace of ideas means that everybody gets to say something. While I think it is important to be polite and tolerant, if you have something to say and there's just no polite way to say it, I think it's important to go for it.