I'm All For Freedom Of Speech, But...

Ever notice that people who begin a sentence with "I'm all for freedom of speech..." seldom are for freedom of speech? They're just using the phrase as a shield. It's like saying 'I can't be a hateful bigot, I have some gay friends.' As an experiment, I did a Google search for "i'm all for freedom of speech but." My search turned up 729 hits including the following:

I'm all for freedom of speech, but...

...this is the wrong time to be having those antiwar demonstrations, with the troops over there.

...I don't want to pay for it.

...the FCC really ought to ban Americans from donning fake Australian accents in commercials.

...for Yahoo to create and maintain this section shows that they actively support these groups.

...threatening to do "whatever" if a certain candidate doesn't get elected is just plain stupid.

...that's not cool, guys...Susan Sarandon means what she says!

...he should've thought ahead about what his actions might cause.

...I also think there is a time and a place for certain issues.

...there has to be a line somewhere that can't be crossed.

...some people seriously make me want to shoot them.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no and no. Freedom of speech has nothing to do with the perceived stupidity of that speech. The fact of the matter is that we don't have free speech in this country. We just don't. Only one of the links I clicked on got it right:

I think any discussion of freedom of speech is good," Liddle said. "That's what freedom of speech is all about. But people always say, 'I'm all for freedom of speech, but ...' but there's nothing you can put after that 'but.'