- Joined
- Dec 14, 2008
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- 36,235
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- Conservative
What about this officer's freedom of speech? Say he had made the same comment to several friends in his back yard, and the neighbor had been outside, overheard him, and complained to the sheriff's office. Is there any forum in which this deputy should have been able to say what he did, without being punished for it by the government?
I am sure millions of Americans, at one time or another, have said very derogatory things about a U.S. President. If a police officer someplace had printed and handed around on the street, while off duty, leaflets in which he called George W. Bush a "lying, Muslim-hating war criminal" and a "cowardly white boy who was trying to kiss his daddy's butt by finishing the war he started" and added that his wife was a "stupid cow," would the municipal department which employed him have violated his freedom of speech by punishing him for what he had written? What if the leaflet had included a cartoon of Bush made to look like a chimpanzee, kneeling in front of his Vice-President in a public restroom, as if to perform a homosexual act on him?
It is not any kind of a restriction on free speech. Free speech however like any other freedom has consequences if abused. In this case he put his job at risk.