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[the_leander]

Blog-mob mentality punishes freedom of speech
Inside the First Amendment

By Paul K. McMasters
First Amendment Center
02.27.05

Take a stroll down Main Street USA and you’ll find people of all ages and persuasions putting on a veritable fashion parade of freedom. We don’t just practice free speech, we wear it.

T-shirts, caps, shoes, jackets, designer labels and the occasional tattoo boldly announce in word, design and color our choice, our message, our cause, our team – our Statement.

And when we take to the road, we do so in rolling billboards, vehicles festooned with bumper stickers, vanity plates and ribbons of every hue embracing every cause. We drive what we say.

Then there’s the Internet, where we really speak our minds. We have e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, personal Web pages and, now, our own newspaper/radio-TV station, the Web log or “blog.”

Full-throated expression is our style. We are America. Hear us roar!

Funny thing. For all of that celebration of free and fulsome speech for ourselves, many of us waste a lot of that precious commodity denying it to others. “America,” we say, “shut up!”

Full story, as ever here.

Before anyone complains "Oh this is just another anti American story, stop posting them and do something else" I would point out that the UK is also seeing many of the things described in this article, I would also suspect Canada of being similar also. I would argue that this article has a point that crosses all continents.