By Ted, I Think He's Got It

The great Theodore Dalrymple writes re free speech and those, like a certain imam in French, who have a problem with it:

Freedom of expression requires not so much the exercise of self-control in what is said as its exercise in reaction to what is said.

Exactly. Which is why an out-of-control reaction to that which is "offensive" is an exercise of brute power, and why it can be such an effective means of curtailing--with the aim, ultimately of killing--that very freedom.