There is a petition out there (I'm guessing, a person on FB posted it, I'm going to assume it's true) that seeks to keep Donald Trump off of the Saturday Night Live TV show.
I responded with the thought that the petition was attempting to stop the speech of folks that the poster didn't agree with.
She came back with a reply that said that her opinion was still valid.
Now, this is the typical kind of thing I find myself involved with. She and I are talking about different things. I'm talking free speech and she (I think, it wasn't really clear to me) was talking about the fact that Trump was unfit for office.
It was not an aborted discussion of whether DT is a fit president, but, to me, the habit of some folks who want to stifle speech they don't like.
The bigger issue to me is why I saw this petition so differently from my friend. Is my logic that bad?
Here is a bit from the petition's page:
"Mass deportation is not funny! By allowing Donald Trump to host Saturday
Night Live, NBC is excusing and even validating Trump's hateful
comments about immigrants and Latinos. Tell NBC to dump Donald Trump as
host of Saturday Night Live!"
Will/would the Donald be a funny guy on SNL? Would his presence be validating of hateful speech? I'd guess NBC is much more interested in rating than anything else.
Some words my father told me a long time ago: "If someone is wrong about something, the best way to make that clear is to let him speak and let them speak often and to the largest audience possible. Soon everyone will find them misguided and they will either vanish or change their ways."
But the worst thing you can do it try to shut them up.
The other reason to shut someone up is that you feel their ideas are dangerous.
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