Is your belief that new forms of speech constitute “harm” and “offense” to such a degree that censorship is warranted? If so, why did you once support Andres Serrano and his work Piss Christ, which Catholics insisted was an intolerable offense, and call it censorship when opponents like Al D’Amato and Jesse Helms tried to pull funding for Serrano from the National Endowment of the Arts? Wasn’t the Hustler magazine spread suggesting Jerry Falwell had sex with his mother in an outhouse offensive? Didn’t you go to The People Versus Larry Flynt anyway?

If you’re okay with the FBI collaborating on censorship with the SBU now, why oppose the original PATRIOT Act, suggesting you didn’t even want the government looking at library records in search of Islamic terrorists? Why did you support the Dixie Chicks when they were blackballed for antiwar views after the Iraq invasion? Did you cheer them when you watched Shut Up and Sing?

Weren’t those national security issues, too? That wasn’t even that long ago. Is Vladimir Putin that much more of a menace than Al-Qaeda to justify the change in heart?

[The “liberals” of that time probably didn’t have a change of heart. It’s the progressives that have endorsed Big Brother more than the liberals, and they haven’t actually changed sides — not really, anyway. They have always wanted authoritarianism; they just want it with themselves in charge. — Ed]