Guidelines

I am one member of a five person board. The opinions I express on this forum are mine only, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Escambia County Staff, Administrators, Employees, or anyone else associated with Escambia County Florida. I am interested in establishing this blog as a means of additional transparency to the public, outreach to the community, and information dissemination to all who choose to look. Feedback is welcome, but because public participation is equally encouraged, appropriate language and decorum is mandatory. Although this is not my campaign site for re-election--sometimes campaign related information will be discussed, therefore in an abundance of caution I add the following :








Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Deleted Comments Redacted and Reposted

Look:  I don't like censorship and I am a free speech guy and anonymous speech is free speech according to the ACLU.  (Except when anonymous speech is critical of the ACLU, their favored political figures and parties, some religions like Islam, and/or some racial groups --but not all ethnic or cultural minorities).

So on this blog I rarely moderate comments unless the language is really, really bad---- so bad it is beyond the pale.  I am a free speech guy.  Freedom of speech is not enshrined in the bill of rights to protect speech that is sanitizeed, homogenized, and nice.  It's there to protect speech that some will find offensive.  But you can't yell fire in a crowded theater either.

Political speech is rough and tumble and is also free speech.  At least it is for now--whether or not it will continue this way is an open question as we see things change in the culture of the media and mainstream thought as new terms like "hate-speech" are adopted as if they are actually in the constitution.  They aren't.

This said, the "n-word" is toxic and it should be removed from the english vocabulary and I won't have it printed on my blog ever, period.

So yesterday a couple of comments popped up on my blog which I immediately had to pull down.

One contained a curse word, one contained the "n-word."  So I pulled them down, saved a screenshot of them and then redacted the offensive content.  I am posting, below, the redacted content.

No, I am not a fan of censorship.  Yes, I support free speech.




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