Bad Taste Is Not a Crime

Sometimes, you can go too far in pursuing a worthy goal. There's no question that hate crimes or the incitement to violence toward a particular group must be fought against in any society. But, just expressing yourself outrageously should not be a crime. It seems to me that the case of Fito Páez, the Argentine rock star who has said publicly that those who voted for a certain political candidate "make him sick to his stomach", and is being threatened with prosecution for "discrimination", is an example of taking things too far. Bad manners or bad taste should not be a basis for prosecution. As far as I know, he did not call for people to bring harm to those who voted the way he considers abhorrent. He was just expressing his views forcefully, and, although one might have a quarrel with the way he did so, this is hardly cause for applying the criminal code to him.

Free societies should not be so touchy over the expression of unpopular ideas, as long as they do not incite to violence or other extreme and harmful conduct. People are free to judge for themselves the ideas of others, including how they are expressed.

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