So it looks as though Pam Geller really did want to provoke a violent response to her little event

[Tommy_Carcetti]

194. Free speech is but an ancillary issue to Geller's behavior.

I could draw a picture of Mohammed while I sit here at my desk. That would be free speech. I doubt anyone would shoot me dead over it.

I could draw a picture of Mohammed in front of hundreds of people at a highly publicized "Draw Mohammed" event. Technically, that would also be free speech on my own part. Of course, given the pre-existing publicity of that event, the chances are much greater of a violent reaction, as is the danger to people who are not directly participating in the event. So the issue shifts from my own expression of free speech to "What the fuck were the organizers thinking?"

But it doesn't stop there. Because if the answer to "What the fuck were the organizers thinking?" isn't just, "Oh, they just wanted an demonstration of free speech and that's it" but is rather, "They wanted a violent reaction to the event to prove their pre-existing biases against Muslims and give them a media platform to spread those pre-existing biases", then you get into the area of extreme reckless, unethical behavior on the part of the organizers.

And that, my good sir, is exactly where we are at here in the discussion. Geller wants to cloak herself in the "free speech" cloak of immunity from criticism, and you are giving it to her.

In the end, the discussion isn't about free speech. It's about Geller's own recklessness and lack of ethnics in her motivations to host this event.