‘free spech zones’

I write for a living. I lecture large audiences for a living. I piss people off for a living. Je suis Charlie. My comrades were murdered for expressing opinions that others don’t like. Ordinarily, we’d call those murderers psychopaths. But because their instructions to kill supposedly came from their god rather than from random psychic noise, they’re considered “religious extremists.” That’s too polite. It subtly helps limit their responsibility for their behavior. Of course, that’s a primary goal of religion—to codify the ways in which people are not in charge of this world, and to provide a vocabulary for not…