Reply #40: There's two sides to that, though. [View All]

[SteppingRazor]

First off, people have been told -- as you said -- that they're free to say whatever they want, regardless of consequences.

But there's another side -- those potential consequences are damned near nonexistent. We've been taught to back down from confrontation -- that somehow these people will "get what's coming to them" in some cosmic, karmic sense, and so people mouth off as much as they want without any negative reinforcement to teach them that they can't talk to people that way.

Hilarious article on this phenomenon in Esquire a couple months back:
http://www.esquire.com/features/man-at-his-best/punching1207