Loud, strong, logical, civil speech

As you may recall, Hitler’s thugs made Munich their headquarters in the 20s, and were able to use it as their power base in the early 30s.  Among other, equally unsavory tactics they used to consolidate power was thuggery to suppress speech.  It’s really a simple tactic if you have the stomach for it, and the civil side always loses in this type of asymmetrical “speech” warfare (not that there’s any real speech involved on the fascist side).

Last week’s Islamo-facism awareness week reminded us that the totalitarian’s early tactic of choice, before he gets his hands on real power, is thuggery aimed at free speech.  Big Lizard’s believes that we shouldn’t take this attack on our liberties quietly, but should go out there ready to counter any efforts to shut down speech.  He has a really rousing post here, which describes the problem and suggests many practical solutions.