My nomination for the best comment of the week regarding the controversy surrounding Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson goes to syndicated columnist George Will.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Will marvelously said, "[T]he new biggest American entitlement is the entitlement to go through life without being offended" (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):
CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: Anyway, George, Duck Dynasty I'm sure you think yourself -- I never thought that at this point of my career I would be talking about an A&E cable show. I want to start with the question we got on Twitter, and let's put it up from Riosmythe -- "In the context of this controversy, is political correctness killing our freedom?
WILL: No, our freedom is really quite secure. Look, this is a big complicated country. This is a week in which New Mexico and Utah became respectively the 17 and 18 states to acquire, by judicial decisions, the same sex marriage. In the same week, Walmart's supply of Duck Dynasty merchandise sold out like that as a sign of support for Mr. Robertson. So, we've got people on both sides of this. His First Amendment rights are not in danger. The First Amendment protects individuals from government action that would either prior restrain speech or punish speech after it's uttered. This is an argument between him and his employer. Let them sort it out.
What we do see here, and this goes to the viewers' question about political correctness, the new biggest American entitlement is the entitlement to go through life without being offended. People think they have a right not to have their feelings hurt, not to have their sensibilities in any way exacerbated. I'd refer them to Jefferson who said, it does me no harm if my neighbor believes in 20 gods or one god, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. We have forked for millennia to get to a point where we say the law will protect our possessions and our persons, but not our feelings and people just have to get over it.
