Salman Rushdie on the First Amendment

Bill Moyers has a new series on PBS, "Faith & Reason," a topic I think is of vital importance in our current sociopolitical environment. The first show features Salman Rushdie, he of the 10-year fatwa and life in seclusion.

"In a free society, offense is not the limiting point. Because if we say that we can suppress things that upset people, then all of us are silenced...When there is a conflict between liberty of speech and the beliefs of private individuals, the liberty of speech must always take precedence, because otherwise, every other liberty -- including freedom of religious observance -- is put into question. It's no accident, I think, that freedom of religious observance and freedom of speech are jointly protected by the first amendment...In my point of view, you can't have one without the other."