The right to free speech must include the right to give offense

Why is the Detroit Police Department investigating a racist email sent to Barbara-Rose Collins? Unless the message contained personal threats toward Collins (which news accounts have not indicated), the person sending the note was exercising his free speech rights. Certainly he deserved to be fired for the grief he brought his employer but as John Stuart Mill famously stated, "the right to free speech must include the right to give offense.” However rude and ignorant his racial slurs were, he did not commit a crime. If making rude and ignorant statements are crimes, Collins deserves to be his cellmate.

[Letter to the Editor - The Detroit News. Submitted 02/24/2006]