Public vulgarity is society's expression of excessive permissiveness. If it feels good do it. Thank you Dr. Spock.

Mr. Burnett;

Would it not be the case that back in the day when kings were divine, that criticizing them was the equivalent of swearing today? The analogy to flag burning is even more obvious. However, the best argument for freedom of speech is that it lets the idiots self-identify.

As for supporting the permitting of such behaviour while endeavoring to prevent it in one's own children seems rather similar to promoting good economics here while disinterestedly watching Europe self-destruct.

I don't think that the censors of the past were worried about common vulgarity, but rather political and religious heresy. As long as the common folk deferred to the proper authorities, I don't think that anyone much cared how salty their language was. I find this notion that humans were collective prudes until the 1960s to be extremely laughable.

A Dutch "bible belt". Who'da thunk it?

Get over to southwestern Michigan and you'll find Dutch reformed there who are pretty straitlaced.

Our juvenile lessons to the contrary, taking the Lord's name in vain has nothing (directly, anyway) to do with using swear words.

De Bond tegen het vloeken needs a little more profound interpretation of the Ten Commandments.

Old maltese: on their home site the 'bond tegen het vloeken' makes the distinction between profanity (taking the Lords name in vain) and using swear words, a distinction that is probably lost om many. Obviously they approve of neither and campaign against both.

AOG;

No, I don't think so. Challenging the king is as old as fire and I think all coherent and resilient societies have understood the difference between challenging the ruling establishment and adhering to collective notions of decency. Even if there was overlap at times, I think we know that all cultures have notions of decency, which have been enforced in myriad customary, informal and legal ways. The point is not that they are logically or rationally consistent but that that are the sine qua non of civilization. If that whole idea is rejected, then we are all determined, materialist automatons and if I march for the right to strip down in public, liberty is advanced by definition. If that causes problems for the plebs, we'll work it out someday.

The real problem is not serious political expression or debate about how to unmask and check tyranny. That is old hat. Surely no one seriously believes that is what activism for freedom of speech is about today. The fight now is for the relativist, amoral cause Robert champions--that words are just words and it's all a problem of neo-Victorian bluestockings who don't understand that in the state of nature everyone tells bawdy jokes and sings raunchy sea shanties anywhere, anytime. Pity he is so locked into his ideological certainties that he no longer cares about the real lives real people are living and what the repucussions are. But if you are a beautiful person who wants to curse and blaspheme whenever, wherever, what do you care about that?

Peter, you are factually incorrect when you say that most struggles over freedom of expression involve indecency.

In the U.S., the periodical that spends most time defending the principles of free expression is published not by the ACLU but by the Seventh-day Adventists, a pretty strait-laced bunch.

The Becket Fund has fought and won dozens of expression cases, every single one in favor of a religious group. While all religious expression seems more or less indecent to me, I doubt you'd agree with me.

Either we live in a free country, or we don't. So far we do.

morality varies with class.

Robert, you may be right about the censors in history, but not in my small universe up to the sixties. We may have been prudes (I think not), but if you haven't experienced the awareness of expression appropriate to the audience then vulgarity has less meaning for you than for me, in my opinion. Perhaps it's a matter of sensitivity.

Disclosure: Having been a Marine I'd venture I have used more profanity than most posting here have heard. At my first breakfast at home after boot camp I asked my mother to "please pass the fucking sugar"; perhaps a faux pas even in your book. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

The Dutch Bible Belt here in Western Michigan is a bit looser these days, but it's buckled.

Genecis:

I remember my mom slamming on the brakes one day (she & I were going to the library) when I told her my friend Bruce "pissed me off". I was in junior high at the time (1973/74).