If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.It's certainly a legitimate view to the rugby player, and no amount of opprobrium is likely to change his antediluvian views. I'm not sure that vindictively sacking him achieves anything useful except making a few equally intolerant folk feel better about themselves. Like the rest of us he's a product of his circumstances and his education by the various channels that we all encounter throughout our lives. New channels with new ideas might change his views and if he doesn't plenty of other observers will, so that's a score draw at worst.
People really need to decide for themselves that something is different. I can remember the exact moment that I realised that God was a ridiculous concept while, in a school Christian Union session one lunchtime. All that extra religious knowledge actually opened the door to ideas that were previously unseen because gods were standing in the way, and made me appreciate that there's more than one "right" for virtually anything (except that Cessnas are better than Pipers and that Sheffield Wednesday will rise again).
The first thing that a future totalitarian regime does is to control what people can say, so that they can then control what people learn, and then what people think. Once you have enough people on board the rest comes together very easily, along with the oppression, extra judicial punishment, torture, gulags, murder, and the rest.
This weekend we've had David Lammy shouting "NAZI" and "HITLER" at people to the left of Thatcher. It belittles him but when enough people share those ridiculous view (as in share, not necessarily believe) it starts to close down another element of speech, builds resentment, but definitely doesn't stop people believing anything or build any common ground.
This isn't new. After WW2, Orwell (we are not worthy) said something along the lines of
'We must stop calling our opponents Nazis, we've just fought a war against actual Nazis'. While people were calling each other Nazis they took their eye off the actual dangers of rising communism.
Here's looking at you David Lammy.
Middle East Peace Expert. Military strategist. Former economist and epidemiologist.
Not always entirely serious.
-Still learning -