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Defending free speech to the death?

Editor, Index-Tribune:

    

  It is perhaps ironic that the recent violent anti-American demonstrations in the Middle East and Central Asia led to the death of some of the demonstrators as they vociferously exercised their freedom of speech. But in a larger sense, they were fulfilling a noble principle, often misattributed to Voltaire, embodied in the statement: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

  Thus we should be proud of those impassioned and now deceased rioters who religiously defended our American freedom of speech but disapproved of what we said.

  Michael F. Heima

  Sonoma