Legally protected speech, no matter how offensive, is a glorious and uniquely American invention, a gift to the marketplace of ideas and an example to the world.
Coming from a journalist — me — that statement should not be even mildly controversial.
Increasingly, though, such a statement is being reviled even here in the U.S. as archaic, revanchist, bigoted, paternalistic, reactionary, sexist, probably tinged with racism or just out of tune with modern thought.