I was in my fave-o-rite record store just now (Central Square Records in Seaside, FL - an unexpected gem in this otherwise fairly typical vacation town) talking with Tom, the proprietor.  We were discussing music and politics and catching up on family and he noticed a shirt on the t-shirt table was out of place.  

"Look at that,"  he said.  

"What?"  I assumed he was talking about the message on the t-shirt, some pun about John Deere. 

"They covered this one up."  He moved the green and yellow shirt to reveal one unflattering to Dick Cheney beneath.  "They're always doing this.  We call them flippers."

He went on to tell me how flippers routinely cover up certain shirts and postcards they don't like, generally the ones critical of the GOP.  There's a conjoined bookstore downstairs and the same thing happens there, only worse.  They've found stacks of books hidden away.  He said they found copies of Lance Armstrong's book squirreled away in a corner, which was confusing at first since it was about his triumph over cancer (it wasn't about the bike), but they eventually surmised it was because Lance refused to credit his near-miraculous cure to an actual miracle (he credited his doctors and healthcare team, the heretic).  

Now, we all have the right to our opinion in the U.S. of A.  And we have the right to express them publicly in the appropriate context.  But I don't think that right extends to retail establishments where books/music/etc... expressing different points of view are sold (there are definitely works from both ends of the political spectrum available).

 I asked Tom if he ever observed this phenomenon in the other direction, i.e. had they ever found a conservative book that had been hidden by a disagreeable liberal.  He hadn't.  My question is this - does this mean liberals are more tolerant of other viewpoints - or just that they're more cautious?