Category Archives: culture

Defending Freedom of Speech, Al Jazeera Style

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A leaked email from Al Jazeera English Editor and Executive Producer Salah-Aldeen Khadr, obtained by Fox News, had this remark, among others, in it:

Was this really an attack on “free speech?” Who is attacking free speech here exactly?

Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile.

Khadr also suggested that the slogan “I am Charlie” is

an alienating slogan—with us or against us type of statement—one can be anti-CH’s racism and ALSO against murdering people.

It may well be that being “obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile;” however, the rub is in whose definition of obnoxious, whose definition of offensive, whose definition of appropriate response to offensiveness or to obnoxiousness is to be applied. When governments make those definitions, all we have is tyranny and the arbitrary rule of a northern Korea, or a Soviet Union, or an East Germany. Or an Iran, or a Hussein Iraq. Or an al Qaeda or an ISIS.

When individuals are free to determine the appropriate sanction to be mayhem, all we have is a Hobbesian existence where the strong determine, arbitrarily, what is “right,” and the weak must obey or die.

Murdering someone—or even “merely” assaulting someone—just because the murderer or the assaulter was offended or thinks the victim’s behavior infantile is always and everywhere brutally wrong, and the deed wants the severest of responses and sanctions.

All apologists like al Jazeera do is give these murderous despotisms and barbarians cover.

If we’re to have free speech, we must be free to be obnoxious and offensive, too, else we have no freedom of speech: someone always will define a remark as out of bounds, and ultimately all speech not preapproved by the strongest becomes forbidden.

And we will have free speech—it’s a necessary part of that Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness that are an indivisible part of the fabric of every man’s very existence—Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, etc, alike. Nor al Jazeeras, nor barbarians, nor Muslim terrorists, nor anyone else can deny us that, even though they may murder our bodies. Full stop.

It’s also true that one can stand against racism and against murdering people at the same time. But this is Khadr’s cynical strawman. There’s no racism involved here. There’s no oppression of any group of people here. Khadr will have to play with that dolly without me.

Punishment of Terrorists

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There is a strong view that terrorists should be executed for their acts. In the main, I don’t disagree. Capital crimes desperately want capital punishment: prompt execution.

However.

Many of these terrorists are doing their deeds in order to become martyrs and to live in Allah’s heaven. For these, execution is a reward, not a punishment; for such as these, execution is a goal devoutly to be wished, not a deterrent.

Instead, I suggest, expensive as it would be, that wherever possible, those terrorists who are acting for martyrdom should be taken alive and allowed to die of old age in a prison cell. Here is punishment for the terrorist, and here is the possibility of deterrence: the price of failure being to live a long life in a cage, to be denied death except through the senility of old age.

Free Speech and Imagery

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French film industry body ARP, made up of writers, directors and producers in France, reacted to the tragedy by praising the publication’s “historical courage” and declaring that threats will not “interfere with freedom of expression and freedom of creation.”

How many images of Mohammed are you printing today, guys?  AP?  New York Times?  Anyone?  At least the National Journal has the courage.  Such things are going up on social media; why are you guys not participating? What is it you fear so badly? Your responsibility? Or your loss of comfort?

Here are a couple, courtesy of Charlie Hebdo. Because, as Charlie says

Parce que le crayon sera toujours au dessus de la barbarie…

Parce que la liberté est un droit universel…

Or,

Because the pen is always above barbarism…

Because freedom is a universal right…

And because they now call themselves “le journal des survivants,” or “the newspaper of survivors.”Mohammed_1Mohammed_2

The Lexicon of the Left

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Daniel Hannan has one. Below are some definitions (with an occasional edit to bring it to the American Left).

RIGHT-WING: Baddie. Vladimir Putin, a lifelong KGB man who regrets the break-up of the USSR, is invading neighboring countries. This is a bad thing, so he must be “right-wing.” The mullahs in Iran abolished the monarchy, nationalized industry, and drove most of the middle classes into exile. But they’re also nasty, so they, too, must be “right-wing.” A crazed gunman goes into a school and…. [O]h, you get the picture. [Ed: Republicans oppose the Left; this is a Bad Thing, and so “right-wing.” Conservatives want to shrink government. This is a Very Bad Thing, and so “far right-wing.”]

DIVERSITY: People who look different but think the same way. Diversity applies to race, sex, disability, and sexual orientation. It emphatically does not apply to opinion. Indeed, when it comes to political views, it has taken on more or less the opposite of its Oldspeak meaning. [Ed: It’s good to have diversity from the presence of blacks and women. But when these worthies are Republicans or Conservatives, it’s a Doubly Very Bad Thing. These folks aren’t “right-wing;” they’re traitors to their race and/or gender.]

GREED: Wanting to keep your own money.

NEED: Wanting to be given someone else’s.

COMPASSION: A politician arranging the transfer.

DISCRIMINATION: Being unpleasant to women or black people. Literally, of course, discrimination simply means discernment. It is something we practice every time we decide between alternatives. But its political undertones have spilled over into every usage of the word, so that discrimination, in any context, becomes discreditable. A firm that discriminates in favor of properly qualified applicants, or a university that insists on good exam results, cannot wholly escape the sense that it is doing something shameful. [Ed: Hurting the feelings of a fellow student or of one’s professor.]

POVERTY: Inequality. Poverty is officially defined in the UK as having an income less than 60% of the mean. A few people get rich and, even if you’re better off in absolute terms, you’re suddenly “poor.” Funnily enough, the recent recession, which saw incomes drop at every level, caused a fall in “poverty” by this definition, but Lefties were more upset than ever. There really is no pleasing some people. [Ed: See the Federal Poverty Guideline. American poverty, far from being an intellectual characteristic of our Left, starts (depending on the favored program) anywhere from 100% to 200% above the Guideline.]

PREJUDICE: Hating other people. In its literal sense, prejudice simply means pre-judging a new situation on the basis of past experience. If you see an expensively dressed man, your prejudice tells you that he is likely to be well off. If a politician rings your doorbell, your prejudice tells you that he is probably after your vote. As Edmund Burke argued in his Reflections, life would become intolerable if we had to think everything through from first principles. But the anathematization of the word also touches its original meaning. If your common sense tells you that longer sentences would cut crime, or that there is a limit to how much immigration a country can absorb, it’s because you are prejudiced. [Ed: Prejudice—hating other people—is a contextual thing, though. It’s OK to hate Republicans.]

TAX CUTS: Squalid public services. For some reason, talk of tax cuts makes us think not of our tax returns but of our local amenities. It’s not so much that we believe that there is a direct link between spending and performance; it’s just that the phrase “tax cuts” automatically conjures up a series of images in our minds: leaky school roofs, bodies lying on trolleys in corridors, and pin-striped Tory spivs selling off school playing fields to their friends in the City…. [Ed: because it’s the Left’s absolute right to spend our money for us; we’re just too stupid to be trusted with that. So we’re taxed.]

FREE SPEECH: Support for racists. We have been told so often that “free speech can never be used as an excuse for racism” that the two things have become conflated in our minds. Arguing for the first automatically opens you to the accusation of supporting the second. If you think that I exaggerate, cast your mind back to the case of the pensioner in Liverpool who was charged with “racially aggravated criminal damage” after scrawling “Free speech for England” on a condemned wall. [Ed: This, too, is contextual. What the Left says is free speech; what Republicans or Conservatives say is Hate Speech.]

CONSERVATIVE: Neanderthal. Like “right-wing” (q.v.), but with the added bonus that it can be applied to both sides in the same conflict. Islamist “conservatives” want to impose headscarves while Western “conservatives” want to ban them. Hardline Israeli settlers and hardline Hamas terrorists are both “conservatives.” And so on. [Ed: Also: not Left.]