Free Speech – Page 7 – Maverick Philosopher

Flag Burning, Muhammad Mockery, and a Double Standard

If a coalition of what some leftists call knuckle-draggers (including rednecks, bigoted white working stiffs, those who "cling to their guns and Bibles," in the derisive words of Obama) were to slaughter flag burners, the leftists would howl in protest, pointing out (rightly) that flag burning counts as protected speech in these United States. They would not 'blame the victims' for having provoked or incited the knuckle-draggers. They would insist that flag burning is protected speech and take the reasonable view that murdering people for their (benighted) views is far, far worse than the desecration perpetrated by the protesters.

Mirabile dictu, however, lefties pull a 180 when it comes to the celebration of free speech practiced by people like Pamela Geller. Suddenly people who are exercising free speech rights are castigated for doing so, and warned about inciting violence.

What we have here is a classic double standard. One standard of evaluation is applied to flag burners, who tend to be on the Left, and a very different one is applied to Muhammad mockers, who tend to be conservatives. This double standard is particularly offensive, even more offensive that the usual lefty double standard, because flag burning and cartooning are very different.

Ought flag burning come under the rubric of protected speech? Logically prior question: Is it speech at all? What if I make some such rude gesture in your face as 'giving you the finger.' Is that speech? If it is, I would like to know what proposition it expresses. 'Fuck you!' does not express a proposition. Likewise for the corresponding gesture with the middle finger. And if some punk burns a flag, I would like to know what proposition the punk is expressing. The Founders were interested in protecting reasoned dissent, but the typical act of flag burning by the typical leftist punk does not rise to that level. To have reasoned or unreasoned dissent there has to be some proposition that one is dissenting from and some counter-proposition that one is advancing, and one's performance has to make more or less clear what those propositions are. Without going any further into this issue, let me just express my skepticism at arguments that try to subsume gestures and physical actions under speech.

Cartooning is very different. Cartoons have propositional content. The above cartoon expresses various propositions. It expresses the proposition that Muhammad is a war-like individual who is willing to put to the sword someone who merely draws his image. It also expresses the cartoonist's opinion that such a vile and backward view ought to be opposed.

If you fart, do you express a proposition? No doubt you ex-press foul gases from your gastrointestinal tract. Could it be that the stupidity of contemporary liberals derives from an incapacity to distinguish these two types of expression? Speech worth protecting is not gassing-off.

Finally, there is the irony that we conservatives are the new liberals. It is we who defend toleration and free speech, classical concerns of old-time liberals, while the 'liberals' of the present day have degenerated to the level of fascists of the Left.

What would be left of the Left were they made bereft of their double standards? There are so many of them. We need a list.

Another Double Standard

Update and Correction (5/13):

Dennis Monokroussos comments:

The Obama quote is that they “cling to guns or [not “and”] religion [not “Bibles”]”. As for the cartoon, it doesn’t express the proposition you relate in the body of the post. It, or something very close to it, is clearly the idea that the cartoonist has in mind, but that isn’t in the cartoon itself. If, however, one is allowed to draw the inference we all do from the cartoon, then it’s not obvious to me that one is also allowed to fill in the obvious connotations of one giving the middle finger or saying “F*** you!” or from the burning of the flag.

Dennis is right to correct my faulty quotation of Obama. See this short video clip. But while I did not reproduce Obama's words verbatim, I did convey their sense. After all, with 'religion' he was certainly not referring to Islam! Besides, 'cling to guns' and 'cling to Bibles' makes clear sense; it is less clear how one could 'cling' to religion. So you could say I was charitably presenting Obama's idea in better linguistic dress than he himself presented it. But Dennis is right: I should have checked the quotation.

Can a cartoon, by itself, express a proposition? No. So Dennis is technically correct. I almost made that point myself but thought it ill-advised to muddy my point with a technicality. Cartoons, in this respect, are like sentences. No sentence, even if in the indicative mood, by itself expresses a proposition. 'Peter smokes,' for example, is a declarative sentence. But it does not express a proposition unless it is assertively uttered by someone in a definite context that makes clear who the referent of 'Peter' is.

It is interesting to note that a mere tokening of the sentence type is not enough. Suppose I am teaching English. I utter the sentence 'Peter smokes' merely as an example of a declarative sentence. I have produced a token of the type, but I have not expressed a proposition.

How Liberals Ruined College

Kirsten Powers. And here is a good one (can he write a bad one?) by Peter Berkowitz: The Left's Crusade Against Free Speech.

So much incisive and intelligent writing by people of good sense. But it is not enough. What is to be done?

Stay Quiet and You’ll Be Okay

Mark Steyn:

Can Islam be made to live with the norms of free societies in which it now nests? Can Islam learn – or be forced – to suck it up the way Mormons, Catholics, Jews and everyone else do? If not, free societies will no longer be free. Pam Geller understands that, and has come up with her response. By contrast, Ed Miliband, Irwin Cotler, Francine Prose, Garry Trudeau and the trendy hipster social-media But boys who just canceled Mr Fawstin's Facebook account* are surrendering our civilization. They may be more sophisticated, more urbane, more amusing dinner-party guests …but in the end they are trading our liberties.

Right. Muslims need to learn how to 'suck it up' the way all the rest of us do on a regular basis.

Free Speech and Islamic Terror: Locating the Bone of Contention

Let me begin with two indisputable facts. The first is that here in the USA we have a legally protected and highly latitudinarian right to free speech that extends beyond speech and writing proper to include such activities as flag-burning and the drawing of cartoons. The second is that many Muslims of the present day are willing to slaughter those who exercise their free speech rights in ways that these Muslims deem offensive such as by producing cartoons that mock their prophet, Muhammad. In this respect Muslims as a group are uniquely intolerant and barbarous among the adherents of major religions at the present time. (Every attempted rebuttal of this claim I have seen is lame.)

Given these two facts, a problem arises. Should we freely limit our exercise of our free speech rights in the present circumstances so as not to set off murderous Islamist rampages that could injure public order and perhaps cause the deaths of innocents? Or should we continue the exercise of our free speech rights in defiance of the terrorist threats? Should we keep our heads down or stand tall and defiant in celebration of values that are classically American, but beyond that, classically Western?

Now the first point I want to make is that there is a genuine problem here. Nicole Gelinas of City Journal seems not to see it, and she is not alone:

. . . there should be no debate here. Geller has the right to free speech. She has the right to put on an exhibit showcasing Muhammad drawings. Likewise, we all have the right to attend it, to boycott it, to ignore it, or to march around it with protest signs.

Gelinas doesn't seem to appreciate that the question is not whether we have the legal right to free speech (in the extended sense and even if the 'speech' is deeply offensive to some); of course we have this legal right. The question is whether in some circumstances the exercise of this right by some people might be morally wrong, or if not morally wrong, then highly imprudent. Please note the italicized words. Gelinas mislocates (dislocates?) the bone of contention. (Pun intended.)

And so one cannot simply dismiss those who say that, while Geller and Co. had a legal right to hold their mock-the-prophet cartoon contest, in holding it they did something morally irresponsible given what we know about the absurd sensitivities, anti-Enlightenment attitudes, and murderous propensities of many contemporary Muslims.

The problem, then, is genuine. What is the solution? The proximate solution is defiance. Geller, Spencer, et al. are right. We must not allow ourselves to be cowed by barbarian scum. But note what I said earlier: if the Muslim response to mockery were as benign as the Christian response to the tax-payer funded outrages of so-called 'artists' like Serrano of Piss-Christ notoriety, then it would be morally wrong to mock that which the Muslims regard as holy. For in general it is morally wrong to mock, deride, belittle, abuse, and show disrespect generally for other people and their religious beliefs, practices, holy places, icons, etc. In the present circumstances, however, we must stand up and defy the Muslim scum and their leftist enablers. Not only is a serious principle at stake, but any display of weakness will lead to further outrages. Unopposed evil doers are emboldened in their evil doing. And the jihadis are indeed moral scum as David French reports:

I’ve seen jihad up-close, in an Iraqi province where jihadists raped women to shame them into becoming suicide bombers, where they put bombs in little boys’ backpacks then remotely detonated them at family gatherings, where they beheaded innocent civilians while cheering wildly like they were at a soccer match, and where they shot babies in the face to “send a message” to their parents. I’ve seen the despair in the eyes of the innocent victims of jihad, and — believe me — that despair is infinitely greater than the alleged “anguish” caused by a few cartoons.

So defiance is the proximate solution. The ultimate solution is to seal the borders against illegal immigration and limit the legal immigration of Muslims. For it makes no sense to admit into our country people with radically different values. No comity without commonality, as one of my aphorisms has it. There cannot be peace and social harmony with people who reject civilized values or who were never brought up to appreciate them. Of course, not every immigrant from a Muslim county is a benighted savage or a silent supporter of jihadis. I lived in Turkey for a year and travelled around the country. I met many fine, decent, civilized people, most of them Muslims, more or less. That is why I said we need to limit Muslim immigation. Not stop, but limit. We need to vet the people we let in. Obviously, no foreigner has any right to come here. But we do have the right to exclude unassimilable elements. On top of that we need to deport potential terrorists and execute convicted terrorists. Indeed, we need a judicial fast-track for trial and execution of terrorists. Why is Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, still alive? Is that not a deep affront to justice? What does it say about us that we have lost the will to defend our way of life, a way of life manifestly superior to that lived in vast tracts of the rest of the world, a way of life that has benefited countless millions of people here and abroad? If you are not speaking German now, you may have an American GI to thank. (May 8th was the 75th anniversary of VE, Victory in Europe, day.)

The Danger of Appeasing the Intolerant

Should we tolerate the intolerant? Should we, in the words of Leszek Kolakowski,

. . . tolerate political or religious movements which are hostile to tolerance and seek to destroy all the mechanisms which protect it, totalitarian movements which aim to impose their own despotic regime? Such movements may not be dangerous as long as they are small; then they can be tolerated. But when they expand and increase in strength, they must be tolerated, for by then they are invincible, and in the end an entire society can fall victim to the worst sort of tyranny. Thus it is that unlimited tolerance turns against itself and destroys the conditions of its own existence. (Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal, p. 39.)

Read that final sentence again, and again. And apply it to current events.

Kolakowski concludes that "movements which aim to destroy freedom should not be tolerated or granted the protection of law . . . " (Ibid.) and surely he is right about this. Toleration has limits. It does not enjoin suicide. The U. S. Constitution is not a suicide pact.

And just as we ought not tolerate intolerance, especially the murderous intolerance of radical Muslims, we ought not try to appease the intolerant. Appeasement is never the way to genuine peace. The New York Time's call for Benedict XVI to apologize for quoting the remarks of a Byzantine emperor is a particularly abject example of appeasement.

One should not miss the double standard in play. The Pope is held to a very high standard: he must not employ any words, not even in oratio obliqua, that could be perceived as offensive by any Muslim who might be hanging around a theology conference in Germany, words uttered in a talk that is only tangentially about Islam, but Muslims can say anything they want about Jews and Christians no matter how vile. The tolerant must tiptoe around the rabidly intolerant lest they give offense.

Was there ever a New York Times editorial censuring Ahmadinejad for his repeated calls for the destruction of the sovereign state of Israel?

Related: What Explains the Left's Toleration of Militant Islam? The piece begins as follows:

From 1789 on, a defining characteristic of the Left has been hostility to religion, especially in its institutionalized forms. This goes together with a commitment to such Enlightenment values as individual liberty, belief in reason, and equality, including equality among the races and between the sexes. Thus the last thing one would expect from the Left is an alignment with militant Islam given the latter’s philosophically unsophisticated religiosity bordering on rank superstition, its totalitarian moralism, and its opposition to gender equality.

So why is the radical Left soft on militant Islam? The values of the progressive creed are antithetic to those of the Islamists, and it is quite clear that if the Islamists got everything they wanted, namely, the imposition of Islamic law on the entire world, our dear progressives would soon find themselves headless. I don’t imagine that they long to live under Sharia, where ‘getting stoned’ would have more than metaphorical meaning. So what explains this bizarre alignment?

1. One point of similarity between radical leftists and Islamists is that both are totalitarians. As David Horowitz writes in Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (Regnery, 2004) , "Both movements are totalitarian in their desire to extend the revolutionary law into the sphere of private life, and both are exacting in the justice they administer and the loyalty they demand." (p. 124)

Read it all!

Free Speech: Is It Always Right to Say What One has a Right to Say?

It is not always right to say what one has a right to say.

Thus one of my aphorisms. It is worth unpacking, however, especially in the light of the incident at Garland, Texas.

First of all, the following is not a logical contradiction: You have a right to say X but you ought not say X. For you may have a legal right, but no moral right, or what you have a legal right to say may be highly imprudent to say. In fact, it may be so imprudent that moral and not merely prudential considerations become relevant.

So while Pamela Geller & Co. undoubtedly had the legal right to express themselves by hosting a cartoon fest in mockery of Muhammad, it is at least a legitimate question, one whose answer is not obvious, whether their doing so was morally acceptable.

On the one side are those who say that it was not morally acceptable given the high likelihood that violence would erupt. Indeed, that is what happened. Luckily, however, the Muslim savages¹ were shot dead, and only one non-savage was wounded. But it might have been worse, much worse. Innocent passersby might have been caught in the cross-fire; the shooter who dispatched the Islamist fanatics might not have been such a good shot and a long melee may have ensued; the Islamists might have shown up with heavier armament and killed all the cartoonists; they might have laid waste to the entire neighborhood, etc. We know from bitter world-wide experience what the barbarians of Islam are capable of. Do you recall, for example, the Taliban's destruction of the ancient Buddhist statuary?

On the other side are those who insist that we must not engage in what they call 'self-censorship.' We must not limit or curtail the free exercise of our liberties in the face of savages who behead people because of a difference in political and theological views.

So what is the correct view?

Suppose that Muslim reaction to the mockery and defamation of their prophet was just as nonviolent as Christian reaction to the mockery and defamation of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. Then I would condemn as immoral the mockery and defamation of Muhammad. I would invoke my aphorism above. There are things that one is legally entitled to say and do that one must not, morally speaking, say or do.

Example. There is no law against private drunkenness, nor should there be; but it is immoral to get drunk to the point of damaging the body. The same goes for gluttonous eating. Closer in, we cannot and ought not have laws regulating all the inter-personal exchanges in which people are likely to mock, insult, and generally show a lack of respect for one another. And yet it is in general surely wrong to treat people with a lack of respect even if the lack of respect remains on the verbal plane. If you don't accept these examples, provide your own. If you say that there are no examples, then you are morally and probably also intellectually obtuse and not in a position to profit from a discussion like this.

So if the Muslim and Christian reactions to mockery and defamation were both physically nonviolent, then, invoking my aphorism above, I would condemn the activities of Geller and Co. at Garland, Texas, and relevantly similar activities. But of course the reactions are not the same! Muslims are absurdly sensitive about their prophet and react in unspeakably barbaric ways to slights, real and imagined. Every Muslim? Of course not. (Don't be stupid.)

So I say we ought to defend Pamela Geller and her group.

My reason, again, is not that that I consider it morally acceptable to mock religious figures. After all, I condemned the Charlie Hebdo outfit and took serious issue with the misguided folk who marched around with Je Suis Charlie signs. Perpetually adolescent porno-punks should not be celebrated, but denounced. That the Islamo-head-chopper-offers are morally much worse than the porno-punks who make an idol of the free expression of their morally and intellectually vacuous narcissistic selves does not justify the celebration of the latter.

The reason to defend Geller is because, in the present circumstances in which militant Muslims and their leftist enablers attack the the values of the West — which are not just Western values, but universal values – including such values as free expression and toleration, the deadly threat from the Islamist barbarians justifies our taking extreme measure in defense of values whose implementation will prove beneficial for everyone, including Muslims and their benighted leftist fellow-travellers.

_________________

1. If you understand the English language, then you understand that 'Muslim savages' does not imply that all Muslims are savages any more than 'rude New Yorker' implies that all New Yorkers are rude.

Tongue and Pen

Christ has harsh words for those who misuse the power of speech at Matthew 12:36: "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." But what about every idle word that bloggers blog and scribblers scribble? Must not the discipline of the tongue extend to the pen?

Suppose we back up a step. What is wrong with idle talk and idle writing? The most metaphysical of the gospels begins magnificently: "In the beginning was the Word and Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1) The Word (Logos, Verbum) is divine, and if we are made in the divine image and likeness, then the logical power, the verbal power, the power to think, judge, speak, and write is a god-like power in us. If so, then it ought not be abused. But in idle talk it is abused. Here then is a reason why idle talk is wrong.

But if idle talk is wrong, then so is all idle expression. And if all idle expression is wrong, then it is difficult to see how idle thoughts could be morally neutral. For thought is the root and source of expression. If we take Christ's words in their spirit rather than in their mere letter, moral accountability extends from speech to all forms of expression, and beyond that to the unexpressed but expressible preconditions of expression, namely, thoughts. Is it not a necessary truth that any communicative expressing is the expressing of a thought? (Think about that, and ask yourself: does a voice synthesizer speak to you?)

So a first reason to avoid idle thoughts and their expression is that entertaining the thoughts and expressing them debases the god-like power of the Logos in us. A second reason is that idle words may lead on to what is worse than idle words, to words that cause dissension and discord and violence. What starts out persiflage may end up billingsgate. (This is another reason why there cannot be an absolute right to free speech: one cannot have a right to speech that can be expected to issue in physical violence and death. Consider how this must be qualified to accommodate a just judge's sentencing a man to death.)

There is a third reason to avoid idle expression and the idle thoughts at their base. Idle words and thoughts impede entrance into silence. But this is not because they are idle, but because they are words and thoughts. By 'silence' I mean the interior silence, the inner quiet of the mind which is not the mere absence of sound, but the presence of that which, deeper than the discursive intellect, makes possibly both thought and discourse. But I won't say more about this now. See Meditation category.

What go me thinking about this topic is the 'paradox' of Thomas Merton whose works I have been re-reading. He wrote a very good book, The Silent Life, a book I recommend, though I cannot recommend his work in general. The Mertonian 'paradox' is this: how can one praise the life of deep interior solitude and silence while writing 70 books, numerous articles and reviews, seven volumes of journals, and giving all sorts of talks, presentations, workshops, and whatnot? And all that travel! It is a sad irony that he died far from his Kentucky abbey, Gethsemane, in Bangkok, Thailand at the young age of 53 while attending yet another conference. (Those of a monkish disposition are able to, and ought to, admit that many if not most conferences are useless, or else suboptimal uses of one's time, apart from such practical activities as securing a teaching position, or making other contacts necessary for getting on in the world.)

There is a related but different sort of paradox in Pascal. He told us that philosophy is not worth an hour's trouble. But then he bequeathed to us that big fat wonderful book of Pensées, Thoughts, as if to say: philosophy is not worth an hour's trouble — except mine. Why did he not spend his time better — by his own understanding of what 'better' involves — praying, meditating, and engaging in related religious activities?

And then there is that Danish Writing Machine Kierkegaard who in his short life (1813-1855) produced a staggeringly prodigious output of books and journal entries. When did he have time to practice his religion as opposed to writing about it?

I of course ask myself similar questions. One answer is that writing itself can be a spiritual practice. But I fear I have posted too much idle rubbish over the years. I shall try to do better in future.

In Many Cases A Dubious Presupposition

Those who place a high value on self-expression presuppose that their selves are worth expressing.

What Does It Mean to Say that Nothing is Sacred?

Yesterday I quoted Christopher Hitchens as saying that nothing is sacred. I now ask what it means to say that nothing is sacred. I think it means something like the following. Nothing, nothing at all, is holy, venerable, worthy of worship; nothing is an appropriate object of reverence. (One cannot appropriately revere one's spouse, 'worship the ground she walks on,' etc.) If nothing is sacred, then nothing is so far above us in reality and value as to require our submission and obedience as the only adequate responses to it.

If nothing is sacred, then man is the measure of all things; he is not measured by a standard external to him. Man is autonomous: he gives the law to himself. Human autonomy is absolute, the absolute. There is nothing beyond the human horizon except matter brute and blind. There is nothing that transcends the human scale. If so, then it makes sense for Hitchens to maintain that the right to free expression is absolute, subject to no restrictions or limitations: "the only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification is the right of free expression."

The right to mock and deride religious figures such as Muhammad follows. For if nothing is sacred, then there is no God, no Allah, and hence no prophets of God. And of course no Son of God. If nothing is sacred and there is no God, then there is no revelation of God in any form, not in nature, not in a human person such as Jesus of Nazareth, and not in any scripture. If there is no God, then the Koran and the Bible are not the word of God; they are books like any other books, wholly human artifacts, and subject to criticism like any other books. And the same goes for physical objects and places. There are no holy relics and holy sites. Mecca and Jerusalem are not holy because, again, nothing is sacred. If there is nothing that is originally sacred, then there is nothing that is derivatively sacred either.

One obvious problem with Hitchens' position is that it is by no means obvious that there is nothing sacred. I should think that something is originally sacred if and only if God or a suitably similar transcendent Absolute exists. No God, then nothing originally sacred. Atheism rules out the sacred. And if nothing is originally sacred, then nothing is derivatively sacred either. If there is no God, then there are no prophets or saints or holy relics or holy places or holy books. And of course no church of God either: no institution can claim to have a divine charter.

I reject the position of Hitchens. I reject it because I reject his naturalism and atheism. They are reasonably rejected . But I also reject the position of those — call them fundamentalists — who think that there are people and books and institutions to which we must unconditionally submit. Here is where things get interesting.

I do not deny the possibility of divine revelation or that the book we call the Bible contains divine revelation; but I insist that it is in large part a human artifact. As such, it is open to rational criticism. While man cannot and must not place himself above God, he can and must evaluate what passes for the revelation of God — for the latter is in part a human product.

God reveals himself, but he reveals himself to man. If the transmitter is perfect, but the receiver imperfect, then one can expect noise with the signal. Rational critique aims to separate the signal from the noise. To criticize is to separate: the true from the false, the reasonable from the unreasonable, the genuine from the specious.

I insist that religion must submit to rational critique. Religion is our affair, not God's. God has no religion. He doesn't need one. He needs religion as little as he needs philosophy: he is the truth in its paradigm instance; he has no need to seek it. Since religion is our affair, our response to the Transcendent, it is a human product in part and as such limited and defective and a legitimate object of philosophical examination and critique.

It is reasonable to maintain, though it cannot be proven, that there is a transcendent Absolute and that therefore there is something sacred. But this is not to say that what people take to be embodiments of the sacred are sacred. Is Muhammad a divine messenger? That is a legitimate question and the right to pose it and answer it negatively must be upheld. To answer it negatively, however, is consistent with holding that something is sacred. Is Jesus God? That is a legitimate question and the right to pose it and answer it negatively must be upheld. To answer it negatively, however, is consistent with holding that something is sacred.

My position is a balanced one. I reject the New Atheist extremism of Hitchens & Co. These people are contemptible in a way in which many old atheists were not: their lack of respect for religion, their militant hostility to any and every form of religion, shows a lack of respect for the unquenchable human desire for Transcendence. Religion is one form of our quest for the Absolute. This quest is part of what makes a human. This quest, which will surely outlast the New Atheists and their cyberpunk acolytes, must not be denigrated just because many of the concrete manifestations of the religious impulse are fanatical, absurd, and harmful.

One ought not mock religion, and not just for the prudential reason that one doesnot want to become the target of murderous Muslim fanatics. One ought not mock religion because religion testifies to man's dignity as a metaphysical animal, as Schopenhauer so well understood. Even Islam, the sorriest and poorest of the great religions, so testifies.

But while I reject the extremism of Hitchens and Co., an extremism that makes an idol of free expression, I agree that what passes for religion, the concrete embodiments of same, must submit to being hauled before the bench of Reason, there to be interrogated, often rudely. Reason, in its turn, must be open to what lies beyond it. It must be open to revelation.

Is Nothing Sacred?

Near the end of Assassins of the Mind, Christopher Hitchens states that nothing is sacred:

In the hot days immediately after the fatwa, with Salman [Rushdie] himself on the run and the TV screens filled with images of burning books and writhing mustaches, I was stopped by a female Muslim interviewer and her camera crew and asked an ancient question: “Is nothing sacred?” I can’t remember quite what I answered then, but I know what I would say now. “No, nothing is sacred. And even if there were to be something called sacred, we mere primates wouldn’t be able to decide which book or which idol or which city was the truly holy one. Thus, the only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification is the right of free expression, because if that goes, then so do all other claims of right as well.”

Hitchens makes four claims in this passage. The first is that nothing is sacred. This ontological claim is followed by an epistemological one: if there were some sacred object, we would not be able to identify it as such. The third claim, signaled by 'thus,' appears to be an inference from the first two: free expression is the only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification. (If it is an inference it is a non sequitur.) The fourth claim is that all rights depend on the absolute right of free speech.

One obvious problem with Hitchens' view is that it borders on self-refutation. If nothing is sacred, then nothing should be upheld at all costs and without qualification. Nothing is worthy of unconditional respect. And that of course includes the right to free expression. For Hitchens, however, free expression is an absolute value, one subject to no restriction or limitation. It is thus a secular substitute for a religious object. A more consistent secularism ought to eschew all absolutes, not just the religious ones. If nothing is venerable or worthy of reverence, then surely free expression isn't either. If nothing is sacred, then surely human beings and their autonomy are not sacred either.

In any case, is it not preposterous to maintain that there is an absolute right to free expression? No one has the right to spout obvious falsehoods that could be expected to incite violence. Truth is a high value and so is social order. These competing values show that free expression cannot be an absolute value.

Hitchens claims that we cannot know which religious objects are truly sacred. He may well be right about that. But then how does he know that free expression among all other values has absolute status and trumping power?

Finally, since there cannot be an absolute right to free expression, all other rights cannot depend on this supposedly absolute right. But even if there were this absolute right, how would the right to life, say, depend on it?

I think it would be better for Hitchens and Co. to make a clean sweep: if there are no transcendent absolutes such as God, then there are no immanent ones either. Free expression is just another value among values, in competition with some of these other values and limited by them.

Observations on Free Speech

1. One's right to express an opinion brings with it an obligation to form correct opinions, or at least the obligation to make a sincere effort in that direction. The right to free speech brings with it an obligation to exercise the right responsibly.¹

2. Free speech is rightly valued, not as a means to making the world safe for pornography, but as a means to open inquiry and the pursuit of truth.

3. Although free speech and free expression generally are correctly valued mainly as means to open inquiry and the pursuit, acquisition, and dissemination of truth, it does not follow that some free expression is not a value in itself.

4. The more the populace is addicted to pornography, the less the need for the government to censor political speech. A tyrant is therefore well advised to keep the people well supplied with bread, circuses, and that 'freedom of expression' that allows them to sink, and remain, in the basest depths of the merely private where they will pose no threat to the powers that be.

5. One who defends the right to free speech by identifying with adolescent porno-punks and nihilists of the Charlie Hebdo ilk only succeeds in advertising the fact that he doesn't understand why this right is accorded the status of a right.

6. The free speech clause of the First Amendment to the United States constitution protects the citizen's right to free expression from infringement by the government, not from infringement by any old entity. My home is my castle; you have no First Amendment rights here, or at my cybercastle, my weblog. So it is no violation of your First Amendment rights if I order you off of my property because of your offensive speech or block you from leaving stupid or vile comments at my website. It is impossible in principle for me to violate your First Amendment rights: I am not the government or an agent thereof. And the same holds at your (private) place of work: you have no First Amendment rights there.

7. The First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and of the press — call them collectively the First Amendment right to free expression — is not the same as the right to free expression. If the latter is a natural right, as I claim that it is, then one has it whether or not there is any First Amendment. The First Amendment is a codicil to a document crafted by human beings. It has a conventional nature. The right to free speech, however, is natural. Therefore, the First Amendment right to free expression is not the same as the right to free expression. Second, the right to free expression, if a natural right, is had by persons everywhere. The FA, however, protects citizens of the U.S. against the U. S. government. Third, the First Amendment in its third clause affords legal protection to the natural moral right to free expression. A right by law is not a natural right. Ergo, etc.

8. The right of free expression is a natural right. Can I prove it? No. Can you prove the negation? No. But we are better off assuming it than not assuming it.

9. To say that the right to free expression is a natural right is not to say that it is absolute. For the exercise of this right is subject to various reasonable and perhaps even morally obligatory restrictions, both in public and in private. There are limits on the exercise of the right in both spheres, but one has the right in both spheres. To have an (exercisable) right is one thing, to exercise it another, and from the fact that one has the right it does not follow that one has the right to its exercise in every actual and possible circumstance. If you say something I deem offensive in my house, on my blog, or while in my employ, then I can justifiably throw you out, or shut you up, or fire you and you cannot justify your bad behavior by invocation of the natural right to free speech. And similarly in public: the government is justified in preventing you from from shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater, to use the hackneyed example. You are not thereby deprived of the right; you are deprived of the right to exercise the right in certain circumstances.

10. The restraint and thoughtfulness exhibited in a responsible exercise of one's right to free speech is not well described as 'self-censorship' given the pejorative connotations of 'censorship.'

11. To suppose that government censorship can never be justified is as extreme as the view that the right to free speech is absolute.

12. It is silly to say, as many do, that speech is 'only speech.' Lying speech that incites violence is not 'just' speech' or 'only words.'

_______________

¹If one cannot be obliged to do that which one is unable to do, then there cannot be a general obligation to form correct opinions.

On the Use and Mention of Cartoons and Other Images

I had a new thought this morning, new for me anyway. It occurred to me that the familiar use-mention distinction can and should be applied to images, including cartoons. I recently posted a pornographic Charlie Hebdo cartoon that mocks in the most vile manner imaginable the Christian Trinity. A reader suggested that I merely link to it. But I wanted people to see how vile these nihilistic Charlie Hebdo porno-punks are and why it is a mistake to stand up for free speech by lying down with them, and with other perpetual adolescents of their ilk. Those who march under the banner Je Suis Charlie (I am Charlie) are not so much defending free speech as advertising their sad lack of understanding as to why it is accorded the status of a right.

So it occurred to me that the use-mention distinction familiar to philosophers could be applied to a situation like this. To illustrate the distinction, consider the sentences

'Nigger' is disyllabic.
The use of 'nigger,' like the use of 'kike' is highly offensive.
Niggers and kikes are often at one another's throats.

In the first two sentences, 'nigger' and 'kike' are mentioned, not used; in the third sentence, 'nigger' and 'kike' are used, not mentioned.

Please note that nowhere in this post do I use 'nigger' or 'kike.'

I chose these examples to explain the use-mention distinction in order to maintain the parallel between offensive words and offensive pictures.

Suppose someone asserts the first two sentences but not the third. No reasonable person could take offense at what the person says. For what he would be saying is true. But someone who asserts the third sentence could be reasonably taken to have said something offensive.

Jerry Coyne concludes a know-nothing response to a review by Alvin Plantinga of a book by Philip Kitcher with this graphic:

Coyne added a caption: AL-vinnn! Those of a certain age will understand the caption from the old Christmas song by the fictitious group, Alvin and the Chipmunks, from 1958. ( A real period piece complete with a reference to a hula hoop.)

Here's my point. Coyne uses the image to the left to mock Plantinga whereas I merely display it, or if you will, mention it (in an extended sense of 'mention') in order to say something about the image itself, namely, that it is used by the benighted Coyne to mock Plantinga and his views.

No one could reasonably take offense at my reproduction of the image in the context of the serious points I am making.

Likewise, no one could reasonably take offense at my reproduction of the following graphic which I display here, not to mock the man Muslims consider to be a messenger of the god they call Allah, but simply to display the sort of image they find offensive, and that I too find offensive, inasmuch as it mocks religion, a thing not to be mocked, even if the religion in question is what Schopenhauer calls "the saddest and poorest form of theism."

By the way, journalists should know better than to refer to Muhammad as 'The Prophet.' Or do they also refer to Jesus as 'The Savior' or 'Our Lord' or 'Son of God'?

Ready now? This is what CNN wouldn't show you. Hardly one of the more offensive of the cartoons. They wouldn't show it lest Muslims take offense.

My point, again, is that merely showing what some benighted people take offense at is not to engage in mockery or derision or any other objectively offensive behavior.

Discussion of a Putative Counterexample to My Terrorism Definition

From a reader (the same one as yesterday):

I think the two distinctions you make are the right ones to make. I doubt that the four necessary conditions in your definition of 'terrorism' are jointly sufficient, but I'm not too concerned about that. [And I didn't claim that they are jointly sufficient, only that they are individually necessary.] I was hoping for a good practical definition and this is as good as I've seen (and better than the ones I offered). If the State Department were to adopt this definition, they would have a good, functional definition that got nearly every case right. It's too bad that you and I both know the State Department as currently staffed and run would never do anything so sane!

BV: Here is the State Department definition:

Title 22, Chapter 38 of the United States Code (regarding the Department of State) contains a definition of terrorism in its requirement that annual country reports on terrorism be submitted by the Secretary of State to Congress every year. It reads:

"[T]he term 'terrorism' means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents".^[53]

That is fairly close to what I said, though I wasn't aware of this definition until just now. I didn't mention premeditation, but that pretty much goes without saying. There are plenty of spur-of-the-moment crimes of passion, but how many spur-of-the-moment terrorist acts of passion are there? But three of my points are covered.

Here's my attempt at a counterexample. Suppose we are in Nazi Germany and suppose further that the Nazi state was not a legitimate one. Thus, in Germany during Nazi rule, there was no legitimate state. I am part of a German underground agency working to overthrow Hitler's regime because I and my agency recognize the Nazis as illegitimate and murderous. My agency is clearly not a state, so I think it meets condition three. My agency and I have a political goal: the overthrowing of the Nazi regime and the establishment of a legitimate government. So, condition one is met.

The other two conditions might be a little harder to meet. Suppose I know that Hitler is to give a speech at a rally, flanked by many high ranking Nazis. My agency has found a way to get myself and a few others into the crowd, but we know the Nazis thoroughly check a crowd for guns. Luckily, agent X is an ace explosive maker, and can make explosives out of things that not even the Nazis would suspect. Agent X equips us all with highly explosive cigarette lighters. We want to kill as many of the Nazi brass as we can and this may be the best shot we have. Given the circumstances, we do not have the option of discriminating between the "combatant" Nazis and the civilians who may have just come out of curiosity. We decide it is better to risk killing a civilians who are too close than not take the opportunity. Thus, we seem to meet condition two.

The question is whether this counts as an act of sabotage against the Nazis. It certainly involves the killing or maiming of other human beings. And, you might think that sabotage involves acts against legitimate entities, and the Nazis are not legitimate. It seems to me to be more than mere sabotage. But I think someone could reasonably disagree with me about that. If I'm right, then it appears that I'm a terrorist unless we come up with more conditions.

BV: Let us suppose that you count as a terrorist by my definition. Would that be a problem? My definition says nothing about whether terrorism is good or bad, morally permissible or impermissible. It merely states what it is. The original question was whether it is true that most terrorists, at the present time, are Muslims. To answer that question we need a definition of 'terrorist.' On the basis of my definition I would say that, yes, most terrorists today are Muslims. My concern was merely to define the phenomenon. I leave open whether some terrorist acts are morally permissible.

Of course, I consider Muslim terrorism unspeakably evil, from the beheading of Christians, including Christian children, to the attack on Charlie Hebdo, even though I consider the Hebdo crew to be moral scum who misuse, egregiously, the right to free speech, thereby confusing liberty with license. This is why it is is so wrong and indeed moronic for people to stand up for free speech by saying Je suis Charlie. Do they really mean to identify with those people? The way to stand up for free speech is by courageously but responsibly exercising one's right to free speech by speaking the truth, not by behaving in the manner of the adolescent punk who makes an idol of his own vacuous subjectivity and thinks he is entitled to inflict on the world every manifestation of his punkish vacuity.

If someone brings up all the violent drug cartel members in Mexico and Central and South America who 'terrorize' people, assassinate judges, bribe politicians and law enforcement agents, and so on, the answer is that they don't satisfy my first condition inasmuch as they are members of organized crime, not terrorists: they are not in pursuit of a political objective. It is not as if they aim to set up something like a narco-caliphate. They do not, like Muslim terrorists, seek to assume the burdens of governance in an attempt to bring about what they would consider to be a well-regulated social and political order in which human beings will flourish by their definition of flourishing. They attack existing states, but only because those states impede their criminal activities. See Mexican Drug Cartels are not Terrorists.

As for sabotage, I was suggesting that sabotage is not terrorism because terrorist acts are directed against persons primarily, while acts of sabotage are not directed against persons except indirectly. If Ed Abbey urinates into the gas tank of a Caterpillar tractor and manages to disable it, that will affect people but only indirectly. (But what about tree-spiking?) So I would not call you and your cohorts saboteurs.

You are not a terrorist by my definition because you are not indiscriminate in your attack on people: you are not trying to kill noncombatants. What you are doing comes under collateral damage.

The question of Double Effect comes up here as well. See my Israel, Hamas and the Doctrine of Double Effect.

“I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Misattributed to Voltaire, the above saying yet captures his attitude. The parroting of the saying in the wake of the terrorist attack by Muslim fanatics on Charlie Hebdo is becoming tiresome. It is high time we take a squinty-eyed look at it. I will be arguing that it does not bear up well under examination.

Suppose you are talking with someone who publically asserts with a straight face, "No Jews were killed at Auschwitz by the Nazis." Will you defend your interlocutor's right to say it? And will you defend it to the death? I hope not. The right to free speech cannot reasonably be taken to include the right to state what is false, known to be false, and such that its broadcasting or public expression could be expected to cause social harm. (The characteristic claim of the Flat Earthers is false and known to be false, but not such that its broadcasting or public expression could be expected to cause social harm, and this for a couple of reasons: whether or not the earth is flat is not a 'hot button' issue; the vast majority consider Flat Earthers to be utter loons.)

Generalizing, will you defend to the death anyone's right to say, seriously and publically, whatever he wants to say? If you answer in the affirmative, then I will label you a free speech extremist, that is, one who holds that the right to free (public) speech is absolute. But what is it for a right to be absolute? And could the right to free speech be an absolute right?

There is a distinction between moral and legal rights. I will consider only whether there is an absolute moral right to free speech. Some rights are exercisable, other are not. The right to free speech is exercisable whereas the rights not to be killed and not to be spied upon are non-exercisable. Some rights are general, others are specific. The right to free speech is general: if any person has it, then every person has it.

To say that an exercisable right is absolute is to say that its exercise is not subject to any restriction or limitation or exception. This implies that an absolute right cannot be infringed under any circumstances. And if an absolute right is general, then it cannot be restricted to some persons only. So if the right to free speech is absolute, then everyone always in every circumstance has a right to free speech.

I believe I have clarified sufficiently — for the purposes of a weblog entry — the sense of ' The right of free speech is absolute.'

My thesis is that the right of free speech is not absolute. It is no more absolute than the other rights mentioned in (but not thereby granted to us in or by) the First and Second and other Amendments to the U. S. Constitution.

Consider gun rights. Is the right to keep and bear arms reasonably regarded as absolute, i.e., subject to no limitations or restrictions? No. I would put you down as a fool if you said otherwise. Felons are not allowed to own guns, and for good reason. Ditto for children and the mentally incomeptent. The right to keep and bear arms does not extend to nuclear arms or biological weapons. The firing of guns is subject to various restrictions, etc. In this case it should be perfectly obvious that the right to keep and bear arms cannot be an absolute right.

Is the right to own real property absolute? If it were, no use of eminent domain would ever be justified, when surely some uses are. Eminent domain laws are sometimes abused to benefit special interest. We cnservatives protest that absue. But the abuse of eminent domain is no argument against its judicious and limited use for purposes that truly serve the common good. Suppose there is a dangerous mountain road on which hundreds of people have lost their lives. The state engineers propose a bypass, but building it would involve the coercive taking, albeit with monetary compensation, of a little land from a fat cat who owns a parcel the size of Rhode Island, the coercive taking of a strip of land occupied only by a few prarie dogs. A rational and morally decent person would say that here the right to property must be limited for the common good. (And let's assume that the good really is common: the owner of the land himself must travel the dangerous mountain road.)

Third example. Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. That is a near-quotation from the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. But what if the free exercise of some religion includes not having one's children immunized for measles or other highly infectious diseases? Would a reasonable person maintain that under no conceivable circmustances would the government ever be justified in forcing a parent to have a child immunized in contravention of a religious precept? I don't think so. There are some truly loony 'religions' out there.

I could go on, and you hope I won't. In the three cases just mentioned it ought to be clear that the rights in question cannot be absolute. Now is there something about the right to free speech that makes it different from the ones mentioned above in a way that justifies saying that free speech is an absolute right when the others are not? Not that I can see.

I have heard it said that speech is just speech; it not like discharging a firearm in a residential area or seizing a man's property or forcing parents to immunize a child. But this is a lame response because speech is not 'just speech.' Not only does public speaking and publishing involve all sorts of actions, it can and does reliably lead to actions both good and evil. People are susceptible of exhortation. One can fire up a lynch mob with well-chosen words. I don't need to belabor this: it is obvious. Speech is not 'just speech.'

The right to free speech meets a limit in the moral obligation to not inflame murderous passions. There is no absolute moral right to free speech. Whether certain forms of speech should be legally prohibited is of course a further question.