Category: Free Speech
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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?
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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In Many Cases A Dubious Presupposition
Those who place a high value on self-expression presuppose that their selves are worth expressing.
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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“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.…
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Freedom of Speech and Freedom After Speech
What is the difference between the USSR and the USA? In the former there is freedom of speech; in the latter, freedom after speech. An old joke, but new to me. I just now heard Dennis Prager tell it. He also mentioned Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. How long would Muslim equivalents of them have…
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Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill
In the wake of the murderous rampage by Muslim terrorists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris on 7 January, many have embraced a form of extremism according to which any and all (public) expression must be tolerated. This entry questions this extremism as we find it in John Stuart Mill. Here are two passages from Chapter…