Author: Ophelia Benson

So didja watch the debate? I’m not a huge fan of ‘debates’ (they’re not real debates, of course), but I watched some of Biden-Palin (enough to see that she was doing much better than I’d expected or wanted) and I watched most of last night’s. I thought McCain was godawful. Awkward, stumbling, unconvincing, unimpressive – and nasty with it. ‘That one’ – it’s all over the place now, but why shouldn’t it be? His hostility and contempt are creepy. Of course, this is the guy who called his (second) wife a cunt in front of a reporter.

Anyway – this ‘Not Presidential’ thing really makes me sick. What is that supposed to mean? Too smart? Too poised? Too calm? Too knowledgeable? Too good at thinking on his feet? Too skilled at talking without a script? Too thoughtful? No, he can’t mean any of that, can he? So what does he mean? It’s very hard not to suspect that he means just what he appears to mean. It’s very hard not to conclude that there is no low too low – so hard that I have no intention of trying. I think he’s stopping as low as he possibly can, and that that’s very low.

The idea itself is completely stupid, you know. How many US presidents have been ‘presidential’? Very damn few. Truman? Nixon? Bush? Come on. Even some of the better ones haven’t been ‘presidential.’ Johnson was widely considered an embarrassing hick in the wake of the prince of Camelot, but actually he was a good one domestically – but he warn’t ‘presidential.’ Obama in fact strikes me as being more ‘presidential’ than anyone since Roosevelt. McCain, on the other hand, strikes me as a snake.

The pope and Sarkozy have been dissing secularism lately. Agnès Poirier defends it.

To speak of positive secularism is to imply that there are two kinds of secularism, one good, the other bad. The supposedly good one, put forward by the Pope and his acolyte Nicolas Sar kozy, is a secularism that would allow politics to mingle with religions. One which would, for instance, turn a blind eye to sects and their actions, one which would accept that people be treated differently according to their faiths, one which would blur the frontiers between the public and private spheres…What the Pope and president pretend not to know is that there is no positive or negative secularism (laïcité in French). Secularism is neutral…Secularism abstains from favouring one religion over another, or favouring atheism over religious belief. It is a political principle that aims at guaranteeing the largest possible coexistence of various freedoms. From a strictly legal perspective, secularism is extremely positive: it creates a universal freedom to believe or not to believe, and protects individuals from any public interference in their belief, provided that their belief or lack of it does not disturb the peace. As the philosopher Catherine Kintzler wrote in the French weekly Marianne: unlike religion, secularism creates freedom. What religion has ever recognised the rights to believe and not to believe? What religion has promoted the physical emancipation of women? What religion accepts what believers would deem to be blasphemous words?

Of course, religion refuses to settle for freedom – it wants freedom (for itself) along with dominion.

Oliver Kamm is brisk with Charlie Gere.

Charlie Gere…expresses unabashedly and succinctly a view that has increasingly made its way into the mainstream of public debate and ought to be derided out of it again…Of course it’s “not a problem” in public policy to offend anyone’s sensitivities, because people’s mental states are no business of government. If government set itself the task of alleviating mental anguish, then there would be no inherent limit to the powers that government might claim. The only proper response in public policy to those who say their deepest beliefs have been slighted and who complain of the offence they’ve been caused is: too bad, but you’ll live; and in the meantime there is no restitution to which you’re entitled, because you have suffered no injustice.

Well, quite. And as Kamm indicates, the idea that you have suffered an injustice, along with the effort to remedy that injustice, would entail massive interference with various freedoms and vocations that we all (probably including the offended among us) value highly. Anything that anyone says can be considered an offense to someone’s sensitivities, and the only way to be certain of never offending anyone’s sensitivities would be for no one to say anything ever, in fact would be for everyone to drop dead immediately. There’s such a thing as too much caution, and it leads to the dead end of doing and saying nothing at all.

Gere replies in the comments.

These limits [on speech] are cultural determined and in this case simply do not take into consideration matters of considerable sensitivity to Muslims.

No, nor on matters of considerable sensitivity to Mormons, or Raelians, or Branch Davidians, or Trekkies, or Wiccans, or anyone else, and thus people are allowed to say things without wondering whether the things might offend one or two or ten of a million groups or groupuscules. How odd that Charlie Gere apparently wishes it were otherwise.

In fact he later says he does.

[W]hat I want is something that is probably impossible, that is neither a PC dictatorship nor a situation in which the support of free speech risks alienating whole sections of the community.

He wants a situation in which the support of free speech stops short of risking ‘alienating whole sections of the community’ – which means (whether he realizes it or not) he really does want no one to say anything, at least anything more provocative than ‘the cat sat on the mat.’ All speech ‘risks alienating whole sections of the community.’

Charlie Gere is back; he seems to be enjoying himself.

I unreservedly and completely condemn any form of violence committed by anybody who believes they have been offended. That of course includes those who are offended by criticisms of the freedom of speech.

Okay. Good. Gere condemns violence committed by people who are offended by criticisms of the freedom of speech. Well naturally; don’t we all. Only…can anyone think of any? I can’t. I can’t, with however much furrowing of brow, think of any violence committed by people who are offended by criticisms of the freedom of speech. Can you? Do let me know if anything comes to mind.

What seems to have happened is that “freedom of speech” – rather than the various freedoms and limitations of speech and the ongoing and indeed never-ending negotiations involved in their continued existence – just becomes a tenet of a western fundamentalism that thus shows itself to be little better than those fundamentalisms it is held to be superior to.

Well, no. Even though I do in fact agree that freedom of speech is often used in a too sweeping and absolutist way which does simply ignore the limitations which are universally (or all but universally) accepted; even though I have in fact engaged in arguments on just this subject over the years, and been rewarded with uncomprehending stares in return; I have to point out that the conclusion that Gere draws doesn’t follow. Free speech is not absolute or unlimited, but it doesn’t follow from that that free speech absolutism is a fundamentalism that is ‘little better than those fundamentalisms it is held to be superior to.’ It could be a fundamentalism and still be superior to other fundamentalisms. It’s not absurd to claim that some fundamentalisms are worse than others, and that some are better. An obstinate unquestioned belief that it is imperative to be kind is better than an obstinate unquestioned belief that it is imperative to be cruel. One could multiply examples indefinitely.

What other conclusion can one draw from Rohan Jayasekera, associate editor of Index on Censorship…describing Theo van Gogh, the filmmaker murdered recently in the Netherlands, as a “free-speech martyr”, and thus turning his murder into a form of passive violence on his behalf[?]

…What? Describing Theo van Gogh as a ‘free speech martyr’ is a form of passive violence? What the sam hill does that mean? What is passive violence? And what is violent in any sense about calling van Gogh a free speech martyr? (It’s rhetorical and sentimental, but that’s another matter.)

Is this a case of defining deviancy downwards or something? Playing with terms in such a way that party X is made to be Just As Bad as party Y even though that is in fact obviously not the case? Y murdered van Gogh for being ‘offensive’; X called van Gogh a free speech martyr; they’re both as bad as each other! Really?

Charlie Gere is probably a rising star. Fasten your seat belts.

Sami Moubayed on Aisha and ‘double standards’.

The book has so far appeared in Serbia, with a provoking illustration of Aisha on the cover (in Islam it is forbidden to portray the wives of the Prophet, known as the “Mothers of Believers”).

The fact that something is ‘forbidden in Islam’ doesn’t mean that it is forbidden in general, and in fact for the rest of us it is not forbidden to portray the wives of the Prophet, nor is it ‘provoking’ to do so. This seems to be widely misunderstood – but the fact is, the laws and rules and taboos of Islam are not binding on everyone in the world. We are allowed to ignore them.

It is equally startling how people like Sherry Jones would wish to add insult to injury, and bad feelings, with her book on Aisha.

No, actually, it is startling how uninformed Sami Moubayed is about the subject of his article; that is exactly what Sherry Jones does not wish to do. He might have found that out before saying that about her – especially since saying that could, in this ludicrous situation, put her in increased danger.

I cite the example of David Irving…Irving showed that Hitler was a rational, intelligent leader and human being whose main motivation was to increase the prosperity of Germany…By the 1980s, Irving was banned from entering Austria…He defied the ban and tried to go but was arrested in Austria. In court he tried to change discourse, but Austrian authorities did not believe him and at the time of writing he still languishes in jail.

No he doesn’t. He was released a few months into his sentence.

It is a funny world with funny double standards indeed. To make things easier for everybody – especially the oversensitive millions in all faiths – it is safe to say that critical issues such as the Holocaust and Islam become red lines that should not be crossed. In saying that, we can assume that Jones, Benedict and Irving all committed mistakes.

No. Not comparable. For the forty millionth time: Holocaust-denial is not comparable to (say) writing a novel about Aisha. That’s not to say that Holocaust-denial should be illegal, it is just to say that the funny double standards are not double standards. (The right double standard would be, for instance, to deny that a massacre happened at Srebrenica.)

Offending others for the sake of free speech should not be tolerated.

Yes it should. If not offending others becomes the criterion for free speech, as many have pointed out, there will be no free speech at all. That would not be a minor crimp, it would be obliteration.