Author: Ophelia Benson

The second meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle has taken place at Orac’s site. The first, at St. Nates’, was two weeks ago. And the archive site with schedule of future meetings is here. As St. Nate said –

But we are not content to rest on our laurels! I want this Circle to endure and to keep getting better and more popular. I want to expand our membership! The blogosphere still remains a cesspool of the paranormal, pseudoscience, and quackery! We’ve had one success–a good start–but we must not let up now!

Go, Skeptics! (Also skeptics – you go too.)

So, they’re making up a new Ten or rather Twenty Commandments, eh. Without the participation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Well you can’t blame him, can you. Much as his job’s worth, probably, trying that on. Would be kind of like Charles suddenly up and throwing out all the ermine and gold carriages and sceptres and whatnot and drawing up a new plan of action. All these huge houses bursting with Rembrandts and Rollses and gewgaws to be turned into community centres. All Royals to get jobs as maintenance workers in housing estates or driving buses. Parliament henceforth to be opened by Sandra ‘Doc’ Tudge of 47 Ribena Lane, Kidderminster. Factories, hospitals, bridges and suchlike to be opened by the cast of The Archers on a rotating schedule. Well it wouldn’t fly, would it. The Queen would just tell him ‘I don’t think so’ and send him on a peace mission to that little island about seventy kilometres from that other little island that you can just barely see with a powerful telescope from that uninhabited island off Tierra del Fuego. Same with the Archbish. His boss wouldn’t be particularly pleased and flattered to have him re-writing the rules, would he. Kind of implies he didn’t do a good job the first time. Which of course he didn’t – Alabama judges to the contrary notwithstanding – but he doesn’t expect his own servants to tell him that, does he.

Whatever. That’s his problem. Nothing to do with us.

Thou shalt not own or drive or buy or covet or admire an SUV.

Neither shalt thou talk on thy cell phone [mobile] whilst driving thy small automobile.

Thou shalt not put pineapple on pizza.

Thou shalt not talk loudly, caper, squeal, grimace or argue whilst walking about in public.

Thou shalt not wear thy hair in the manner of Donald Trump.

Thou shalt not wear purple and yellow together, nay, not even if thou art a ‘Husky fan.’

Thou shalt not wear lycra spandex undergarments outside thine own house unless they are augmented with a seemly outer garment. Thou shalt not make a display of thy buttocks, whether on a bicycle, or running, or standing in a supermarket checkout lane.

Thou shalt not expectorate on the public right of way.

Thou shalt not make unseemly gestures with thy hands whilst at the wheel of thy small unobtrusive automobile.

Thou shalt not call women female dogs, nay, not even if thou art flushed with rage, or beside thy wits, or singing a rhythmic tuneless song, or pretending to be a ‘homey.’.

Thou shalt not turn up the volume and bass on thy small car’s sound system such that it causes passers-by to totter and bump into walls.

Thou shalt not serve sushi to guests who are not expecting it.

Neither shalt thou serve calimari, nor oysters, nor peanut butter and grape jelly on Wonder bread.

Thou shalt not go on a low-carb diet.

Thou shalt not talk about carbs and carb-counting.

Neither shalt thou serve thy guests low-carb meals that leave them hungrier after eating than they were before. Thou shalt provide pasta or rice or bread (not of the Wonder clan) or potatoes as I have laid it down for thee.

Thou shalt not tell stories about thy children, neither about thy dog. Thou shalt talk about interesting subjects, or be silent.

Thou shalt not floss thy teeth in the living room whilst guests are present, nor yet when they are absent. Thou shalt never floss thy teeth in the living room.

Thou shalt not vote for any present or former motion picture thespian for any political office whatsoever, nay, not even if it be country assessor in a rural county in South Dakota.

Thou shalt not take it upon thyself to invent new deities. Thou hast more than enough to deal with already.

This is good. Now if lots of people start saying the same thing, maybe one of these days it will begin to sink in.

In case it isn’t already obvious, competition has broken out between the religious elements of our society for the label of ‘Most Sensitive’. Every time someone gets offended, it has become standard policy to complain that followers of other faiths are treated with more respect…[B]roadcasters, production companies and even theatre houses can fall into a trap of trying to keep the ‘representatives’ happy. In an environment where they’re evidently competing with each other, this is a dangerous policy because there is no way back. With Behzti for example, it gave the impression to those being consulted that they had editorial control over the final product. For news organisations it can mean bias in reporting. For young British Asians who want to tell their own stories through theatre, it can mean facing an environment where censorship is imposed on them by their own community…The worry is that in the desire to be politically correct, British institutions end up listening only to highly vocal and organised religious groups. There is a tendency to assume they represent everyone in their respective communities.

Yup, there is. In fact – that bit about ‘young British Asians who want to tell their own stories through theatre, it can mean facing an environment where censorship is imposed on them by their own community’ – that reminds me of something – gosh, what is it – it’s hovering right there – oh yes! I remember now. Just change the word ‘theatre’ to ‘literature’ or ‘fiction’ and you have the situation Salman Rushdie found himself in. And still does, since the fatwa was touchingly renewed the other day. Gives communitarianism a whole new meaning, that kind of thing.

Harry has a post on the subject at his Place.

Hmm. There’s an odd statement in here – in the AAUP’s statement on the Ward Churchill fuss. Well, that’s not surprising, I guess. Pretty much whenever people start talking about freedom of speech and academic freedom, odd statements get made. It seems to be a subject that inspires odd statements – no doubt because there are so many competing goods at issue, and because people don’t always notice the competitive aspect, so they’ll cheerfully make contradictory statements from one sentence to the next.

Needless to say, the AAUP thinks Churchill should not be fired for writing the ‘little Eichmanns’ article, no matter how livid the right-wing pundits get. Needless to say, I agree with them, however much I may mock Churchill’s Billy Jack routine. But there are some oddities, all the same.

One of them is utterly routine and predictable, but it’s one that always makes me wonder a good deal.

Freedom of faculty members to express views, however unpopular or distasteful, is an essential condition of an institution of higher learning that is truly free. We deplore threats of violence heaped upon Professor Churchill, and we reject the notion that some viewpoints are so offensive or disturbing that the academic community should not allow them to be heard and debated.

The thing that always bothers me about statements like that is that it leaves out a real problem – thus making the free speech position seem a lot easier than it really is. Because there are views and viewpoints that are not just unpopular or distasteful or offensive or disturbing – they are dangerous or harmful. That’s where a lot of the disagreement takes place, obviously. That’s the issue that’s central to the disagreement over the incitement to religious hatred law in the UK – whether such a law can, in principle and in fact, distinguish between speech that is unpopular or distasteful or offensive or disturbing, and speech that is dangerous – or (more complicated still) potentially dangerous. And surely the idea of danger is behind laws against incitement to racial hatred. The point is not that such speech is offensive, it’s that it has the potential to get people killed. And yet – free speech statements so seldom talk about the subject in those terms. That seems to me to be an evasive way of proceeding. I think I think the religious hatred law is a bad idea, but I also think that it’s quite true that it is possible to incite hatred and violence by means of speech about religion. Competing goods, you see. I think there are competing goods here (as there usually are, after all), as opposed to all good versus all bad. Statements endorsing free speech that pretend the worst speech can do is offend or disturb people are stacking the deck. (Which is not, just in case it’s not clear, to say that I think Churchill’s article is dangerous; I don’t; the point is a general one. I’m not making a ‘don’t you know there’s a war on?’ argument against Churchill.)

In fact the tension is visible right inside the statement. ‘We deplore threats of violence heaped upon Professor Churchill.’ Yup. But threats of violence are speech too. But they go beyond unpopular or distasteful or offensive or disturbing. I think that should have been mentioned somewhere in that statement, if only as a parenthetical stipulation. ‘Freedom of faculty members to express views, however unpopular or distasteful (provided they fall short of threats or incitement),’ perhaps. There’s a large snake-swallowing-tail element in all this, because people often use their freedom of speech to make threats against other people in order to shut them up. As we saw in Birmingham a few weeks ago. Well that’s how free speech is, isn’t it – there’s a huge de facto element. The powerful have more free speech than the powerless; those who own newspapers and radio stations have more free speech than those who don’t; the rich who can buy advertising and bribe politicians have more than the poor who can’t; and so on. ‘Sure, honey, you have a constitutional right to say whatever you like, and if you say it I’m going to punch you in the face. Go ahead.’