Free speech doesn’t mean anything if you’re going to define it down to being ‘inoffensive’ speech, or ‘good faith’ speech.
How do you feel about flag burning amendments? Burning a flag is offensive, it’s provocative, and it’s usually done as an ‘in your face’ slap. So let’s just ban flag burning.
And if you want to go down this road, are you ready when the Christians come out and demand that speech offensive to their religion should be banned? How about ‘shock’ artists, who exist purely to be offensive?
Do you realize how offensive deeply religious people find much of our popular culture? Most of that ‘speech’ isn’t even political. How about Linda Blair masturbating herself with a crucifix while yelling “F*ck me Jesus!”? I recall religious groups trying to ban ‘the Exorccist’, and I also recall the ACLU and other groups coming out to defend free speech in absolute terms, not just speech that is ‘inoffensive’ or in ‘good faith’.
How about “The Last Temptation of Christ”? There were certainly religious groups offended enough by it to wage campaigns to have it banned and to picket theaters. Or Monty Python’s “Life of Brian”, which was also subjected to such treatment.
How about Klan marches? The ACLU has successfully defended them as free speech despite the fact that they are hateful and even inciting violence. Should the Klan’s speech be banned? If so, how about the Worker’s World Party? Their speech is often offensive.
How about Sinead O’Connor ripping up a picture of the pope and saying “Fight the real enemy”? Do you realize how offensive that was to Catholics? Should speech like that be banned?
If you’re going to apply one standard to offenses against Islam, you’d better be ready to accept the same standard against every other religion, race, and ethnic group. Otherwise, you’re either a hypocrite, or you’re hiding your real reason for your willingness to ban this speech - the fear of danger from radical Islam.
The SDMB is a private entity. They can ban whatever they like. Or are you saying we should have restrictions on speech that prevent ‘trolling’ by law? Otherwise, the example of the SDMB is a non-sequitur.
That’s the part that scares me the most about this - the fact that the rioting might be working, in some sense.
If people in the West is willing to satirize or offend any group except those who might react irrationally, then the forces of irrationality have won. It would be OK to burn the flag in protest, because American citizens aren’t going to riot. It would be OK to make cartoons lampooning Jesus if someone shoots an abortionist, because Christians won’t burn down your embassies. But let’s walk on eggshells about those Muslims, because they might really kill you.
I guess I’m not clear. I’m not saying any laws should change. I don’t see a way to implement filtering for speech based protections using intent without making the protection effectively meaningless.
I’m saying the US, and other western nations, are having a PR problem. The distinction needs to be drawn between endorsing the motive and tolerating the speech. I haven’t seen that distinction clearly stated in anything I’ve seen or read from the western governments. One looks like entire nations are attacking Islam. The other more accurately presents the situation.
I’m willing to state anything I believe in. It doesn’t matter to me if someone else may be offended by it. I expect to be protected during this expression.
I’m not as willing to extend such protection to provacateurs.
The problem is that since I can’t tell the difference between someone expressing a true belief and someone acting as a provacateur then I must protect both to protect the first.
This is the message I don’t think the western world is getting across. We are not lining up behind the messages of the provacateurs, we are just not willing to form repressive regimes in order to quiet them. It is not agreement with the motives, or even subject matter, of the provacateurs which is staying our hand, but the cost in collateral damage which would inevitably occur if governments moved against them.
Not to mention that the Muslim assholes who are rioting are attacking US embassies when we had essentially nothing to do with the Danish cartoons.
So, far from being provacateurs, we are nearly completely uninvolved. And still we get blamed for it.
I think part of the problem is that we are trying to come up with a rational response to this mess. But not all anti-Americanism is rationally based. Maybe some Muslims hate us because Richard the Lion-hearted fought Saladin or whatever. But some hate us because their lives are empty and pathetic, and they are jealous of the incredible wealth and power of the West. Or because some asshole told him that Americans kill Muslim and sell their organs to Israel, like that shitty-ass movie that did such business in Turkey.
My WAG is that the typical rioter lives a meager life, compared with the typical American, or more especially compared with what he thinks is the typical American. He has some subsistance level job, and thinks we are all rich - and compared with him, we are. His wife resents the way he and his society treat her, and her lack of education and worldly experience mean that she isn’t much in bed - especially compared with the wild fantasies of sexual license he thinks the West indulges in. If he’s gay, he reacts against his own self-loathing and repressed sexuality by hating the societies that offer a liberation he cannot accept. If he is poor, he resents us for having opportunities he can’t even dream of. If he harbors any guilt over his religious practices or beliefs, he tries to purge himself by whipping himself in a frenzy of hate for the infidels.
It’s a truism to say that “they hate us for our freedoms”, but truisms are often true. What is easier to change into hatred, but jealousy?
:rolleyes: Yourself. You really seem to like this phrase, as if by saying it you can simply dismiss what someone else is saying. Sorry but your magic philosophy 101 phrase is kind of falling flat. HOW is it ‘excluded middle again’? What exactly is the middle course? Please define it explicitely instead of rolling your eyes as if its obvious…because frankly its not. Thats why I keep calling it a slippery slope. Where you draw the line for your ‘middle’ is going to be different and mean different things to different people…depending on ‘who’s ox is being gored’ (since you seem to like trite turns of phrase).
To be perfectly clear here, define when its ok to offend and when its not…and how artists, authors, writers, cartoonists, dog catchers, political pundits, hair dressers and, well, everyone else, is supposed to know. Do they all have to come to you for a ruling or something?
Well, technically, the murderous dictator had been in charge earlier…so it was more like “reinstalled”, and it was the failure of the first coup attempt that made the Shah flee…
And also, we didn’t overthrow the government…the Iranian military and the Shah did…we just helped.
You know, the more I follow this, the more I realize this isn’t about free speech at all, but rather, it’s another stick to beat the darkies with. It’s much like issues before the UN. If it’s the U.S. that’s not getting its way at the UN then it’s because the UN is “irrelevant”, “corrupt”, “outdated”, or some similar nonsense. If it’s Israel that’s facing UNSC resolutions, then eh, who cares. But if it’s some middle eastern country, then it’s how dare you defy the International community and all hands on deck and high time to dump some white phosphorous on those rogue wild people.
I wonder, if it’s really about free speech, why is Austria jailing a man for nothing more than speaking his mind?
A lot of folks here are asking the very valid question of why should anyone follow or bow down to “their” laws in when they’re not in “those” countries? A valid question to which the only answer is you don’t have to. Conversely, they can act as “savagely” or as much like “cretins” as they damn well please. Don’t like it? Piss off. That’s right, piss off. Don’t like your embassies attacked? Don’t open them. But you can’t resist, can you? This isn’t about showing the importance of free speech and its benefits to a healthy society. If it was, you wouldn’t make the example something that offends others, yet outlaw things that offend you (i.e., the example in Austria).
Actually, it’s more like yutzpah. If the Israelis are so thick-skinned, instead of aping the Iranians, they shouldn’t belly ache about things like this
Bullshit. The Americans used a disaffected general who was wanted for conspiracy and treason to do it. They didn’t just “help”. They paid for, organized, and implemented it.
I’m sorry, but this isn’t clear to me. I keep trying to parse the phrase “freedom entails responsibility” and am having little luck. I wasn’t sure if the context is necessary to the phrase, so I included the post numbers. Can you help me understand what you mean by this?
I’haven’t read the whole thread, but with regard to the question: “now what” I think there are a few things we can do.
To counter the feeling of having “the enemy in our midst” it would be nice to hear from muslims in western countries that, yes, they strongly object to the cartoons (if they do), but that they object even stronger to the excesses of protesting i abroad. Western gouvernments should firmly ask National Muslim organizations to take this stand.
Secondly, I feel that this isn’t really about religion, but about dignity. That’s why cartoons provoke more outrage then war. We should ask ourselves how Muslim culture has tarditionally dealt with intentional or un-intentional insults, and follow suit. That’s not giving in, that’s smart.
If Saoedic family A insulted Saoedic family B, they must have had some method of putting things right again before all sons of both families had murdered each other, no? Probably something subtle like A-s daughter marrying B’s nephew and the patrarchs taking turns with the same hookah, or something. (I’m thinking proud Arab tent-dwelling patriarchal nomadic families here, with a smouldery-eyed Rudolph Valentino somewhere in the background).
No - that’s conceding the point that religious injunctions of one faith are applicable internationally and promising not to do it again.
Muslims offended by the cartoons need to retune their sensibilities and reactions because with free speech and the internet hair-trigger ‘honour’ is just going to be slighted on a regular basis.
We ‘traditionally’ ignore such slights and I damn well expect Muslims to do the same. Liberal panty-waist that I am I believe the values of the Enlightenment, secularism, freedom of speech, freedom in general trump those derived from a book and a man who condone all sorts of dubious crap.
Free speech is not the freedom to say anything but what might upset people who seem to get murderously upset by anything critical of their ridiculous religion. Except that is what it has become - don’t make a noise and wake up the rabid dog in the corner. Self-censorship - which is what publication of the cartoons was about in the first place.
These values are not to be compromised. If minorities in a country don’t like these values then they are free to leave. And if other countries don’t like it, they are free to f*** off.
Damn them and damn their ridiculous sensibilities. Damn the fact that writers cannot any longer write novels critical of Islam in any way, or make a film about the dreadful condition of women without being threatened with murder or stabbed in the chest. (Offer applies to fundamentalists of all hues).
Well, let’s ignore **Shodan’**s latest childish episode of shitting on the dinner table again, and look at what that was in response to:
A pretty absolutist, either-one-or-the-other statement there, isn’t it? This shouldn’t need explaining, and in fact if you’d read my remarks about responsibility and needing to have a point it wouldn’t be necessary now. Yes, you can knowingly piss people off if there’s a purpose to what you’re saying. You don’t acknowledge that. Hence, you’re excluding a middle - perhaps your problem is that you don’t understand that the middle even exists?
Digital Stimulus, do I *really * have to explain the concept of responsibility too? :rolleyes: That you don’t go out of your way to make people angry without a good reason to? That the Golden Rule is not just a saying but necessary?
I DID acknowledge that…several posts ago. I went on to explain to you with some patients that having a ‘point’ is in the eye of the beholder. YOU don’t think there is a point…but unfortuntately you aren’t the sole judge of that. To cut to the chase here, if the cartoonist had a point then you are ok with this…but if he did it as mere ethnic bashing then you aren’t. Is that your contention? Then…who is to judge whether or not the author had a point? You? Me?
You are correct about one thing though…when it comes to free speech and your mushy statement that people need to self censor depending on if they have a ‘point’ or not I DON’T think there is a middle position. People are either free to be creative and to publish their works…or they aren’t. And if they have to self censor because they may offend someone then they aren’t free. If thats ‘excluding the middle’ then so be it. Roll your eyes to your hearts content.
But first maybe you can answer some of the questions with reguards to this mushy position of yours that I asked in earlier posts…i.e. how does one go about determining when its OK to offend? How does one convey that they have a ‘point’ to all people…so we can agree that there is one? You refuse to see a ‘point’ to these cartoons for instance…but I do see one. Who’s right? Is it in the interpereting or do we need to go back to the author and ask HIM what, if any, point he had? What if he says he did have a point…would you then conceed that its ok? If he says he did it with no point at all should I then say that though I see a point that because he intended no point it was wrong? This seems like a slippery slope to me…a very slick and very steep slope at that.
Let me ask you one last thing…another example so to speak though not quite the same. I’d like your take on it. During the 2004 elections CBS published some supposed ‘new’ dirt on the President and what he did (or didn’t do) during his time in the National Guard. It turned out that the source was bogus but thats irrelevant to the discussion. The point was…well, we all knew about this shit from the LAST time it was all dragged out in the 2000 elections (and actually I had heard some of it prior to that from friends in Texas). So, to me, it was pretty pointless…just a bash on Bush to counter the attacks Kerry was getting about the whole Swift Boats thing. It was old news, dead as last years fish, and had no bearing on the election…the American people had already seen this stuff and still chose to elect Bush the first time.
Lets assume for a moment that you didn’t think it was pointless. Lets further assume that there is a third party, one who would be offended by this attack on the Noble Bush™. Finally, lets make (the small IMO) assumption that CBS’s only real point was to bash Bush. Now…what are your thoughts? I think its pointless. Someone else is highly offended. Should CBS have shown restraignt as you suggested for the cartoonist? After all, its pretty clear that their ‘point’ WAS to bash Bush (from the assumption). Should they have held back the story in light of your views on having a ‘point’…and folks being offended?
-XT
p.s. If you are interested in my own thoughts I’m consistant. Though I felt the piece was pointless (and got a good laugh when the source was found to be bogus) I completely support their right to publish it. Pointless or not, old news or not, ultimately worthless or not, offensive or not…it was their right to do what they chose to do.
Alessan, I’ve read about that contest and saw the boomka site.
Once again I have to say how I admire your countrymen’s valour, intellect and sense of humor.
I wish more religions could be that way. Maastricht, Saturday, Februari 25, 13:00 hours at Damsquare Amsterdam:
‘Stop Islamic Censorship’
alas, your education appears not to have brought to your attention the mechanisms of a parliamentary system. While it is true in the broadest sense that a prime minister is invited by the head of state to form a government, ever since about 1688 the range of choices available to the aforesaid head of state has been limited, (in true parliamentary democracies, such as Iran circa 1953) to the leader of the majority party in the parliament.
This is a remarkable event in the modern history of Iran in 1950. Parliamentary elections had been completed meanwhile, and early in July Mossadegh, having resigned in accordance with constitutional procedure, was requested by the shah to resume his office. His acceptance was based on various conditions notably that giving the control of the army and the right to rule by decree for 6 months.
Shah rejected the former condition, and on July 16 Mossadegh resigned. Former Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam agreed the next day to form a new government. The public responded with riotous demonstrations and a general strike (July 21), which forced Qavam’s resignation. On July 22 Mossadegh was designated prime minister.
Dr. Mossadgh requested more authorities after re-election as prime minister. Ayatullah Kashani, as Majlis speaker in that period, accepted the prime minister’s bill in order to make unity and preventing from separation. But Dr.Mossadegh demanded more authorities in order to reduce Majlis power
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