Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Couldn’t Have Said It Better Myself… V
A few hours ago, this article rolled into my inbox. It’s worth a read. I agree with the sentiment involved, but the format of the article is wrong. It has all of the ingredients of a speech and a miniskirt: Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to hold your attention. Be that as it may, the issue of the right to free speech, versus the responsibility of governments to prevent chaos and protect people, is a complex issue in which the briefest recitation of the facts often results in bad decisions.
The issue is the prohibition in Austria, and nine other European countries, against “Holocaust Denial” and the consequent legal problems of noted author and suspected Nazi sympathizer David Irving…
There are many reasons to regret the decision by Austrian authorities to prosecute, sentence and imprison for three years or more British pseudohistorian David Irving. Liberal democracies ought not to be in the business of criminalizing speech, except speech that incites violence. Prohibitions against specified types of speech, such as Holocaust denial, have a tendency to invite further prohibitions and risk rendering the concept of free speech a nonsense. Imprisoning people for their views alone has a way of turning louts into “martyrs.” And just when the Danish government is under unprecedented attack for its refusal to intervene in the editorial decision-making of a private newspaper, it seems perverse to offer Muslim provocateurs an example of a European country catering to one set of sensitivities but not another.
I have nothing to add to the core message, but I would like to expound on the whole business of “martyrs.” My dictionary says a martyr is “one who makes great sacrifices or suffers much in order to further a belief, cause, or principle.” Problem: The usage of the noun, in context, is much broader than the definition specifies. You punish David Irving simply for holding contraband views, and what you have to do is punish in like manner anyone else for holding similar views. The intent on their part to further their cause through self-sacrifice, becomes a non-issue. They may intend to go to jail to further the political cause in the public eye; or, they may not. (According to this News.Telegraph article, Irving had already purchased his plane ticket to London, confident that the arrest would not be forthcoming.)
Does it really matter? The population of people born after 1945, myself among them, is swelling rapidly. A lot of us embrace the American value, even in other countries, that truth has no need to be enforced through the police power of government. This contradicts the European value that if government should ever stand mute on any particular question, government runs the risk of being thought to endorse the less appealing answer — and therefore government is obliged to form, maintain and enforce an answer to everything that comes along.
Well, Austria is part of Europe, and I’m not empowered to vote in Austria or affect Austrian policy in any way shape or form. But I know a bad idea when I see one. To place the public bureaucracy under the burden of opining on everything, using legal pain to silence dissenting views, creates the appearance that those contraband dissenting views have the grain of truth. And who, among those born after 1945, is to say they do not? After all, it’s not like the argument is being granted a fair hearing.
Worst of all, according to this principle government is obliged to haul out all kinds of things decided privately, and turn them into public matters. Here in America, we get to make up our own minds about whether man-made global warming (MMGW) is contributing to irreversible damage to the ecosystem, or not. On both sides of this question, we can find a good helping of scientists with sturdy credentials who agree with whatever we think. Is there an official government opinion? Maybe we should criminalize whichever opinion is opposite. Why not? If MMGW is destroying the environment, people like me who say it isn’t so may be defeating our last, best chance to save the planet for ourselves and future generations. That’s genocide! On the other hand, if MMGW is a myth, or exists but is entirely benign over time, those who insist it is a danger are threatening the world economy over nothing. Mass starvation is bound to be the result. Off with their heads!
Now, imagine the arguing that would take place if one of these factions, or the other, was up for being thrown in jail like David Irving — but it was an open question as to which one. Hoo, boy. The Florida election of 2000 would look like a Sunday picnic.
What about abortion? There are a lot of people who think if you’re a man, you shouldn’t have an opinion about it one way or another. (Curiously, those people never rush to silence a “pro-choice” man.) Maybe we should legislate that. We already argue about abortion a whole lot more than we did when the matter was left up to the states. We have special-interest groups who exist specifically for the purpose of keeping the states from being able to vote on the issue, and we have millions of people who maintain a white-hot fiery interest in the Supreme Court, but labor under the delusion that the Supreme Court’s only job is to keep people from being able to vote on abortion. Why not take it a step further? Why not make it a crime to speak out against abortion, if you’re a man? Or suppose the other side wins, and we criminalize anything said in favor of it? Why not? There are plenty of people who think it’s murder. Usually, when free speech is criminalized in “free” societies that normally would stand against censorship, the objective is to uphold the “higher ideal” of keeping innocent people from being hurt.
Again: If you want every presidential election to teeter on the brink of a civil war, it’s a great idea.
Some conservatives say we were winning every battle in the Vietnam War before Walter Cronkite offered his opinions on the Tet Offensive and effectively turned the tide of the war against his own country. I notice liberals never seem to have a snappy comeback to this, even the ones who are hooked on “The Daily Show” and live every single waking moment according to the rule of snappy comebacks. Why not simply criminalize people who say it? When the opinion is allowed to stand, it seems almost compulsory to get a revolution going against our “fourth estate” of journalism. Appearances being any indication, we lost a war solely because of them. Well golly, if a revolution is imminent, doesn’t our government have a responsibility to protect us from the speech that might incite it? Or why not go the other way, and use the government’s legal powers to lock up Cronkite for saying what he said? I see no reason for a statute of limitations to apply for such a heinous act of sedition.
Why not?
It would make for a critically important campaign issue, after all. Lock up Cronkite, or lock up his critics. Why, I’ll bet the voter turnout would be ninety percent or more.
That’s exactly the problem.
This is America. And this is yet another reason why it kicks so much ass to be living here. We embrace the ideal that there are some issues on which government should just keep its big mouth shut…and in order to maintain that day-to-day, we have to believe that when government keeps its silence on any particular matter, it means just that. Silence. Nothing.
It’s not good enough to have the First Amendment. You have to have the culture that goes with it. A culture that says when someone is saying something that’s wrong, we believe in giving them enough rope to hang themselves, instead of trying to shut them up. And that’s why, when we let them keep talking, the opinion our government holds about what he’s talking about, can be inferred to be…nothing.
A couple years ago, some senator from Massachusetts was running for President on the platform that he wanted us to do things more like the way Europe does them. I may think David Irving is a kook, and a bigot, and it even seems an almost settled matter that he’s a Nazi sympathizer. But his troubles with Austria make me happier than ever that that senator lost the election. Had the election gone in that senator’s favor, we would have lost our national identity, and we would have never gotten it back again.
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