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9/11, reason, and unreason
2010-Sep-11, Saturday 10:35 amWould you believe that the most reasonable summary I found of the 9/11 and Koran-burning hoopla in America came from an Arabic news source? My own thoughts are "all over the map" and hard to pin down to a single opinion.
BBC is reporting that there will be no Koran burning from the pastor who stirred controversy in the last week or two. It remains to be seen if the familiar Fred Phelps (of "God Hates Fags" fame) does it instead. They've done it before, so no big surprise there. Meanwhile, the American urge towards humor is apparent as someone creates a delightfully blasphemous video mocking the whole Christianity-vs-Islam concept using the style of an announcer promoting a wrestling showdown event.
What a nice touch of historical sensibility in the midst of this absurd posturing.
I'm an avid supporter of free speech, including speech that is reprehensible. The only point at which I get confused, however, is when actual lives are at stake. This "line" is the same one which courts have tried to describe using the argument about "yelling fire in a crowded theater". If a reasonable person can expect people to die because of your action, even the utterance of a few syllables of speech, then society has a legitimate interest in forcibly preventing you from performing that action.
Consider the following scenarios. In America, it is the liberal faction that defends the right of free speech in some of these cases, while it is the conservative faction that defends it in other cases. We're not consistent in our thinking on this issue.
It requires some complicated inquiry to determine degree of responsibility or reasonable expectations for someone else's mind. It's much simpler to draw a "line in the sand" to declare that one should never cause harm because of one's emotional desire to do harm to others. It's simpler, therefore it's probably the correct path for any governance that must rely on fallible human enforcement.
And yet... I still can't shake the nagging suspicion that this answer is less than ideal. I wish I knew the ideal solution for a democratic human political framework. We do, after all, have laws that criminalize the incitement of a riot. What if the figurehead does not use declarative statement during that foment? What if the speaker poses hypotheticals instead? What if leaders rely on the stupidity and poor impulse control of their audience to do what they can never state directly? If we hold people culpable for providing the means (a weapon) to commit murder, shouldn't we hold people culpable if they provide the motive to commit murder?
The viciousness of "the righteous" poses a complication to my desire for absolutely free speech. I want to criminalize those who would manipulate others. That way, however, leads to great legal complication and yet another kind of injustice masquerading as justice.
BBC is reporting that there will be no Koran burning from the pastor who stirred controversy in the last week or two. It remains to be seen if the familiar Fred Phelps (of "God Hates Fags" fame) does it instead. They've done it before, so no big surprise there. Meanwhile, the American urge towards humor is apparent as someone creates a delightfully blasphemous video mocking the whole Christianity-vs-Islam concept using the style of an announcer promoting a wrestling showdown event.
"Quran row feeds media frenzy"
Burning the Quran, despite the impression one might have after the hyperventilating media coverage of pastor Terry Jones' planned Saturday conflagration, is not a novel practice. Immolation as a political statement is a practice with a long, storied and mostly depressing history dating to antiquity, when Romans burned early Christian martyrs. The practice of burning books, including the Quran, marked a less fatal but arguably just as dangerous turn in the practice, with its threat of erasing knowledge itself and its accompanying violence and death. [...]
A Facebook page in support of the burning had more than 16,000 fans by Friday and was on the increase, while fans of opponents' pages numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Both sides exchanged angry and often bigoted online broadsides. [...]
The well-followed and conservative Powerline blog in the US, while it made its stance against the Quran burning clear, also said that "what gives rise to this dilemma, of course, is the fanaticism of radical Muslims, who have, indeed, responded violently to real or perceived slights to their religion". "Perversely, the crazier radical Muslims behave, the more it benefits them," John Hinderaker, a lawyer and freelance writer, argued in his post on the blog. "Today it is burning Korans, but the broader objective is to outlaw, de facto, any criticism of Islam," he said.
- http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/09/2010910123534220284.html
"Quran burning and US law"
But the First Amendment to the US constitution, one of the sacrosanct documents of the American bill of rights, prevents the government from interfering in personal freedom of expression, assembly and religion. In the US, the right to express oneself- no matter how offensive that expression might be- is seen as a fundamental part of what it is to be American. So while authorities in the US can condemn the Quran-burning event in the strongest possible terms - and they have, from the US president downwards - they have no legal power to stop it from happening. [...]
This "tolerance for intolerance" is an intrinsic part of American democracy - and will be respected even if, as in this case, there appears to be a genuine risk of violence or even death as a result of the pastor's actions. Defenders of the US constitution argue the protection the First Amendment provides outweighs the credible threat that abuse of the right can pose. "That's the slippery slope about the First Amendment; if you permit common sense to prevail over principle, then you start giving up the principle," Gregg Thomas, partner at Thomas & LoCicero, told Reuters. "The values that are embedded in the First Amendment long-term - while maybe not in this immediate circumstance - are so valuable to our democracy that you just can't change the rules when it gets tough," he added.
- http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/09/201099184720360588.html
Burning the Quran, despite the impression one might have after the hyperventilating media coverage of pastor Terry Jones' planned Saturday conflagration, is not a novel practice. Immolation as a political statement is a practice with a long, storied and mostly depressing history dating to antiquity, when Romans burned early Christian martyrs. The practice of burning books, including the Quran, marked a less fatal but arguably just as dangerous turn in the practice, with its threat of erasing knowledge itself and its accompanying violence and death. [...]
A Facebook page in support of the burning had more than 16,000 fans by Friday and was on the increase, while fans of opponents' pages numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Both sides exchanged angry and often bigoted online broadsides. [...]
The well-followed and conservative Powerline blog in the US, while it made its stance against the Quran burning clear, also said that "what gives rise to this dilemma, of course, is the fanaticism of radical Muslims, who have, indeed, responded violently to real or perceived slights to their religion". "Perversely, the crazier radical Muslims behave, the more it benefits them," John Hinderaker, a lawyer and freelance writer, argued in his post on the blog. "Today it is burning Korans, but the broader objective is to outlaw, de facto, any criticism of Islam," he said.
- http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/09/2010910123534220284.html
"Quran burning and US law"
But the First Amendment to the US constitution, one of the sacrosanct documents of the American bill of rights, prevents the government from interfering in personal freedom of expression, assembly and religion. In the US, the right to express oneself- no matter how offensive that expression might be- is seen as a fundamental part of what it is to be American. So while authorities in the US can condemn the Quran-burning event in the strongest possible terms - and they have, from the US president downwards - they have no legal power to stop it from happening. [...]
This "tolerance for intolerance" is an intrinsic part of American democracy - and will be respected even if, as in this case, there appears to be a genuine risk of violence or even death as a result of the pastor's actions. Defenders of the US constitution argue the protection the First Amendment provides outweighs the credible threat that abuse of the right can pose. "That's the slippery slope about the First Amendment; if you permit common sense to prevail over principle, then you start giving up the principle," Gregg Thomas, partner at Thomas & LoCicero, told Reuters. "The values that are embedded in the First Amendment long-term - while maybe not in this immediate circumstance - are so valuable to our democracy that you just can't change the rules when it gets tough," he added.
- http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/09/201099184720360588.html
What a nice touch of historical sensibility in the midst of this absurd posturing.
I'm an avid supporter of free speech, including speech that is reprehensible. The only point at which I get confused, however, is when actual lives are at stake. This "line" is the same one which courts have tried to describe using the argument about "yelling fire in a crowded theater". If a reasonable person can expect people to die because of your action, even the utterance of a few syllables of speech, then society has a legitimate interest in forcibly preventing you from performing that action.
Consider the following scenarios. In America, it is the liberal faction that defends the right of free speech in some of these cases, while it is the conservative faction that defends it in other cases. We're not consistent in our thinking on this issue.
- When rappers sing of shooting police officers, should we blame them when a fan actually uses a gun to kill a police officer?
- When preachers talk of homosexual abomination, should we blame them when a congregant actually murders a homosexual?
- When video games reward murder of civilians, should we blame the programmers when a high schooler actually goes on a killing spree?
- When politicians shout about the Muslim (or Communist) menace, should we blame them when someone actually goes out to enact the obvious solution to this imminent danger?
It requires some complicated inquiry to determine degree of responsibility or reasonable expectations for someone else's mind. It's much simpler to draw a "line in the sand" to declare that one should never cause harm because of one's emotional desire to do harm to others. It's simpler, therefore it's probably the correct path for any governance that must rely on fallible human enforcement.
And yet... I still can't shake the nagging suspicion that this answer is less than ideal. I wish I knew the ideal solution for a democratic human political framework. We do, after all, have laws that criminalize the incitement of a riot. What if the figurehead does not use declarative statement during that foment? What if the speaker poses hypotheticals instead? What if leaders rely on the stupidity and poor impulse control of their audience to do what they can never state directly? If we hold people culpable for providing the means (a weapon) to commit murder, shouldn't we hold people culpable if they provide the motive to commit murder?
For instance: "I didn't tell them to kill. I just gave them a framework to justify killing. They came to their own conclusions."
The viciousness of "the righteous" poses a complication to my desire for absolutely free speech. I want to criminalize those who would manipulate others. That way, however, leads to great legal complication and yet another kind of injustice masquerading as justice.