Posted on 10/04/2012 4:06:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
The American Left used to champion free expression. We were lectured -- correctly -- that the price of being repulsed by occasional crude talk and art was worth paying. Only that way could Americans ensure our daily right to criticize those with greater power and influence whom we found wrong and objectionable.
When 1950s comedian Lenny Bruce titillated his audiences with the F-word and crude sex talk, liberals came to his defense. They reminded us that vulgar speech is not a crime: The First Amendment was not just designed to protect uplifting expression, but also rarer blasphemous and indecent speech.
For liberals, the burning of a flag on campus and the full frontal nudity of Penthouse magazine were also First Amendment issues.
When artist Andres Serrano photographed a crucifix in a jar with his own urine ("Piss Christ"), the avant-garde Left not only protected Serrano's constitutional right to offend millions, but also saw no problem in the U.S. government subsidizing the talentless Serrano's sophomoric obnoxiousness.
But the worldview of the Left is self-contradictory. One of its pet doctrines is multiculturalism -- or the idea that non-Western cultures cannot be judged critically by our own inherently biased Western standards.
Female circumcision or honor killings in the Muslim world don't merit our attention in the way that a woman's right to free abortion pills from her Catholic employer does in the West. When it comes to the Middle East, we neither criticize strongly enough the region's sexism, homophobia or racism, nor do we defend without qualification our own notions of free expression as inherently superior to the habitual censorship abroad.
Fear plays a role, too. Championing the right of Andres Serrano to show his degrading pictures of Christ wins liberal laurels. Protecting novelist Salman Rushdie's caricatures of Islam might earn death.
The Obama administration went to great lengths to blast -- and even arrest -- an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian for posting on the Internet a juvenile movie trailer ridiculing Islam and offending Muslims. After riots across the Middle East and the murder of the U.S. ambassador in Libya, American officials did not wish to concede that radical Islam hates the United States -- even when Barack Obama is president. And they did not want to admit that their own lax security standards, not a film trailer, led to the horrific murders in Libya, or that in an election year their Middle East reset policy is in shambles.
No obnoxious American in the last half-century -- not Larry Flynt, not Daniel Ellsberg, not even Julian Assange -- has warranted so much condemnation for his antics from the president of the United States, the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as have one crackpot preacher in Florida and an inept Coptic film producer.
Outraged Arab-Americans in Dearborn, Mich., demonstrated in favor of anti-blasphemy laws last week. They demanded an end to any expression that they find religiously offensive -- and thereby prove to be embarrassingly clueless as to why many in their communities left their own homelands to come to America in the first place.
The new Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, recently lectured the U.S. on its decadence and wants a global ban on the caricaturing of Islam. He, too, forgot why he once fled to the United States to be educated, employed and to freely say things that would have gotten him killed in his native Egypt.
Another Egyptian immigrant, frequent CNN and MSNBC guest pundit Mona Eltahawy, recently spray-painted over a public anti-jihadist poster that she disliked. In her world, defacing public property is OK if by her own standards she judges it offensive. Eltahawy, like the Dearborn protestors, is oblivious to the fact that her self-appointed censorship would soon turn her adopted country into just the sort of intolerant society from which she, too, fled.
It is past time for U.S. officials to insist that our traditions and laws apply equally across the board, regardless of where we come from, or what we look like, or the anger and danger we incur from abroad.
Schools could do better by cutting back on their multicultural classes and reintroducing study of the U.S. Constitution. All immigrants need to pass a basic test on the Bill of Rights as part of winning citizenship.
"Speaking truth to power" is not Sandra Fluke grandstanding to ovations at the Democratic convention on behalf of government-supplied free contraception. It is instead our elected officials reminding rampaging Middle Eastern terrorists and bigots that they will not alter our Constitution -- and better not try.
Free speech is racist.
‘For liberals, the burning of a flag on campus and the full frontal nudity of Penthouse magazine were also First Amendment issues.’
But NOT the burning of the Rainbow Flag. No First Amendment here. This is a hate crime!
this article is wrong — Islam is not a culture
Voltaire famously said "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize". This is why Muslims want all criticism of Mohammed and Islam banned: a ban on criticism elevates them to ruling status.
There is a difference between the free speech that the left objects to and free speech that the right objects to.
The Constitution has the free speech provision for the exact purpose of protecting criticism of the government. This was done to keep the government from suppressing the voice of those who didn’t support it, and in particular those who expose the truth.
The left does not like free speech when it criticizes their politicians, candidates, leaders, and pet causes.
The right does not like free speech when it is vulgar, obscene, or pornographic.
There is a huge difference between the two.
I’m willing to put up with free speech I dislike in order to protect the free speech that is crucial for liberty and freedom.
IMO, one of the few places conservatives miss the boat is with the flag burning issue. I’m a conservative who supports the right to burn the flag because I think that falls under free speech. (I don’t condone burning it, I just support the right to do so. I think those of us who respect the flag should develop some appropriate responses. My personal response would be to put my hand over my heart and honor the flag as someone is burning it. The contrast between conservatives behaving like civilized adults while leftists behave like demented brats eventually makes a point.)
>>Fear plays a role, too. Championing the right of Andres Serrano to show his degrading pictures of Christ wins liberal laurels. Protecting novelist Salman Rushdie’s caricatures of Islam might earn death.
Likewise, putting a Romney sign in your yard or a bumper sticker on your car makes you a target for vandalism from leftists. Liberals who put 0bama signs and stickers have no fear of vandalism because conservatives are civilized.
>>No obnoxious American in the last half-century — not Larry Flynt, not Daniel Ellsberg, not even Julian Assange — has warranted so much condemnation for his antics from the president of the United States, the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as have one crackpot preacher in Florida and an inept Coptic film producer.
In addition, there is now evidence linking the filmmaker to the 0bama administration. I would not rule this out as a false flag operation instigated by the 0bama administration and/or Islamic terrorists.
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