WASHINGTON — Why are conservatives and liberals not united
in defending free speech? The estimable Bret Stephens in his
Wall Street Journal column
this week raises the question and suggests conservatives and
liberals give the matter some thought.
What has provoked him is the plight of the Dutch
politician, Geert Wilders, who has just been denied entrance to
the United Kingdom on the grounds that he is an “undesirable
person.” What rendered him so is his documentary, “Fitna,” that
lifts lines from the Koran and cites them as the sacred
justification for acts of Islamic terror. Wilders is also being
prosecuted for “hate speech” in Holland on account of “Fitna.”
Supposedly his documentary offended the religious sensibilities
of Muslims, which is enough to get a work of intellectual
expression banned in Europe.
Stephens points out that it has been precisely twenty years
since Andres Serrano dunked a crucifix in a glass of urine,
photographed the sacrilege, and called it art. The National
Endowment for the Arts awarded him $15,000 for his creativity.
Frankly, I think he might have as profitably applied for a grant
at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, George. In fact,
with the Obama Administration now in power I suggest that Serrano
give it a try, assuming he has not passed on from some horrible
disease.
Stephens also points out that twenty years ago the
Ayatollah Khomeini placed a fatwa on the head of the celebrated
left-wing author Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic
Verses, which, according to the art critic
Khomeini, blasphemed Islam. This was one of the rare instances
when the Rev. Khomeini and I were in agreement. I too found the
book appalling, though I would not issue a fatwa even if I were
certified as an official fatwa installer. A fatwa could get a
person killed. I settled on giving Rushdie the J. Gordon Coogler
Award for the “Worst Book of the Year.” Rushdie, who publicly
traduced Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, gladly accepted the
bodyguards she gave him, though he never showed up for the awards
ceremony.
Things have changed in the UK. Now Labour has replaced
Thatcher’s Tories, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown denied Wilders
entry into the country. For my part, I actually watched “Fitna”
in the comfort of New York City a few months back and found more
artistic merit in the documentary than in either of the works by
Serrano or Rushdie. Moreover, to my surprise Wilders is not a
wild man or a rustic but a gentleman. He deserves to have his
speech protected, as did Serrano and Rushdie, though in Serrano’s
case I do not see why the American taxpayer had to support his
afflatus.
No thoughtful conservative I know called for either Serrano
or Rushdie to be banned. We objected to paying for Serrano, but
denying him the coverage of the First Amendment was against our
commitment to freedom of speech. During the Serrano controversy
liberals pretty much defended his First Amendment rights and went
further insisting that the National Endowment for the Arts was
justified and perhaps even enlightened in funding him. So are the
liberals defending Wilders today? Are they alarmed by Europe’s
suppression of free speech? This is an issue that both
conservatives and liberals should agree on.
What is called “hate speech” is, in a free society, as
equal to First Amendment protection as disgusting speech or
blasphemy; though presumably there are places where hate speech
ought not to be tolerated, for instance grammar schools and high
schools. There children and young people are not yet full
citizens. They are immature and their ideas are not fully
developed. Their outburst would be disruptive. Where the students
are adults, say at universities, the First Amendment should
hold.
Actually I fear liberals will not join Stephens and me in
defending Wilders’ rights or even the rights of Rushdie. My
explanation for this is not a happy one. In recent years it seems
to me American liberals and conservatives do not want to be in
agreement. They want to be at war with each other. This is
particularly true of liberals. On the First Amendment they find
qualifiers to part company from libertarians conservatives. We
see it in the liberals’ support of speech codes at universities.
There all advocates of free speech allowed communists to teach
and to stir up revolution even during the Cold War. Now free
expression is policed by speech codes, lest someone offend touchy
ethnics or religious people, preferably non-Western religious
people. Serrano never was accused of “hate crime.”
Free speech is a tricky issue once we begin to limit
it. People can be very subjective about what is protected speech.
Consider Wilders. For all his talk of free speech, he calls the
Koran a “fascist book.” He equates it with Mein
Kampf and would ban it. Wilders is free to
call the Koran anything he wants to call it. Yet he cannot ban
it, not in the United States; possibly in Europe, but not in the
Land of the Free.
