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Obama’s Imbroglios
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My Rahm Reunion
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The Left Hates Us
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Such a Dynamic Duo
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The Continuing Crisis
May 1, 2013 | 0 comments
The Current Crisis
The First Freedom
The freedom of speech is being diminished.
WASHINGTON — I am grateful to George Washington University professor of Law, Jonathan Turley, for pointing out that a growing number of world leaders find the First Amendment’s right of free speech to be an inconvenience. He cites, for instance, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s warning that “when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others’ values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.” Turley makes the valuable — and if you think about it obvious — observation that free speech becomes intolerable not when it is used recklessly but when one person or a group of people object to its use, especially when they object violently.
Thus the Secretary General’s neat formulation utterly collapses when, say, some heiress to Mother Teresa asseverates in public that “God is the source of all good.” It is a harmless utterance, until some indignado, say, a venerable witch, gets wind of it and objects with hurt feelings or more preferably with violence by burning down Mother Teresa’s chapel. Possibly this Mother Teresa happens to be influential worldwide and she has a whole string of chapels to burn down, possibly some are diplomatic installations. Free speech is difficult to limit. Without limiting it, it can be disagreed with. It can be ridiculed or it can be ignored. But as soon as we come up with some nice neat formulation for limiting it, à la Ban Ki-moon, along comes a mob of brutes and they put free speech to the test. Under the Ban Ki-moon formulation free speech gives way. In fact, it is extinguished.
That was the lesson from the eruption of violence around the globe to the idiotic YouTube masterpiece of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, “Innocence of Muslims.” In America hardly anyone saw it. In the Arab world my guess only the makings of a small mob or two saw it. Yet it was used as a pretext for violent protest and thus for such lawyerly poppycock as was spewed by Ban Ki-moon, and there are others. Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia has said, “Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has delivered an equally muddled declaration on tolerance and free expression, arguing for the adoption of a U.N. resolution that would simultaneously guarantee “the right to practice one’s religion freely and the right to express one’s opinion without fear.” Try enforcing that resolution in Benghazi, Madame Secretary of State.
Freedom of speech is being diminished, says Professor Turley, “not from any single blow but rather from thousands of paper cuts of well-intentioned exceptions designed to maintain social harmony.” I am not sure they are “well-intentioned.” Rather I consider them the fatuous efforts of politicians intent on riding out the storm. They hope the enemies of freedom will be placated temporarily or at least until the politician retires. I am not so sure they will get their way. As Turley says, there are thousands of cuts. Eventually free expression could be extinguished.
He cites opposition to blasphemous speech, to hate speech, to discriminatory speech, and to deceitful speech. That accounts for a lot of “paper cuts.” The aggrieved groups keep growing and the defenders of free speech keep fighting off ever more enemies. Now we have the opponents of unhealthy diets opposing commercial free speech. We have already disposed of tobacco advertising. Will chocolate be next?
It seems to me freedom of speech must be absolute. Let anyone say anything they please. Let Nakoula Basseley Nakoula or whatever his name is make any film he desires. We do not have to watch it. We can protest it. We can ridicule it. We can even ridicule his idiotic name, replete with its redundancy. Call it hate speech if you will. Call it discriminatory. Just let free expression reign. As for the mob that protests him, so long as they do not break the law they too are free to utter whatever they want in public or in private, so long as they are law-abiding. That is the way we should do it in America. It is, as we say, the land of the free. Keep the lawyers, the busybodies, and the government away from the First Amendment. That is the American way.
About the Author
R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. is the founder and editor in chief of The American Spectator. He is the author of The Death of Liberalism, published by Thomas Nelson Inc. His previous books include the New York Times bestseller Boy Clinton: the Political Biography; The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton; The Liberal Crack-Up; The Conservative Crack-Up; Public Nuisances; The Future that Doesn’t Work: Social Democracy’s Failure in Britain; Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White House; The Clinton Crack-Up; and After the Hangover: The Conservatives’ Road to Recovery.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (40) | Leave a comment
More Articles by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
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drudge ette obama| 10.18.12 @ 6:26AM
Hate speech, politically correct, anti-Christian bias, belief in traditional marriage - we whisper what we believe to safe people because we fear attack on what we believe. We are quiet in the crowd for fear. And in doing so, we take our own rights away, leaving the vocal minority the entire stage to utter whatever because we still grant free speech to others.
Solution: speak up people and express your beliefs without fear. Think hw brave the little Pakistani school girl was to blog about her school - she almost died from it - perhaps she still will.
She's my hero. I give her my Peace Prize.
gerald brennan| 10.18.12 @ 6:50AM
Speech that is not offensive doesn't need protection. This is so obvious that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and the millions like him, must be considered as an ally of totalitarianism.
Von Mises Jr| 10.18.12 @ 8:06AM
In Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism," we see today's so-called Progressives/liberals re-enacting much of the Nazi and USSR tyranny.
It includes isolation and "atomization" of the masses, indiscriminate targeting of groups, and terror. In the USSR, if a woman's husband disappeared, the family would not speak of him again in public for fear of retaliation.
The policies are also the same with universal health care, environmentalism, propaganda, censorship, and banishment as this internet film maker is now suffering. The Rule of Law is abandoned for the Rule of Despots.
I have had enough, and it is becoming clear that many have joined the ranks. If you doubt me, you don't even need to read the almost 500 pages. You just need to watch this video and listen to what Dear Leader has to say. It even frightened the crap out of Rachael "Mad Cow:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....e=youtu.be
benny havens| 10.18.12 @ 2:44PM
Anyone who speaks ill of the government will be rounded up and held as a “home grown terrorist” indefinitely.
When this guy talks about a “Civilian Police Force” this is who will enforce his new “rule of law”.
What is about to follow will be our home computer monitors connected directly to the civilian police force so they can watch and see that no harm comes to us in our homes.
Sound familiar?
Appleby| 10.18.12 @ 7:00AM
This kind of blather comes from a serious lack of teaching in schools at any level of the Founding Documents and the Federalist Papers, among other things. Time to put down the remote and pick up the book.
TLP| 10.18.12 @ 11:58AM
That's not it, at all.
Pick up a Book?
What book? A School Book? An Encyclopedia? These "Books" tend to resemble the works of Saul Alinsky, Karl Marx, and Mao, than they do anything that we grew up with, in the Public Schools. And, it is The Schools that bear the brunt of all of the Blame, for leading us down the Totalitarian Leftist Path that we now find ourselves on.
We need to stop putting Academic Theorists in places of Power, as they never come to the Job equipped with any Real Life Experience that doesn't consist of something associated with a Bellybutton, and them Looking at it.
Their only Constant, is the belief that a Central Government with Total Control over every aspect of Everybody's lives, in it's Benevolence, will take us to a Worker's Paradise Heaven on Earth, even if they have to Kill All Of Us, in the process.
Thanks for that pair a Bloomers the other week, bye the way. I believe that they ended up on the Flagpole outside of the Clinton Library/Dirty Book Store/Whorehouse/Ghonorreah Walkin Clinic and Dry Cleaners, down in Arkansas.
You can have them back, but you gotta climb Slick Willey's Pole.
Appleby| 10.18.12 @ 4:37PM
Right - this is your idea of "free speech" : I make a comment, and you counter with a dirty non sequitur.
Joe Biden, is that you?
TLP| 10.18.12 @ 5:23PM
Actually, that IS the idea behind Freedom of Speech.
If you were REALLY an American?
You would know that.
Right?
MelvinNC| 10.18.12 @ 7:38AM
This horse squeeze emanates from the rear orifice of Liberalism. Reading a piece by John Stossel about how UNC of North Carolina doesn't call Freshman, Freshman any more due this esteemed institution of higher academia wanting to protect woman. So these students are now called, "First Year."
Alas it gets worse. UNC goes further down that path of stupidity by, "decreeing that no student may "implicitly" or "explicitly" ask for sex."
Now can tell me what insipid educated moron with obviously way too much time on his or her hands would come up with such sophomoric edicts?
But what do we expect this is the land of now Gov. Beverly Purdue a truly hopeless, hopeless Liberal, who by the way used to be a government run educator. But that is beside the point isn't it?
The real point is that we are allowing this small percentage of idiots fall into the trap of Islamic propaganda designed to influence those extremely weak minded Liberals, so that they can prance about and wet themselves all in the name of political correctness of whatever the hell they want to call it nowadays.
Bottom line the UN Sec. Gen. doesn't know his ass from a hole in ground, and neither does college academia aka UNC with it's silly, "Protecting Woman," by getting rid of the title of Freshman.
Heaven help the future generation of Americans that will suffer under the weight of these tyrannical panty waisted pansies .
Nancy in NC| 10.18.12 @ 7:58AM
If anyone wants to doubt what is happening to freedom of speech they only have to look at what has happened to freedom of religion. Somehow the morons have decided the Constitution says freedom from religion. After all the left works incessantly to rid the public square of any religious expression. Religion, according to the kool-aid drinkers, must remain inside the four walls of the church.
Recently in New Bern, NC a mother protested at the public library about a children's morning group because the word God was mentioned. After all, she's a "humanist" and doesn't want her darling little children's minds be polluted with the word God. As of now the library has thumbed their nose at this idiot (who I'm sure believes in democracy), but she threatened further action so they may or may not fold at a later date. She's probably in contact with the ACLU so we shall see. The ACLU has fought to control prayer before public meeting and has won in some of the townships and the county.
Good thing these wusses weren't around in 1776. We would still belong to the Brits.
benny havens| 10.18.12 @ 7:46AM
I guess if the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has his way, Don Imus will have to give up his inspired profanities and creative ethnic slurs.
TLP| 10.18.12 @ 12:00PM
That Goddamn Zipper Headed, Ying Yang Sloper.
What's he thinking?
benny havens| 10.18.12 @ 2:33PM
LOL, yes, exactly.
Does this guy even know what planet he’s on?
TLP| 10.18.12 @ 2:54PM
Contest, Tomorrow.
It will be on the Entirety of the last 4 years, and this Election.
Look for the Clues.
KennesawJack| 10.18.12 @ 3:56PM
I'm bringing Abraham with me to the contest tomorrow.
TLP| 10.18.12 @ 5:24PM
I don't get it.
KennesawJack| 10.18.12 @ 8:45PM
You will tomorrow.
Alej| 10.18.12 @ 6:34PM
It's his culture. Not ours. He's thinking like he was brought up... a natural born citizen of an Asian country. Piss on "united nations," lower case letters. They don't think like us and we don't think like they do. The whole concept is terminally flawed by the term "united."
Especially when the majority of votes belong to countries of backwater thirdworld savages controlled by dictators.
The UN is a canker on the ass of America. Or at least the half that works for a living.
C. Vernon Crisler | 10.18.12 @ 8:39AM
Of course, the first freedom is not free speech. The first freedom or freedoms are life, liberty, and property.
I don't think we should allow Islamists to determine what our rights and laws should be. In America we had anti-blasphemy laws on the books years after the First Amendment was ratified. So the two are not incompatible.
We should look to our own laws and traditions to determine the limits of speech in America, and not worry about what some ignorant Imams may have said on the subject.
JimH| 10.18.12 @ 9:11AM
The U.N. is a club for governments, not people. And as such it will reflect their interests. When the U.N. sides with people over a government it is because there is a more influential bloc of governments making it do so.
KennesawJack| 10.18.12 @ 3:58PM
Jim, You got me. I can't recall a time when the UN sided with the folks rather than a government.
Citizen Jerry| 10.18.12 @ 11:06AM
I'm really sorry (not really) that so many world leaders find American freedom of speech offensive. But we're a sovereign nation and make our own laws -- others need not apply.
As for the UN's Donkey Moon saying that some freedom of expression should not be allowed, I'd ask him how to say "póg mo thóin" in Korean.
J.C.Eaton| 10.18.12 @ 11:18AM
Yet another exemplar of why the United States shouldwash its' hands of the United Nations.According to this self-important twit [who serves utterly no productive function save to his wallet]:snake-worshippers, Aztec human sacrificers, and every manner of crazed zealots[Christians and Jews, excepted,sorry] shouldn't be made cross over criticism of their preferred methods of "worship." As my late and esteemed football coach used to scream reacting to a missed block: Bullshit!!!!!!!Exactly what does it benefit this nation to largely underwrite this noxious school for scoundrels?
TLP| 10.18.12 @ 2:54PM
Contest, Tomorrow.
It will be on the Entirety of the last 4 years, and this Election.
Look for the Clues.
Anthony| 10.18.12 @ 12:08PM
Turley has always had a soft spot for totalitarian designs. No professor who respects the Constitution could ever call any attempts at the surpression of free speech "well intentioned".
Turley, like many elite leftists, practice a form of paternalism which results from their adherence to moral relativism and political correctness.
He and his ilk will gladly jettion the rights of a free people in order to save the rabble of the world from having their feelings hurt.
Instead of telling the fanatics of Islam to grow up and face the realilty of a world that doesn't accept your radicalism, Turley is ready to say, "I agree, we must cowtow to your feelings".
Turley should be teaching law at the Sharia School of Law in Terhan.
TLP| 10.18.12 @ 2:55PM
Contest, Tomorrow.
It will be on the Entirety of the last 4 years, and this Election.
Look for the Clues.
JD| 10.18.12 @ 12:23PM
Can somebody please explain the Left's recent obsession with "binders" to me? I keep asking them about it on their websites, but I get only two flavors of answer:
1. "If you don't understand it, that proves how sexist you are!" - a classic evasion. What they're really saying is "The emperor has no clothes" - in this case, they have no idea what's wrong with it either.
2. They suggest that Romney "shouldn't have had to look so hard to find qualified women", or that in looking that way, he implied that there are fewer qualified women to find than qualified men.
But Romney clearly stated that he wasn't getting applications from qualified women, so he HAD to go looking for them. How is that his fault? What was he supposed to do - walk down the street and have qualified women just appear to him?
In no way does this line of thinking explain what makes the word "binders" in particular offensive.
And how do Democrats have any standing to condemn the seeking out of qualified minorities? They've been ramming Affirmative Action down our throats for decades! What is Affirmative Action if not the requirement that businesses go out of their way to find minorities to employ (qualified or not)? Are Democrats really slamming Romney for practicing AA?
In fact, their suggestion that he shouldn't have needed to go out of his way is a suggestion that AA is unnecessary! What hypocrites (as always)!
Archie| 10.18.12 @ 2:29PM
Very well said. I would also add that anyone who does not "get" that Romney was referring to binders of resumes, bios, vitae, etc. is not someone I want running the country for the next 4 years.
TLP| 10.18.12 @ 2:56PM
Contest, Tomorrow.
It will be on the Entirety of the last 4 years, and this Election.
Look for the Clues.
JP| 10.18.12 @ 2:58PM
It's called desperation. One could always retort that the Women's Rights is no laughing matter. But, that would go right over their heads.
JD| 10.18.12 @ 4:14PM
JP, what you said is offensive to women, and if you don't understand why it just proves how sexist you are!
spike59| 10.19.12 @ 5:49AM
Can somebody please explain the Left's recent obsession with "binders" to me?
================================
it means they're running out of squirrels and shiny objects to dangle in front of our brain-dead MSM
Seapuss| 10.18.12 @ 12:53PM
If speech that ridicules or defames a religion may be banned, then perhaps we should start by banning the Koran. That book is full of foul statements against Christianity, Judaism, and the followers of both religions:
http://www.americansagainsthat.....Quran.html
http://www.godlikeproductions......094048/pg1
We should also ban the writings of Karl Marx, who defamed all religion as the "opiate of the masses."
Anne Onymous| 10.18.12 @ 1:32PM
How is it possible to write an article on free speech under attack without once mentioning either Islam or the OIC? And why perpetuate the myth of the evil, dastardly YouTube trailer as a proximate cause of the present uproar? Watch the thing - it is almost endearing in its amateurish ineptitude. If that trailer is a sufficient pretext for going on a rampage then just about any imagined slight would do.
AmericanCynic| 10.18.12 @ 4:27PM
"world leaders find the First Amendment's right of free speech to be an inconvenience."
Who in their right mind would think that our beloved U.S. Constitution and it's 1st Amendment applies to other World Leaders?
I love our rights to speech in this country, it's still the best speech protection in the world.
There is also great responsibility attached to it and in a nation of over 330 million people with variable levels of responsibility, perspective and common sense it CAN'T be absolute.
Try screaming "FIRE!" in a crowded forum/venue and try defending that in court.
Please try thinking outside platitudes like FREEDOM and FREE SPEECH and embrace the much more complex and interactive world modern day America has become.
Skippy| 10.20.12 @ 1:12PM
OK, fine.
I'm thinking beyond freedom and free speech.
I'm also looking beyond freedom and free speech.
What I see is tyranny; what I think is slavery; what I suggest is resistance, ridicule and revolution.
Complexity? Nah.
This rifle is quite simple to operate, thank you.
Jimbobogie| 10.18.12 @ 4:36PM
In all of the liberal and conservative excitement in criticizing the other side, there's one issue that I believe we're overlooking. We base our criticism on what we see and hear through the media and/or press conferences. I think that the real truth in what governs either Republican or Democratic Presidencies can only be found when the official Presidential Papers are released, usually years after the end of the administration. Public debates and even elections may really have little effect on what's really happening in the world. Once a new President steps into the Oval Office he, in effect BECOMES his predecessor, with only minor changes based on party label (insert "Obamacare" here). I welcome your thoughts-and I'm sure that a lot of those thoughts will be brief and angry-but I welcome them nonetheless.
Jimbobogie| 10.18.12 @ 4:38PM
Sorry, this belongs in a different forum-I'll move it (but give it a thought anyway).
geminicontender| 10.18.12 @ 6:30PM
Why are we letting third world thugs dictate to us in the first place. We are a sovereign nation and we must stay that way. Please let us move the UN to another part of the world.
Skippy| 10.20.12 @ 12:54PM
" Time to put down the remote and pick up the book."
Time to put down the book and pick up the gun.