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.
