When the NY Times has a choice between constitutional principles and strident moralizing, you can always be sure where they'll fall. Here's their editorial on the attack in Texas: "Free Speech vs. Hate Speech."
There is no question that images ridiculing religion, however offensive they may be to believers, qualify as protected free speech in the United States and most Western democracies. There is also no question that however offensive the images, they do not justify murder, and that it is incumbent on leaders of all religious faiths to make this clear to their followers.
But
I'll stop right there. The "but" is that, sure it's "free" speech, but well we just can't go about provoking
members of a certain religion.
What makes this editorial extra special is that the Times has been famously hypocritical about reprinting blasphemous images over the last few decades. They had no problem with “Piss Christ” or Chris Ofili’s elephant-dung portrait of the Virgin Mary, both of which “inflicted deliberate anguish” on million of devout Christians, but they wouldn’t touch the Danish Mohammed cartoons 10 years ago and they wouldn’t touch the Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons this winter even though both were at the center of major international news events.
As usual, the media and the Left (but I repeat myself) wants to be the arbiter of what is "free" speech, explicitly ignoring the language of the First Amendment. The NY Times doesn't like Pam Geller and if ISIS
kills her, it won't defend her rights but will say, in effect, she asked for it. Then when Sharia law (hypothetically) shuts down the free press, the Times will ask: what happened?
10 comments:
Hear, here!
Very good commentary!
Vike, it is evident that what the weenies did in Garland is protected speech. I see you used your freedom of expression to selectively cut and paste and re-characterize the editorial as suggesting a limitation on free speech rather than chastising the weenies. Here is a part you left out:
"Those two men were would-be murderers. But their thwarted attack, or the murderous rampage of the Charlie Hebdo killers, or even the greater threat posed by the barbaric killers of the Islamic State or Al Qaeda, cannot justify blatantly Islamophobic provocations like the Garland event. These can serve only to exacerbate tensions and to give extremists more fuel.
Some of those who draw cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad may earnestly believe that they are striking a blow for freedom of expression, though it is hard to see how that goal is advanced by inflicting deliberate anguish on millions of devout Muslims who have nothing to do with terrorism. As for the Garland event, to pretend that it was motivated by anything other than hate is simply hogwash."
You took the liberty of assuming the NYT said nothing about Charlie Hebdo. While the statement is untrue, I will fight to the death for your right to be factually incorrect when trying to support your narrative (also, from the NYT OPED in January):
"There are some who will say that Charlie Hebdo tempted the ire of Islamists one too many times, as if coldblooded murder is the price to pay for putting out a magazine. The massacre was motivated by hate. It is absurd to suggest that the way to avoid terrorist attacks is to let the terrorists dictate standards in a democracy.
This is also no time for peddlers of xenophobia to try to smear all Muslims with a terrorist brush. It is a shame that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front party, which has made political gains stoking anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim fears, immediately sought political advantage with talk of “denial and hypocrisy” about “Islamic fundamentalism"
Yes, as if to prove my point, when the French cartoonists are murdered it's "je suis Charlie" but now it's unnecessary provocation. Which way is the moral wind blowing today?
Oh, they didn't like those pictures? Tough. Maybe it's time they adapt to Western values instead of the other way around. I, for one, am sick of everybody tiptoeing around that redheaded kid in the "Twilight Zone" that you don't want to make angry. "You did a bad thing!"
As someone noted, the bien pensant crowd loves to say it's wrong to broadbrush Islamics as violent BUT their violence is so predictable that the response to a couple of drawings is "baiting them."
After Texas, it isn't broadbrushing Islamics. After all, there were TWO of them! That's gotta be safely within the margin of error.
The best question I've heard asked recently was: How would our leftist media react to a couple of ISIS terrorists shooting up a gay wedding?
They, of course, wouldn't blame the flaunting of homosexuality - even though it is deeply offensive to Muslim fanatics. On the other hand, they also wouldn't be able to blame radical Islam, with which they share a quite strange fellow travelorship.
I think in such a case they would end up in strait jackets frantically muttering "lone wolf lunatics!"
Zowie, what a conundrum! When you get to script the imaginary reaction, too, it's a dominant shutout win in Hypothetical-Land for your side!
But how would our rightist media react if a gun shop refused to sell a handgun to gays? Which isn't happening anywhere either, but I mean, DUDE, WHAT IF?
Mind... blown.
It's a dominant shutout win because you don't want to touch it with a ten foot pole.
Or, perhaps you'd like to inform us - just how would our leftist media react to a couple of ISIS terrorists shooting up a gay wedding?
But what if your imaginary gay wedding was being held in an Episcopal church? How would our rightist media reconcile their icky yicky feelings with their ongoing hunger for Christianity Under Attack?
And what if your make-believe ISIS gunmen were provoked to violence because they owned a pizzeria, but a state law was struck down by activist judges, forcing the terrorists to cater the gay wedding against their will and beliefs?
Pathetic.
You need to start a website for your adorable fan fiction.
It would be a great venue for you and Team Red to continue burbling about the sociopolitical cognitive dissonance among "a quite strange fellow travellership," while simultaneously swooning over the strength of true leaders like Vladimir Putin, or recalculating polls until Mr. Romneycare is in the lead. Sorry... those two hypotheticals are much too far-fetched to happen.
Post a Comment