Wrong: Islam apologist and author Karen Armstrong in The Guardian:
[T]he [Danish] cartoonists and their publishers, who seemed impervious to Muslim sensibilities, failed to live up to their own liberal values, since the principle of free speech implies respect for the opinions of others.Right: Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616, 630 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting):
[W]hen men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas--that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."Respect" isn't a shield from debate. Cartoon-ish characterizations don't warrant killings, otherwise I would have torched Hollywood when American Beauty won "Best Picture." As Norm Geras says, "one of the benefits, and sometimes joys, of free speech is that it allows you to express disrespect towards pernicious or idiotic opinions." Which, alas, is impossible when lefty bloggers delete arguments with which they disagree--even if factually and legally supported--without rebuttal.
Ignorance may be bliss in some sectors (RealClimate.org is famous for deleting comments by warming skeptics), but the primary "respect" free speech requires is valuing an opponent's argument sufficiently to shoot it down. Which, Ms Armstrong, I just did.
3 comments:
Somewhat off-topic: I usually wander through the lefty blogs a few times a year, looking for ones which allow reasonable discussion. There are a few. One rule of thumb is that those with a specific focus are more likely to be open to debate than the ones which comment on events in general (perhaps because they actually know something about the topics?).
I wasn't scheduling myself for another round until the fall, but hooking up with Mercury Rising because of your incident there inspired me to try their blogroll. That perhaps was a poor choice of starting point.
It's Status quo: the energy there is put into the cleverness of the insult and the expression of how enraged they are (and the American sheeple just take it! Oh, the injustice!) rather than the thought behind the argument. Reminiscent of my teenage years.
I should thank you for helping me get this out of the way early, Carl, but at the moment I'm irritated.
I share your frustration.
Come, entertain me and yourselves at Cannablog. If you like I'll even start an open thread for you so you can make whatever case you want against the progressive movement.
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