Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I've never been remotely tempted to link to Little Green Footballs before but on this issue I am 100% in agreement. LGF has a post that includes 3 Youtube videos of Ezra Levant, a conservative Canadian publisher, testifying before and being questioned by the Alberta Human Rights Commission. He is being investigated on charges of violating the law by republishing the infamous Danish Muhammed caricatures.
Levant delivers an impassioned opening statement that correctly blasts the commission as an Orwellian outfit that violates human rights in the name of defending them. Spot on, Mr. Levant. He's quite belligerent in his answers to the bureaucrat questioning him; he should be. Such star chamber proceedings are repugnant to liberty, as is the whole procedure. And I liked his answer when asked what his purpose was in republishing the caricatures:
We published those cartoons for the intention and purpose of exercising our inalienable rights as free-born Albertans to publish whatever the hell we want no matter what the hell you think. I've probably given 200 interviews with people other than the state where I give a very thoughtful and nuanced expression of my intent. But the only thing I have to say to the government about why I published it is because it's my bloody right to do so. And it's my right to do so for reasonable intentions and it's my right to do so for extremely unreasonable purposes. I refuse to concede to you that what my political thoughts in my mind are or my heart are will determine whether or not an artifact is legal or illegal.
I may not like Levant's political views, but I'll stand up and cheer for that statement. He is absolutely right. I return once again to my most basic creed, the fundamental axiom of my view of the world, expressed so perfectly by HL Mencken:
What do I primarily believe in, as a Puritan believes in Hell? I believe in liberty. And when I say liberty, I mean the thing in its widest imaginable sense - liberty up to the extreme limits of the feasible and the tolerable. I am against forbidding anybody to do anything, or say anything, or think anything, so long as it is at all possible to imagine a habitable world in which he would be free to do, say and think it. The burden of proof, as I see it, is always upon the lawmaker, the theologian, the right-thinker. He must prove his case doubly, triply, quadruply, and then he must start all over and prove it again. The eye through which I view him is watery and jaundiced. I do not pretend to be "just" to him - any more than a Christian pretends to be just to the Devil. He is the enemy of everything I admire and respect in this world - of everything that makes it various and amusing and charming. He impedes every honest search for the truth. He stands against every sort of good will and common decency. His ideal is that of an animal trainer, an archbishop, a major-general in the Army. I am against him until the last galoot's ashore.This simple and childlike faith in the freedom and dignity of man - here, perhaps, stated with undue rhetoric - should be obvious, I should think, to every critic above the mental backwardness of a Federal judge. Nevertheless, very few of them, anatomizing my books, have ever showed any sign of detecting it...
For liberty, when one ascends to the levels where ideas swish by and men pursue Truth to grab her by the tail, is the first thing and the last thing. So long as it prevails the show is thrilling and stupendous; the moment it fails the show is a dull and dirty farce.
Comments
no need to link to LGF; you could instead link to mr. Levant's own site.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | January 14, 2008 11:22 AM
Nomen, Levant was unknown to non-Canadians until LGF covered the story, and Levant's blog is more Right than LGF, so your comment sounds funny.
The real question here is why the story is absent from Daily Kos; is the Left ambivalent on free speech?
Posted by: Manny | January 14, 2008 1:30 PM
Hi Ed,
I'm inserting a post from blogger Robert McClelland that I think quite nicely sums up what is happening here:
"So what is the real story? Well it certainly isn't that Levant is being prosecuted for "thought crimes" as many of the rubes are claiming. And it certainly isn't that Levant is being censored by the government as many of the yokels are braying.
The truth of the matter is that nothing more is occurring than what is supposed to occur when one Canadian citizen has a complaint about the actions of another Canadian citizen. An arbitrator (the Alberta Human Rights Commission in this case) is working to resolve this dispute between two citizens of this country.
So lets examine this case. You're probably aware of the details already, but here they are.
Ezra Levant published some cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in the Western Standard Magazine. Syed Soharwardy, a Muslim, took offense to the cartoons and filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission claiming they violated his human rights as outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Alberta HRC informed Ezra Levant of this complaint against him. They then attempted to arbitrate a resolution to this dispute. This attempt failed as Levant refused to accept the resolution offered by Mr. Soharwardy.
The Alberta HRC then moved to the next phase by asking both parties to present their side of the story. That is now complete and this is as far as the this story goes.
As you can see, none of the ridiculous claims about what is happening are true. Nor are they likely to come about since the next step by the arbitrator (the Alberta Human Rights Commission) will be to determine if this case has any merit to it. And as has been pointed out by numerous people familiar with our Charter of Human Rights, it's almost a certainty that this complaint will be found to have no merit.
This brings me to the other ridiculous claim being peddled by the gawking rubes; that the Alberta HRC is wrong to have let the complaint go this far. That is absurd simply for the reason that without this preliminary hearing they simply wouldn't have the facts of the case at their disposal to render such a decision. Only an idiot would render a decision before hearing from both parties.
The Alberta Human Rights Commission is handling this dispute between two Canadian citizens as it should be handled; not by listening to braying of the ignorant mob but in a way befitting a society that believes their citizens should resolve their disputes in a civilized manner."
Posted by: theo | January 14, 2008 1:48 PM
Theo, next time can you also link to the post you're copying... just to save google time for the rest of us? :D
Posted by: kodiak | January 14, 2008 2:04 PM
theo -
No-one is saying that these proceedings are somehow extra-legal. I think the point here is that government petty officials have no business in the first place putting their oar in on matters of speech liberties such as this. That they have no right to judge, and that Mr. Soharwardy has no right not to be offended. Being legal doesn't make it right. That they may judge this particular case as baseless is beside the point, which is that they shouldn't be judging it at all.
Posted by: Dave S. | January 14, 2008 2:05 PM
theo-
McClelland is completely full of shit. As Levant said, it is the process itself that is appalling. It is the fact that one citizen can get another citizen investigated for nothing more than having offended his sensibilities by publishing something he doesn't like. It is the fact that Levant is forced to defend himself in official government proceedings for doing something that is clearly within his rights to do, and that they actually have the power to punish him, as they have already punished others, for nothing more than causing offense. That is the inevitable result of hate speech laws and we have seen it play out in front of these "human rights" commissions time and time again. The only human right that is at risk in this situation is Levant's unalienable right to publish what he wants to publish no matter how much someone else might not like it.
The notion that the human rights commission is just mediating a dispute is utter bullshit. There is only one proper response to such complaints: get over it. You do not have a right to go through life unoffended by the views of others, period. Don't like what he published in his magazine? Then don't buy the magazine.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | January 14, 2008 2:19 PM
Manny, my intention was mainly to suggest a more primary source than anything else. subsidizing extreme wingnuttiness is always distasteful, but subsidizing wingnuts when they're not even the horse's mouth seems sort of pointless.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | January 14, 2008 2:50 PM
The only thing that I find more appalling than censorship of this sort is the pretense that it is equitable. In point of fact, laws against "hate speech" are used against criticism of Islam, but you won't see the Qur'an banned for the vitriol it spews against non-Muslims. Laws like this are useful only in defense of whatever is currently politically correct.
Posted by: Bill Poser | January 14, 2008 3:15 PM
@ theo: Did McClelland mention that Levant had to pay his lawyer, while Soharwardy's legal costs are footed by the Alberta taxpayers? This is not exactly an impartial process.
Posted by: weemaryanne | January 14, 2008 6:42 PM
@Bill Poser
The Bible has just as much vitriol, and I can quote mine as well as you if you want to get into it. Saying hate-speech law is all to limit criticism of Islam is stupid-- those laws were dreamed up before Islam was even an issue (they date back to the 90s in most cases).
@Ed, et al.
I'm not the biggest fan of hate speech laws. But I don't see it in such absolute terms for two reasons.
First, we recognize motivation in murder-- that is, I am punished worse if I am convicted of killing my wife for the insurance money by poisoning her (a premeditated act) than if I got mad in an argument, threw a frying pan and accidentally killed her.
So, in a similar fashion, inciting to riot is a crime in most of Canada and the US. It's a crime for me to go out and say "Hey everybody, kill the brown people." when I know that people might do it. Obviously in the US the juridical rules for such are pretty stringent. In that sense, the hate speech laws could be seen as an attempt to address that issue of motivation, just as we do with other crimes and misdemeanors.
The second issue is not necessarily seeing the power issues that go with speech. That is the old saw "Freedom of the press belongs to one who owns one." That was talking about economic power. But the idea is the same.
There is just a vast, vast difference between a white guy going around in blackface and a black guy saying the n-word. Power matters. As a white guy, you never have to deal with a thousand little things that make life for those of us who aren't (or who, as one friend of mine put it, "pass") really, really weird and difficult.
It isn't like "White guy makes fun of black guy, black guy speaks back, it's even." It is far from even, because these things don't go on in a vacuum.
As a white Christian, the guy who wants to publish the cartoons making fun of Muhammed (and I have seen them, and they are mostly pretty awful -- blackface level caricature) has society behind him. He isn't going to get stopped by the cops at every airport. He doesn't have to justify who he is every goddamned day. He has privileges and power that the Muslim in a mostly white province just doesn't have.
Muslims are always having to apologize for who they are in a million little ways. When was the last time you saw a Christian supporter of Tim McVeigh have to do that? I don't see white dudes with buzzcuts getting stopped in their cars.
Does all this mean I think hate speech laws are a good solution? Not really. I'm just trying to point out that it is an attempt, however ham-handed, to deal with very real power imbalances that exist. A lot of white people never run into them so it's sort of invisible. That's why conservatives can talk all day about being "colorblind." They can afford to be. Many of my friends can't. No non-white person in the US can ever, for one second, forget it. Neither can a Muslim. It's just too dangerous. (Even when you say "I am just like my white friends," you are remembering it, kind of like saying "Don't think of white elephants." The whole thing can drive you crazy if you let it).
Mr. Soharwardy has no right to not be offended--lord knows we all have to deal with stuff sometime. But, conversely, Levant doesn't have the right to be a racist jerk, who is quite deliberately trying to provoke a reaction, the more violent the better. There has to be a way to address that. Hate speech laws are probably not the way to do it, but there has to be some redress for people who are in more serious situations than this one is.
I restate: I am not a fan of hate speech laws, but I understand well the impulse behind them. And to simply cry "free speech" doesn't address too many things that are very real.
Posted by: Jesse | January 14, 2008 7:26 PM
Jesse,
You may not be a fan of hate speech laws, but I don't get the impression you're much of a fan of free speech either.
The harms you point to are results of actions, not words, and yet these laws are an attempt to shut down words. The very target is misguided. Cops are going to stop beating black guys because some white guy somewhere is punished for using the N-word? As soon as we prevent the publication of caricatures of Mohammed, airport security guards are going to stop pulling Muslims out of line for a closer search? There's no causal mechanism to link the action and the goal.
Anyone who spent any time in a U.S. public university in the 1990s knows how these speech laws work out. They turn into inquisitions led by thought police that often punished innocent students. It wasn't those who said, "I don't really support those rules, but I understand them," that led the legal battles where they were correctly shown to violate the First Amendment.
You said there has to be some redress...why? Why if person X is not threatening person Y, and not even speaking to him, should there be redress? Because you're not willing to stand up and say X has the right to speak even if Y is offended. You can't distinguish offense from harm.
Just this morning in my American Gov't class, I was telling the students the number of people killed by various governments during the 20th century. The Turks killed nearly 2 million Armenians, the Hutu government killed nearly a million Tutsis in under 4 months. The Khmer Rouge wiped out a third of Cambodians in about three years--mostly because they were too westernized, and didn't "think right."
And yet here in North America, our big concern is that somebody says something offensive about a minority group. And despite the clear dangers of handing more power to government we say, "it's understandable--there needs to be some redress for this evil."
No, there needs to be public shunning. But don't shirk your responsibility by handing more power to the government to control what we say and believe. That's the classic road to hell paved with (naively) good intentions.
Posted by: James Hanley | January 14, 2008 9:02 PM
Jesse wrote:
This is really a very silly argument. The fact that we use motivation to help determine the level of punishment for some very serious crimes certainly does not provide logical support for a law that punishes any expression of disapproval or ill will that the government disagrees with. Criticism is not a crime, nor is causing offense. There is nothing in this case that even hints at calling for anyone's death; indeed, the whole point of those cartoons is to criticize those who do call for the murder of innocent people merely for causing offense.
In the context of this situation, this is an absolutely ridiculous argument. This man republished a series of caricatures that are controversial solely because a group of people claims the power to murder the cartoonists and those who published them. You can't seriously argue that because white people generally have more wealth and power than brown people (and I would remind you that not all Muslims are brown) that therefore no white person can criticize the barbaric actions of a subset of those brown people. Even more ridiculous is the notion that if a white person does criticize those barbaric actions he is guilty of "hate speech", while the people who are calling for the extermination of cartoonists for speaking their mind are not. This is moral relativism run insanely amok.
Bullshit. First of all, you have no idea what he was trying to provoke. I say what he was trying to do was criticize the very violent behavior that it does provoke. But the blame for that violent behavior lies with those who think they have a right to murder someone who offends them. They are the criminals, not those who criticize them. Go tell Salman Rushdie that what happened to him is understandable because society has a "power imbalance." The only power imbalance there is that there are lunatics in the world who think they have the power to murder anyone who dares to criticize their religion. They are fucking nuts and they are criminals and it is time we stopped playing these stupid games of trying to rationalize their behavior.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | January 14, 2008 9:57 PM
The sad fact is that many people simply don't believe in free speech. They would rarely admit to it. Openly stating that you are against free speech sounds bad. Ironically it is kindo of like been accused of racism. And the David Dukes of the world try to weasel around the accusation by explaining that they are simply "pro-white".
In a similiar fashion people who are against free-speech present themselves as defenders of morality and/or civil rights. But personally I think it has more to do with the seduction of power. You have both liberals and conservatives who want to use the power of the State to control people what people believe and say. I supppose that it all boils down to fear. They fear ideas different that theirs to such a degree that their suppresion becomes a moral imperative.
Posted by: Cheddar | January 14, 2008 10:06 PM
"Go tell Salman Rushdie that what happened to him is understandable because society has a 'power imbalance.' "
yes, and sadly, its actually true. What happened to him WAS because of a power imbalance...his wife apparently liked the other guy better and split!
I heard she was teh hot and he was this frumpy writer dude (sort of, dare I say, like our host?)
anyway I'll drop over to KOS and see if they picked it up yet.
myself, I don't think the government at a federal, state or city level should infringe on our freedom of speech rights.
HOWEVER, I think that like-minded citizens living in a four or five block area could band together and force out people they don't like and make them move to another area, by, say, insulting them, refushing to serve them, charging them more than people they like, etc.
or zoning, as it relates to a physical object, like the 20' high phallus I have erected in my front yard. It's not the "Fertility Front" diatribe I copied and placed on the stand in front of it that people tend to object to.
Now, would they be justified in tresspass, arson, vandalism?
where do my rights end and their's begin?
Posted by: Kevin | January 14, 2008 10:16 PM
Why doesn't someone in Canada turn the tables by attending a sermon given by the imam who filed the complaint, and then filing a hate speech complaint against him on the grounds that the complainant's feelings were hurt? "There is no God but Allah"? Now if that isn't religious discrimination, I don't know what is!
Posted by: Ebonmuse | January 14, 2008 10:20 PM
Well. let me put it another way. Can I claim "freedom of speech" if I, as an imam, issue a fatwa and Salman Rushdie gets killed? What about when Randall Terry tells his followers to hate and one of them acts on it and kills an abortion provider?
"There is nothing in this case that even hints at calling for anyone's death; indeed, the whole point of those cartoons is to criticize those who do call for the murder of innocent people merely for causing offense."
Well, not exactly. Let me point out something. That wacky bunch of leftist PC folks at the Wall Street Journal did a fascinating piece about the cartoons noting that the publisher was well known for baiting Denmark's immigrant population. (KInd of like Lou Dobbs, but nastier). On top of that, after saying they were having trouble getting illustrations for a children's book, they picked a couple of images that were at best insulting (the bomb in the turban f'r instance). It's like saying you can't get an illustrator for a book about MLK and using a KKK-drawn caricature to drive home the point.
But wait, there's more. It's easy to say the muslims around the world are ignorant sheep-like followers. But then one would assume that they would react similarly to other Muhammed caricatures. They didn't. South Park did the "Super Best Friends" episode in 2001 and nobody said a thing. (It aired in March that year). South Park is broadcast in several countries with Muslim populations. They could see the video on YouTube and even on the show's site, and it isn't like they don't have satellite TV in Europe. Not a peep, though. No reaction at all.
That says to me that there's another dynamic at work.
I wasn't saying hate speech laws were right, nor that white people have no right to criticize any part of the muslim population. But Ed, you are free to criticize Muslim fundamentalists all you want. A Muslim isn't free to criticize people in the US. He just isn't, not in the same way.
Just that these cartoons have become a way to beat folks over the head. And that free speech can cover a lot of things, that it isn't always so cut and dried.
Posted by: Jesse | January 15, 2008 6:24 AM
Christopher Hitchens dealt with this type of case very well in a debate in Toronto.
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2007/03/free_speech_6.html#comments
Must viewing.
Posted by: bernarda | January 15, 2008 7:12 AM
" A Muslim isn't free to criticize people in the US. He just isn't, not in the same way."
If that is the case then the answer is to make it possible for muslims to be able to do so, not stop others from it. It's been said before, but apparently needs repeating: the answer to bad speech is more speech, not less.
Posted by: jba | January 15, 2008 7:45 AM
"Theo, next time can you also link to the post you're copying... just to save google time for the rest of us?"
Oops, you'd think I'd know that. My apologies.
"@ theo: Did McClelland mention that Levant had to pay his lawyer, while Soharwardy's legal costs are footed by the Alberta taxpayers?"
No, I didn't know that. Why, exactly, does Levant need a lawyer? He seems to have done okay by himself.
"This is not exactly an impartial process."
Yes, you're right. It happens in the judicial process too, I'm told.
Posted by: theo | January 15, 2008 7:52 AM
If your actions contain a direct incitation to violence, then no, you cannot claim freedom of speech. Otherwise, yes. This is really not a very difficult distinction.
Yes, there is: Islamic leaders were deliberately using this particular incident as an excuse to take offense and whip up their followers. They either missed the earlier cartoons or chose not to. How does that affect the basic point in any way? Are you suggesting that if some speech act is "so bad" that it encourages other people to express their disagreement through violence, it should be banned? What is this if not a heckler's veto where you can control the content of my speech by deciding how offended to become in response?
Posted by: Ebonmuse | January 15, 2008 9:01 AM
Jesse wrote:
How about putting it in some way that bears some relevance to the issue? Your analogy is patently ridiculous. No one here issued a fatwah; in fact, the speech being called hate speech - the caricatures themselves - were created precisely to protest and criticize those who issue fatwahs and call for the deaths of those who offend them.
Bullshit. The bomb in the turban may have been viewed as insulting by some, but it was drawn in protest of something very real. And some of those who were offended by it then ducked into the punch and confirmed the accuracy of that criticism by doing exactly what the drawing was protesting against - issuing fatwahs and calling for the murder of those who offended them. You are treating "insults" and murder as though they are somehow equal. That's fucking insane.
And you know why? The difference between those situations and the Danish caricatures is that after the Danish cartoons were published, a radical imam took them to the middle east and distributed them among the radical groups. He also mixed in a few cartoons that weren't part of the ones published in Denmark, including one of Mohammed having sex with a dog, in order to maximize the outrage. And he called them to riot and destroy as a result. And they did. I didn't say anything about "Muslims around the world" - a group far too large and diverse to generalize about - but those who took up this imam's call to destroy (embassies were bombed and many people died) can certainly be characterized as sheep-like followers; worse, they are highly dangerous sheep-like followers.
Bullshit. Muslims not only criticize others routinely in the US, we still have radical imams preaching jihad in mosques in this country (we also have lots of moderate imams preaching the opposite and that should be recognized as well). But this, again, has precisely nothing to do with anything I said about this Canadian law and its abuse.
You keep using these vague phrases like "beat folks over the head." All that means is criticize people for their ideology and their behavior. And guess what? That criticism is accurate. It was proven to be accurate by the very people who tried to kill those who drew them. How that could possibly escape anyone's attention is beyond me.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | January 15, 2008 11:47 AM
Last thing, here, and I'll ask you this:
-If I told you Christians were a persecuted minority, you'd say that's silly right? And you yourself have posted numerous times about how Atheists have been denied their proper voice and place, how they are not treated equally. So would it be stupid of me to say that perhaps, the freedom of speech that Christians enjoy (having all these outlets like radio) and that you enjoy are somewhat different?
-How would you approach dealing with bigoted speech, given that these inequalities exist?
(To my example about an imam criticizing the US within our borders, he's likely to get stopped at the airport. You aren't. That's not equal footing by any stretch of the imagination).
I've never said I think the kind of destruction the extremists called for was a right thing to do.
I do think, however, that the position that all hate speech laws are a dumb idea isn't as easy as you make it sound. After all, Germany is a fairly free liberal democracy, and stuff like Nazi symbols are outlawed.
I read some of Levant's stuff there, and dammit, the problem -- which maybe I should have stated at the very beginning -- is that I do think he's right about the right to say certain things. But it's frustrating to me that people refuse to acknowledge that in many ways, the system is rigged. If everybody was in a perfect world where we all had equal access to everything, that wouldn't be so. But we don't.
Anyhow, I am going to state, fully and publicly that I judged Levant too harshly. Though my instinct is to go have a chat with Mr. Soharwardy. For all I know he could be as belligerent as Levant.
And I'll be less vague: the cartoons are being used as a way to show that Muslims are somehow irrational and their objections are so stupid nobody could ever understand them. I don't think you take that position, Ed, but that's the context they almost always appear in.
Jesus, Ed, I can't get why folks jump all over the idea that it isn't a black and white case. Life just isn't like that. That's why I can't say "I believe in free speech" as an absolute, axiomatic position. It's why I have mixed feelings about the hate speech laws as they are written.
Reading Levant, I feel like I'm watching a battle in which I don't want either side to win. Levant because he dresses up old-fashioned bigotry with nice words. Soharwardy because he seems like someone who is just plain thin-skinned. Do you understand, Ed, why I can't be a fundamentalist about this stuff? This as someone who as wroked as a reporter for 15 years. I know my speech has consequences, you know? And I take that pretty seriously.
(You'll also be happy to know that the complainant will get his when he's up before the HRC for discriminating against women).
Posted by: Jesse | January 15, 2008 7:24 PM
Jesse, I find it baffling that you think that prejudice and inequalities in the world can somehow be remedied, or even addressed, by using the government to penalize "hateful speech." A person doesn't have to deny that these kind of inequalities exist in order to be opposed to the criminalization of speech. That only makes things worse-- people need to be able to voice their opinions, rational or irrational, pleasant or negative, in order for dialog to take place. As jba said above, the solution is more speech, not less. No matter how much prejudice a person has to deal with, that does not entitle them to bring the government in and sic it on people who say things that offend them.
If this "discrimination" refers to negative speech concerning women, then I am not happy at all to hear that he may be penalized for it.
Posted by: Gretchen | January 15, 2008 7:38 PM
Equal protection of the law is not achieved by indiscriminate imposition of inequalities.
Posted by: Ebonmuse | January 15, 2008 9:38 PM
Jesse wrote:
No. Freedom of speech means being free from government punishment when we speak our minds; it doesn't mean we all have exactly the same forum to speak our minds. I have precisely the same freedom of speech that Christians have in this country: we are equally protected by the first amendment. The government cannot punish a Christian for speaking out about his beliefs and they cannot punish me for speaking out against their beliefs.
I don't approach it; it's completely irrelevant. The bigoted speech of Christians is protected by the very same principle that protects my speech. All bigoted speech is protected by the very same principle as non-bigoted speech. The government simply has no business deciding what is and is not bigoted speech, and they sure as hell don't have any business deciding that Group A gets punished for bigoted speech while Group B does not because Group B is not as powerful or numerous as Group A.
And that's equally wrong. Those laws make them less free.
So. Fucking. What. Even if true, all this means is that you don't like the opinions of those who published those cartoons. Well tough shit. Don't like it? Then speak out against it. Criticize it. You have that right and it is an absolutely protected right. But they do too, no matter how much you don't like it.
You know what? No one gives a shit who you think should win. It is totally and completely irrelevant to this discussion. You can like or dislike any speech you want. You can scream at the top of your lungs about how much you hate it. But you cannot censor it. Period.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | January 15, 2008 11:31 PM
It's not bullshit. It's a fairly accurate description of the events leading up to the publication of the cartoons in Jyllandsposten, except he conflates the guy who (allegedly) couldn't get an illustrator for his children's book with the journalists who picked up the story and ran with it despite not being able to get confirmation (we only have the guy's own word he couldn't get an illustrator - he wouldn't even tell a politically allied journalist who he'd asked in the first place).
Of course, once they'd been published, some muslims "ducked into the punch", thus retroactively justifying them. That doesn't change the fact that this newspaper is not a bastion of free speech - they're racist assholes. As it happens, they're currently trying to censor the radio appearances of an ex-MP and ex-foreign minister who has had the temerity to criticize their publication of the cartoons. I think that says something about where their priorities lie.
Posted by: konrad_arflane | January 16, 2008 7:48 AM
Ah, but, Jesse, the Muslim is free to criticize the Christian in predominently Muslim countries, much freer than the Christian is to criticize Islam. You think it's tough being black in the ghetto (and, yes, I'm talking about the good ole US of A)? Try being white.
My point? Racists of any color are assholes. I learned this when I was a kid and we moved from the projects where we got ganged up on for being white to a basically all-white town and I saw the one black kid ganged up. I drew the logical conclusion -- people are all the same, they're all assholes. If you don't think hate crime is about PC oppression but think the white kids who beat up the black kid should be more harshly punished than the black kids who beat us up, do some soul searching because that's racism.
If the same standards aren't applied to everyone, it's bigotry, plain and simple and separate but equal never made anyone equal or did a damned thing to improve the balance of power. You've only to look at the history of our country to know that. We've a lot of history to overcome but balancing the scales in the other direction won't do it either.
Posted by: Donna | January 16, 2008 1:11 PM