There was a shooting yesterday in Garland Texas. Two men who were allegedly offended by an intentionally provocative “Draw Mohammed” event showed up at that event with body armor, rifles and murderous intent. They exchanged fire with police and security, and got themselves killed for their efforts. It has since come out that at least one of the two had long expressed sympathies with Islam, and ISIS has claimed the shooters as their own. Sadly, this isn’t the first time that purported followers of Islam have engaged violent and murderous response to cartoon drawings of The Prophet. The shootings at the Charlie Hebdo offices in France, and a shooting at a Mohammed cartoon event in Denmark, both of which occurred earlier this year, followed a similar pattern. The provocation was intentional, the response was violent, people died, and a message of violent intolerance was reinforced.
A free society is rooted in individual liberties, and prime among those is the right to freely express one’s self via speech, arts and letters. This right includes the right to express one’s self offensively, as it absolutely must. An individual liberty cannot be deemed real and legitimate if it is subordinate to the arbitrary feelings and whims of others, and offensiveness is in the eye/ear of the beholder. We have a right to take offense, but we do not have a right not to be offended.
To the best of my understanding, a typical Muslim’s belief set (despite the protestations of some scholars who claim the Koran says nothing of the sort) includes the belief that images of Mohammed are forbidden. That’s fine, we each believe as we wish. That belief, however, cannot and must not be forced upon those who do not share it. By extension, museum exhibits that were offensive to Christians, flag desecrations, racial and ethnic epithets and even simple name-calling must not be banned or punished. We don’t have to like any of these, we don’t have to condone, we don’t have to agree, but our response cannot be forceful, either in the physical sense or the legal sense.
Many, especially on the Left, bend and have bent themselves into pretzels in order to defend muslims’ right to be offended and stand in opposition to freedom of expression when it comes to this particular hot-button. The Charlie Hebdo shootings were an obvious and overt attack on free speech and a free press, yet numerous members of the press expressed a degree of “understanding” for the murderers and refused to embrace the Je suis Charlie motto that those who respect liberty put forth in response. A similar bit of “blame the victim” is popping up on liberal editorial pages, as writers and editors make double- and triple- sure that their readers understand they don’t agree with or condone the deliberately provocative nature of the Draw Mohammed event. It hasn’t quite gotten to “they had it coming,” but there is at least some “well, what did they expect?” out there. While it’s always disheartening to see members of the press abandon the core principles of free speech, it isn’t unexpected.
A step (or two or five or ten) below the mainstream press corps exists the political blogosphere, a world where one can find deep insight, thoughtful analysis, utter fearlessness, stunning ignorance, naked bigotry and appalling lack of restraint or civility. It is also the world where the epithet tea bagger is commonly used to denigrate those who identify with the Tea Party movement, those who might voice an opinion that’s also held by the Tea Party, and those who might voice an opinion that disagrees with that of the utterer of the phrase, even if that opinion has zero commonality with the Tea Party. The intent of tea bagger (which refers to a sex act) is pretty obviously derogatory in that it is now almost invariably used pejoratively. It is also overwhelmingly intended to end discussion rather than extend and deepen it, as are other common Internet pejoratives such as libtard and nazi.
This raises an interesting question: If someone who feels it’s OK to use tea bagger as a derogation against another, does he also support the right of people to draw cartoons of Mohammed as a provocation against what they see is a (sometimes violently) illiberal stance against freedom of expression? Will the utterer of the phrase hypocritically denounce the rights of cartoonists and freedom of the press if they put forth something that offends some? Or is hypocrisy and an inconsistent application of liberty not only acceptable, but desirable? Are some more equal than others?
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