The free speech you disagree with

Thomas Paine said, "He who would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." 

This principle -- espoused by many leaders of the Enlightenment -- was famously summarized by historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall as "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend unto death your right to say it."  It's a central founding tenet of democracy.  We all have voices, and are allowed (within certain well-demarcated boundaries, including prohibitions against threats, hate speech, and fraudulent claims) to use them to voice our own views.

That right has been steadily eroding under the Trump regime.

The situation got markedly worse following the assassination of right-wing agitator Charlie Kirk last week.  First, allow me to state up front that I am in no way celebrating Kirk's death.  No one deserves to be murdered, period, end of story.

But.  The fact remains that Kirk was a thoroughly horrible human being, and his violent death doesn't cleanse him of the odium of things he himself said.  Here's a small sampler:

• "[The biblical injunction to stone gay people to death] is God's perfect law when it comes to sexual matters."
• "[Black people] are coming out, and they're saying, 'I'm only here because of affirmative action.' Yeah, we know.  You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously.  You had to go steal a white person's slot to go be taken somewhat seriously."
• "We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the mid-1960s."
• "I can't stand the word empathy, actually.  I think empathy is a made up new age term that does a lot of damage."
• "[Transgender people] are an abomination to God."

But like -- we'd hope -- anyone else in the United States, Kirk had the right to say all those things, just as I have the right to vehemently, and vocally, disagree with them.

Then he was murdered.  And the people on the right immediately assumed that the killer was a leftist.  Or transgender.  Or an immigrant.  Or Black.  Or maybe a Black immigrant transgender leftist.  Before a scrap of information was known about the actual killer, self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" (and, judging by the extent to which he controls content on X/Twitter, actual complete hypocrite) Elon Musk stated, "The Left is the party of murder."  I saw more than one person on social media post a horrified, "They killed Charlie Kirk" -- and you know who "they" is.  

Then a 22-year-old man was arrested for the murder, and it turns out he's a white Mormon conservative whose family his own grandmother described as "one hundred percent MAGA."  Well, can't have that spoiling the narrative -- so immediately the Right started casting about for reasons that the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, can't have been what he seemed.  A good example is this one, from Dinesh D'Souza Distort D'Newsa:

Never mind that Robinson attended college for exactly one semester, with the notoriously left-wing major of... engineering?  Not only that, it was during the COVID lockdown and contained only virtual classes, and he dropped out afterward -- to attend trade school.  

Man, those sly, scheming leftist professors work fast.

At present, the alleged killer's motives are unclear, as he's "not talking with investigators," but it's been credibly claimed that Robinson was a follower of people like Laura Loomer and Nick Fuentes, who criticized Kirk for not being far right enough.  (Interestingly, shortly after Kirk's death, Loomer deleted all her tweets that had been critical of Kirk, and Fuentes posted a message to his "Groyper Army" on X/Twitter, saying, "If you take up arms, I disavow you.  I disown you in the strongest possible terms."  More than a little suspicious, that.)

In all of this, what's certain is that Robinson is not anything close to a "leftist."

But none of that matters.  Trump has called for a crackdown on anyone vocally on the left, and especially anyone who is publicly critical of Charlie Kirk, often merely for repeating what Kirk himself said.  Just a couple of days ago, ABC terminated talk show host Jimmy Kimmel for saying, "The MAGA gang is desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it," which is nothing more than the honest truth.

And it's also true that currently the "MAGA gang" has a stranglehold on the media.  The United States is not as bad as North Korea yet -- where anything even remotely critical of Dear Leader can get you killed -- but it's rapidly heading that direction.  Forty percent of the news entering American households is controlled by stations owned by the strongly conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, which includes the majority of not only Fox-affiliated stations but the majority of those connected to CBS, NBC, and ABC.  The idea of independent, unbiased news media in the United States is very much a thing of the past.  If you think they don't screen every last news story presented, and make sure anything even mildly critical of the current regime is expunged, you're fooling yourself.

The fact that people like Kimmel and Stephen Colbert got away with it for a while is actually surprising -- but now even they've been silenced.

I had virtually convinced myself not to write about Kirk's death and the fallout afterward.  Tempers are running high on both sides, and my own distaste for everything Kirk stood for makes it too easy for anyone who leans right to dismiss me as "just another radical leftist."  As I said in the beginning, no one deserves to be murdered for their beliefs, and that includes people I vehemently disagree with.  (And contrary to what a lot of MAGA types want you to believe, the vast majority of people on the left have been saying exactly that; the number of people I've seen "celebrating" Kirk's death is extremely small.)

But the idea that Trump and his cronies are coldly, callously using this violent act as an incentive for cracking down on dissent is somewhere beyond reprehensible.  It is also not without precedent.  The MAGA playbook owes much to the strategies of Joseph Goebbels, who used just such an incident -- the murder of Nazi party member Horst Wessel -- to crack down on the communists.  When Wessel was shot to death by a communist, he was elevated to martyr status, statues of him erected in public places, and a song about his heroism composed.  (In another parallel that would be comical if all this wasn't so deadly serious, Adolf Hitler didn't bother to go to Wessel's funeral, just as Trump didn't go to Kirk's -- Trump was too busy playing golf to honor the man he called "a true American hero.")

In any case, I decided I couldn't stay silent.  I'm not sure what this'll accomplish, besides probably losing me some followers.  At this point, there aren't many people who are still undecided, and the impossibly annoying backfire effect makes it likely that anyone who disagrees with me and reads this will come away disagreeing with me even more stridently.

But you know what?  That is your right.  I will keep speaking up, and I hope you do, too.  I can't do much to stop the degradation of human rights that is currently happening in this country, except for continuing to voice my beliefs as long as I am able.

The bottom line is that everyone supports the free speech they agree with.  The sticking point comes with supporting the free speech you disagree with.  And -- this is the critical thing -- screaming like hell when anyone tries to take away that right from anyone.  Because you know what?  Once the fascists start curtailing the rights to free speech, they don't stop.  You might want to reread Martin Niemöller's famous poem that begins "First they came for the socialists."  Yeah, perhaps right now you're safe, but if things keep going the way they're going, you can't count on staying that way.

Just remember -- that poem is all too short.  And it doesn't end well.

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Free speech vs. the truth

There are times when my uncompromising support of the right to free speech runs head-first into my uncompromising commitment to the truth.

The topic comes up because once a week, I volunteer as a book sorter for the Tompkins County (Ithaca, New York) Friends of the Library Used Book Sale.  This event, which occurs twice a year (May and October), is one of the biggest used book sales in the United States; we sort, shelve, and sell around a half a million used books yearly.

Besides my desire to help the very worthwhile cause of supporting our local library system, I also volunteer for a purely selfish reason; if I put in thirty hours, I get to go to the volunteers' presale and have first crack at the books.  The fall presale is coming up on October 1, and I still haven't gotten through all the books I bought at the spring sale.  

This fact, of course, won't slow me down a bit.

The problem with being a sorter, though, is that sometimes we have to sort (and therefore offer for sale) books that are kind of... out there.  And I don't mean weird.  Weird is fine.  This week, for example, I put in the "Physical Sciences" section a three-volume hardcover set called The Biochemistry of Collagen.  I mean, I know collagen is important, but three volumes' worth?  (Other good examples I saw recently are Fancy Coffins to Make Yourself, The Official Spam Recipe Book, and Successful Muskrat Farming.)

So bizarre isn't problematic.  What bothers me is how to handle books that are, to put not too fine a point on it, bullshit.  For example, what to do with the book I ended up with this week -- Hyemeyohsts Storm's infamous Seven Arrows.  Storm claimed to be Cheyenne, but actually is of German ancestry.  His book is supposedly about Cheyenne history and tribal beliefs, but is a mishmash of maybe five percent facts and the other ninety-five percent made-up gobbledygook.  When his book came out, naturally someone asked the Cheyenne Tribal Authority about him, and they said they'd never heard of him -- and it turned out that Storm (his actual name is Arthur Charles) had presented a falsified tribal enrollment to his publisher to convince them he actually is Native.  As far as his book, the Cheyenne consider it "blasphemous, exploitative, disrespectful, stereotypical, and racist."

So, where do I sort Seven Arrows?  Anthropology?  It isn't.  Religion?  Maybe what Storm wrote reflects his own religious beliefs; and given the popularity of the book with New Age types, evidently he's convinced quite a few folks to join in.  Fiction?  Much like Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan books, he didn't publish it as fiction.  Both men (well, for Castaneda, until his death in 1998) acted as if what they'd written was nothing more than the literal truth, which makes the books the absolute worst sort of cultural appropriation -- attractive lies dressed up as a real, if esoteric, indigenous belief system.

And there are loads of people who do think it's all factual.  Apparently both Storm's book and Castaneda's multiple volumes are still used as teaching texts in college anthropology and ethnology courses, which I find absolutely appalling given how thoroughly both authors have been debunked.

Anyhow, when the actual book was in my hands, I was really troubled about what to do with it.  I'm not allowed to do what I wanted, which was to drop it in the trash where it belongs.  I eventually decided to put it in "Religion" because it seemed the closest, but honestly, I felt guilty even doing that.  I don't want anyone reading this book and having even the slightest inclination to believe it.

What about Laurel Rose Willson's book Satan's Underground, supposedly a true account about her being subjected to ritual abuse as a child in a Satanic cult, but later proven to be a complete fabrication?  (Willson herself later switched gears and wrote a different book, under an assumed name, claiming -- also falsely -- that she was a Holocaust survivor.)  Or The Third Eye by T. Lobsang Rampa (actual name: Cyril Henry Hoskin) which purported to be the real experiences of someone growing up in a Tibetan monastery -- when the real Rampa/Hoskin was actually an unemployed plumber from Plympton, England who had never been to Tibet in his life?

What about books on homeopathy, claiming you can treat your illnesses using "remedies" that have been diluted past Avogadro's Limit?  Or ones claiming you can fix your health if you consume lots of vinegar -- or only foods that are alkaline?  (Presumably not at the same time.)  Or pretty much anything by Joseph Mercola, Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, or Dr. Oz?

And that's not even getting into the political stuff.

I know that the principle of caveat emptor applies here; if people are ignorant or self-deluded enough to believe this nonsense, especially given how much information there is online debunking it, then they deserve to be bamboozled.  As P. T. Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute," and the unspoken corollary was that suckers deserve everything they get.  And the principle of free speech should also apply, right?

But.

I don't want to be part of it, you know?  I don't want people reading Seven Arrows and the Don Juan books and Satan's Underground, at least not without knowing what the real story is.  (I actually own the first four Don Juan books -- but next to them on the bookshelf are Richard de Mille's The Don Juan Papers and Castaneda's Journey, the most comprehensive takedown of Castaneda's fraud I've seen.)

But at the same time, how is surreptitiously throwing them in the trash when they cross my path at the book sale any different from the book bans and book burnings I've so often railed against?

Gah.  Ethical questions like this are beyond me.  Where's Chidi Anagonye when you need him?

So far, I've been a Good Guy and haven't thrown away a book because I think it's bullshit.  I won't say I haven't been tempted, but as of right now I've sided with free speech and P. T. Barnum, as well as the Friends of the Library rules for volunteers.  I won't say it hasn't been without some pangs to my moral sensibilities, though.

Anyhow, those are the ethical conundrums faced by a book sorter.  Fortunately, most of the books I handle are unproblematic.  Even if The Official Spam Recipe Book makes me gag a little, I have a clear conscience about putting it in "Cookbooks."

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Free speech and consequences

A couple of days ago I broke my cardinal rule -- arguing with strangers about politics on the internet -- when someone posted a snarky reply to a comment I'd made on Twitter.

The comment was about a recent story featuring the spectacularly out-of-touch-with-reality Rush Limbaugh, wherein he said that liberals staged the shootings in New Zealand to make conservatives look bad.  The exact quote is, "There's an ongoing theory that the shooter himself may in fact be a leftist who writes the manifesto and then goes out and performs the deed purposely to smear his political enemies."  Interestingly, Limbaugh admits this claim is too bizarre even for Fox News: "[I]f that's exactly what the guy is trying to do then he's hit a home run, because right there on Fox News: 'Shooter is an admitted white nationalist who hates immigrants.'"

There are a couple of things that came to my mind when I heard about this, the first of which is that the word "theory" doesn't mean "some random idea I pulled out of my ass just now."  But that's a minor point, really.  The other thing that crosses my mind is that it's telling that Limbaugh thinks posing as a white-supremacist wacko and shooting immigrants would make conservatives look bad.

But anyhow, after I saw this story posted on Twitter, I responded, "It will be a good day when anyone who makes a statement like this is immediately shouted down."

Well.  You'd swear I just suggested violently overthrowing the government, or something, judging by the responses.  The one that stood out, though, was a guy who said, "Just like a liberal.  To hell with free speech.  If someone disagrees with you, they deserve to be silenced by whatever means necessary."

Which is packing a lot into a small space.  First, I wasn't saying Limbaugh should shut the hell up because I disagree with him on political matters, but because he had (1) made a claim that was demonstrably false, and (2) encouraged the beleaguered siege mentality that's becoming increasingly common on the Right.  And nowhere did I say he deserved to be "silenced by whatever means necessary."

But the most important point is that he seems to believe that free speech means you can say whatever you want with zero consequences.  Free speech refers to your right to state your opinion; it doesn't mean that you have a right to avoid the repercussions.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Simon Gibbs from London, United Kingdom, Free speech reason progress, CC BY 2.0]

As a simple example, consider people who've made disparaging comments about their bosses on social media, and gotten fired.  Sure, it was entirely within their rights to say what they said.  But the boss was also entirely within his/her rights to fire the employee.  What this guy seems to be claiming is that people bear no responsibility for the results of their actions -- odd since most conservatives claim to support personal responsibility.

To quote physicist and writer Brian Cox: "The problem with today's world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion and have others listen to it.  The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored, and even be made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense."

This is exactly the situation with Limbaugh's case; the logical consequence of publicly uttering a ridiculous statement is that he'll be ridiculed.  What I was saying is that it'd be nice if everyone hearing such dangerous fiction would recognize it as such and respond by telling him to shut up -- and by extension, encouraging his sponsors to stop advertising with him.  This isn't a curtailment of free speech.  It's the natural result of being an asshole.  In a fair world, you get your public forum taken away.  You're still free to say whatever you like; it's just that no one's listening any more.

After all, there's no such thing as "conservative truth" and "liberal truth."  There's only the "truth," and it'd be nice if more people on both sides of the aisle cared about it.

But honestly, I should have known that posting on Twitter, and then (worse) responding to someone who objected, was a fruitless pursuit.  The exchange didn't change either of our minds, it just resulted in two people being even more pissed off than before.  This is the danger of social media -- it tends either to turn into a battleground or an echo chamber, neither of which is conducive to change.

A lesson Donald Trump has yet to learn.

So I'm once again making the decision not to get in online arguments with strangers.  I just don't have the energy or patience for it.  I'll continue to try to facilitate change where I can -- such as writing here at Skeptophilia -- but I've recognized a losing battle for what it is.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a look at one of the most peculiar historical mysteries known: the unsolved puzzle of Kaspar Hauser.

In 1828, a sixteen-year-old boy walked into a military station in the city of Ansbach, Germany.  He was largely unable to communicate, but had a piece of paper that said he was being sent to join the cavalry -- and that if that wasn't possible, whoever was in charge should simply have him hanged.

The boy called himself Kaspar Hauser, and he was housed above the jail.  After months of coaxing and training, he became able to speak enough to tell a peculiar story.  He'd been kept captive, he said, in a small room where he was never allowed to see another human being.  He was fed by a man who sometimes talked to him through a slot in the door.  Sometimes, he said, the water he was given tasted bitter, and he would sleep soundly -- and wake up to find his hair and nails cut.

But locals began to question the story when it was found that Hauser was a pathological liar, and not to be trusted with anything.  No one was ever able to corroborate his story, and his death from a stab wound in 1833 in Ansbach was equally enigmatic -- he was found clutching a note that said he'd been killed so he couldn't identify his captor, who signed his name "M. L. O."  But from the angle of the wound, and the handwriting on the note, it seemed likely that both were the work of Hauser himself.

The mystery endures, and in the book Lost Prince: The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, author Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson looks at the various guesses that people have made to explain the boy's origins and bizarre death.  It makes for a fascinating read -- even if truthfully, we may never be certain of the actual explanation.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

The silencing of dissent

The word education comes from the Latin verb educare, meaning "to draw out of."

Too many people involved in the educational process forget this.  Education is not trying to see how many facts we can stuff into students' brains; it's seeing how we can foster their growth, challenge their preconceived notions, help them to see the universe in a new way.

Which is why what happened at Wellesley College this week is so completely antithetical to the spirit of education.

On Monday, a committee of Wellesley professors presented a letter to the community of the college.  I quote  part of the letter below, but the entire text is available at the link provided if you'd like to read it:

Over the past few years, several guest speakers with controversial and objectionable beliefs have presented their ideas at Wellesley...  There is no doubt that the speakers in question impose on the liberty of students, staff, and faculty at Wellesley.  We are especially concerned with the impact of speakers' presentations on Wellesley students, who often feel the injury most acutely and invest time and energy in rebutting the speakers' arguments.  Students object in order to affirm their humanity.  This work is not optional, students feel they would be unable to carry out their responsibilities as students without standing up for themselves.  Furthermore, we object to the notion that onlookers who are part of the faculty or administration are qualified to adjudicate the harm described by students, especially when so many students come forward.  When dozens of students tell us they are in distress as a result of a speaker's words, we must take those complaints at face value. 

What is especially disturbing about this pattern of harm is that in many cases, the damage could have been avoided.  The speakers who appeared on campus presented ideas that they had published, and those who hosted the speakers could certainly anticipate that these ideas would be painful to significant portions of the Wellesley community.

The letter was spurred by the appearance on campus of Laura Kipnis, writer and self-described feminist who has criticized Title IX implementation, and who has decried a "culture of sexual paranoia" on American college campuses.  Kipnis, for her part, was shocked by the faculty committee's response.  She wrote:

I find it absurd that six faculty members at Wellesley can call themselves defenders of free speech and also conflate my recent talk with bullying the disempowered.  What actually happened was that there was a lively back and forth after I spoke.  The students were smart and articulate, including those who disagreed with me. 

I’m going to go further and say — as someone who’s been teaching for a long time, and wants to see my students able to function in the world post-graduation — that protecting students from the ‘distress’ of someone’s ideas isn’t education, it’s a $67,000 babysitting bill.

Which is it exactly.  The goal of college -- hell, the goal of education in toto -- is not to insulate you from the trauma of ever hearing ideas you disagree with, it's to open your mind to consideration of other answers and other ways of thinking.  It's not supposed to be comfortable.  In fact, if you come out of college with your views completely unchanged from what they were on your first day as a freshman, the college has failed.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Note that I'm neither defending nor opposing Kipnis's views.  In fact, my opinion on Kipnis's views is entirely irrelevant.  But the idea that a college would block a speaker simply because his or her ideology runs counter to that of "dozens of students," and thus cause them to be "in distress," is ridiculous.

The bottom line: the only speakers who should be prevented from speaking on college campuses by decree are those who recommend criminal activity or violence.  Other than that, if you disagree with the views of a speaker, you have three options: (1) don't attend; (2) stage a non-violent protest; or [best of all] (3) show up and ask questions that push the speaker toward addressing whatever it is you disagree with.

Which is also why what happened at Middlebury College (Vermont) last week is so appalling.  Professor Allison Stanger, of the Department of International Politics and Economics, had invited Dr. Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute to give a talk.

The AEI is a pro-capitalism conservative think tank.  Murray rose to some notoriety with his 1994 book The Bell Curve, which proposed that intelligence was largely inherited, and was a better predictor of job success, likelihood of committing a crime, and financial status than is the socioeconomic status of the parents.  Murray was roundly condemned as a racist for writing about intellectual differences between different ethnic groups, and his book is still a subject of controversy today.

Murray never got to speak.  His appearance at the lectern was greeted by shouts of derision.  After it became clear that he was not going to have an opportunity to say anything, he and Dr. Stanger left -- but a screaming mob followed them, attacked Dr. Stanger's car, and resulted in her receiving a serious concussion and whiplash.

Stanger herself was astonishingly philosophical about the whole thing.  She writes:

It is obvious that some protesters made dangerous choices.  But with time to reflect, I have to say that I hear and understand the righteous anger of many of those who shouted us down.  I know that many students felt they were standing up to protect marginalized people who have been demeaned or even threatened under the guise of free speech. 

But for us to engage with one another as human beings -- even on issues where we passionately disagree -- we need reason, not just emotions.  Middlebury students could have learned from identifying flawed assumptions or logical shortcomings in Dr. Murray's arguments.  They could have challenged him in the Q. and A.  If the ways in which his misinterpreted ideas have been weaponized precluded hearing him out, students also had the options of protesting outside, walking out of the talk, or simply refusing to attend... 

More broadly, our constitutional democracy will depend on whether Americans can relearn how to engage civilly with one another, something that is admittedly hard to do with a bullying president as a role model.  But any other way forward would be antithetical to the very ideals of the university and of liberal democracy.

So the professors at Wellesley, and the students who rioted at Middlebury, are examples of exactly the opposite of what colleges should be about.  Once again, as long as you are not promoting violence or criminal activity, you should have the right to express your views.  Students learn more by being exposed to unpopular opinions, and learning to frame their arguments rationally and logically, than they will by belonging to an institution where unpopular opinions are suppressed.

And the professors and administrators should be unequivocal in their support of this.

The price of being cowed by the letter from the professors at Wellesley and the violence at Middlebury is the conversion of colleges into comfortable little bubbles of confirmation bias, where only the majority opinion is ever heard, understood, or argued with.  And if you need an example of where that can lead, you have to look no further than the echo chamber of our current administration, where yes men and women have insulated the president from the consequences of his own lies, and any dissent is labeled as fake news at best, and treason at worst.

Intellectual discomfort is not bad for you; in fact, you should seek out opposing opinions.  It keeps you honest about the soundness of your own views, and helps you to craft arguments against positions you disagree with based on the facts of what your opponents believe.  It hones your mind, improves your grasp of the real situation, and fosters dialogue and open communication.

Which should be the outcome of education in any case.

The price of free speech

It's been kind of a grim week here at Skeptophilia.  The news over the last few days has been seriously depressing, what with the current political situation, the attack in Orlando (and the chest-thumping by ideologues that followed), and the ongoing turmoil in so many parts of the world.  And much as I'd like to return to my happy world of making fun of people who believe in Bigfoot, aliens, and telepathy, I'm afraid we have (at least) one more rather dismal topic to cover.

This one comes up because of Newt Gingrich, who (according to informed sources) is currently hoping to be chosen as Donald Trump's running mate.  And in what looks like a bid to align himself with Trump's "'Murica!  Fuck Yeah!" platform, Gingrich has proposed recreating the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

[image courtesy of photographer Gage Skidmore and the Wikimedia Commons]

You probably know that the original such committee was founded back in the 1930s, first to keep track of (and stop) any infiltration into the United States by the Nazis, and later to do the same thing with the communists.  The committee did nab a couple of Soviet spies -- notably Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers -- but in the process blacklisted hundreds of people whose only crime was attending communist party meetings (or even being friends with someone who had).  Eventually, criticizing the government was all it took (as folk singer Pete Seeger found out).  Careers and reputations were ruined, and the gains in terms of national security were debatable at best.

Now, of course, the target is different; Gingrich wants to go after people with Islamist leanings.  "We originally created the House Un-American Activities Committee to go after Nazis," Gingrich said during an appearance on Fox and Friends this week.  "We passed several laws in 1938 and 1939 to go after Nazis and we made it illegal to help the Nazis.  We're going to presently have to go take the similar steps here... We're going to ultimately declare a war on Islamic supremacists and we're going to say, if you pledge allegiance to ISIS, you are a traitor and you have lost your citizenship.  We're going to take much tougher positions."

Which sounds like a credible position at first.  I certainly have no reason to defend people who have dedicated themselves to ISIS, or whose political and religious beliefs impel them to come over here and harm American citizens.

But the problem is, how do you find out who those people are before they act?  The FBI already monitors people who are suspected Islamists, not that such efforts are foolproof.  But Gingrich seems to be proposing further measures, taking legal action against people who have committed no crime, who have only subscribed to the wrong ideology.

Me, I find this troubling.  It's a slide toward imprisoning people for thought crimes, and one step away from abrogating the right to free speech.

And lest you think I'm overreacting, here; just two days ago, Donald Trump revoked The Washington Post's press credentials because he objected to perceived criticism by the media.  "Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign," he said in a statement, "we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post."

The Post's executive editor, Marty Baron, replied:

Donald Trump's decision to revoke The Washington Post's press credentials is nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press.  When coverage doesn't correspond to what the candidate wants it to be, then a news organization is banished. The Post will continue to cover Donald Trump as it has all along -- honorably, honestly, accurately, energetically, and unflinchingly.  We're proud of our coverage, and we're going to keep at it.

Which is it exactly.  If free speech means anything, it must involve allowing citizens to criticize the government.

So the whole thing is moving in a decidedly scary direction.  Look, it's not that I don't appreciate how hard it must be to craft policies that will protect American citizens, insofar as it is possible, from outside threats.  I can't imagine being tasked with monitoring anyone who is suspicious, and making the right call with respect to when to move in and make arrests -- especially given the backlash either way if you're wrong.

But I do know that restricting the right to free speech, muzzling the media, and harassing Americans for perceived "un-American activities," is not the way to go.  We tried it once before, and it didn't work out so well.  The price of free speech is risk -- but it's a cost that is well worth what you gain.

The right to blaspheme

It's time to quote Voltaire again:

"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

This is a concept that is apparently new to musician and religious activist Pat Boone, who last week called for criminal charges to be filed against Saturday Night Live over a skit ridiculing the Religious Right's insane persecution complex.

In an interview with Alan Colmes, Boone said:

There is a vitriol, I would say there is almost a hatred, of people who dare to take the old-fashioned truisms, the old traditional stands about moral right and wrong.  They absolutely, they do not want any restriction on what they might do...  There have been restrictions, as you know, the movies, there used to be a censor board in the movies that declared what should be appropriate for family audiences and not.  Then they went to a rating system, which is in a way a regulation...  I think the majority of American citizens, and they ought to be the arbiters, not a few people in robes, it ought to be the American people who determine what they want coming into their homes...  There's an FCC, you know that, don't you?  The FCC does make regulations, it's just a question of what they'll declare off limits...  You cannot do blasphemy, yes...  I think 90% of the American public would say, "Yes, I agree."  And if the public doesn't have anything to say about it -- it's the public airwaves...  [A proper punishment for allowing blasphemy on the air would be to] lose license.  Just like any other law, if you disobey the law, you're punished for it, and you lose the ability to keep doing it...  The network, or whoever's responsible for the shows -- there should be regulations, yes, that prohibit blasphemy.  Now of course it's hard to determine what obscenity, what profanity, what blasphemy is.  But to call God by some profane name -- I think anybody with a rational mind would agree that that's blasphemy.  

This is twisting together so many different threads that it's going to take some thought to tease them apart.  But let's give it a try, shall we?

First, there's the conflation of what's on the air and what is approved for family viewing.  Saturday Night Live is clearly not a child-friendly show; no one claims that it is, and it's on at an hour when most younger people are long asleep.  So talking about "family friendly programming" is irrelevant here, unless you want all programming to be appropriate for five-year-olds (and honestly, this sounds kind of like what Pat Boone wants).

Pat Boone [image courtesy of photographer Gage Skidmore and the Wikimedia Commons]

Second, there's the issue that if people object to what's on television, they have an incredibly powerful recourse: turn the fucking thing off.  My wife and I don't have regular television -- we own a TV and use it to watch Netflix and the like, but we made a conscious decision not to get satellite (we're too far out in the middle of nowhere for cable).  This decision is reinforced every time we're in a hotel and we flip the TV on, do the round of the channels (all hundred-some-odd of them) and discover that amazingly enough, all that's on is garbage.  With lots of commercials.  So if Boone et al. don't like what's on Saturday Night Live, they shouldn't watch it.  No one has them tied to a chair with the television on.

Third, though, there's the deeper issue of free speech.  Let's say the tables were turned, and Pat Boone and his evangelical pals were to make a nasty film ridiculing atheists.  (Some would say that's what Harold Cronk's God's Not Dead actually is, in fact -- portraying atheists as ugly-minded people who set out deliberately to destroy the faith of Christians, and who furthermore have thought processes approximately as deep as a kiddie pool.)  I might not like it.  I pretty certainly wouldn't watch it.  After all, I get enough hate mail here, there's no reason why I would want to subject myself to what is basically an hour and a half long screed sneering in the direction of my particular worldview.

But you know what?  My not liking something is not equivalent to my saying that no one can say it.  If you're religious, you have every right to say that atheism is every awful thing you can think of.  You can do anything up to what would amount in the eyes of the law as slander or libel.  (Those are fairly narrowly defined, and shouldn't be hard to avoid.)  I wouldn't be happy about it, but the First Amendment protects your right to say it.

But the last problem is something that Boone himself touches on -- it's impossible to define obscenity, profanity, and blasphemy, because those are (1) based on personal lines that are different for each individual, and (2) often contextual.  A sex scene in a movie, where it contributes to the plot, is (in my opinion) not obscene.  (In fact, I've written sex scenes in a couple of my novels -- in ways, I hope, that are neither obscene nor gratuitous, but genuinely contribute something to the story other than titillation.)  When it comes to profanity, it is entirely situation-dependent, something I explain every year to my students.  The whole thing about swearing, and the real reason why teachers object to it for the most part, is not because it's inherently wrong, but because you have to learn when it's appropriate.  Saying "fuck you" to a buddy in a funny situation, with a smile, could be entirely reasonable and result in no ill feelings.  Saying the same thing to your boss could get you fired.

Best to learn the distinction early, and err on the side of caution when using strong language.

The hardest one of all is blasphemy.  Some people -- apparently, Boone included -- think that any criticism, any ridicule of religion, is blasphemous.  The Saudis agree; people in Saudi Arabia are routinely whipped, jailed, or beheaded for speaking ill of Islam.

I'm not sure we should be following their example, however.

But that's the difficulty, isn't it?  When does criticism of a religion cross the line into hate speech?  The law as it stands is pretty clear; it's hate speech if it implies "immediate danger or an imminent breach of the peace."  Beyond that, you're free to be as critical as you like.

I may or may not like what you say.  But as long as you don't threaten my person, that is completely irrelevant.

Because that's what "free speech" means.

So Boone, as one might expect, is proposing something that contravenes not only the First Amendment, but any standard we have for separation of church and state.  Because face it; he wouldn't be saying this if it were Islam being ridiculed, would he?

Yeah, thought not.

In our current offense-sensitive culture, you have to wonder if we're moving that way.  Boone and his friends have demonstrated over and over that they have a persecution complex, and want Christianity to receive protections from the law that are offered to no other worldview.

It's to be hoped that our leaders will recognize right from the outset what a slippery slope that is.

The right to blaspheme

There is a fundamental difference between criticizing an idea and criticizing a person.

Ideas stand or fall based upon their consonance with the known evidence.  If I believe that aliens have abducted my dogs and replaced them with synthetic life-forms so they can spy on me, that statement is either true or false, and presumably should be resolvable by applying a little science and logic.

Okay, that's a facile example, and I recognize that; but honestly, any statement someone makes can be treated that way.  If you are making a claim about the way the world works, that claim is testable.  More importantly, testing the claim requires that we criticize it, push and prod at it and see where its weaknesses (if any) lie.  If certain realms are made off-limits to criticism, the result is that their truth value can't be analyzed.  They have to be accepted on faith alone -- i.e., without question, whether or not the evidence you have agrees or disagrees.

Which is why British MP Keith Vaz's declaration of support for anti-blasphemy laws is so wildly wrong-headed.

In a discussion over anti-Muslim statements on media, Miqdaad Versi, Assistant Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, said, "Muslim communities need to be able to respond to accusations [against] Muslims, or against the Prophet, in a more effective way... Whether there should be legislation is something that really is a more complicated question."

Vaz, in response to Versi's comments, went further.  "I have no problem with the re-introduction of anti-blasphemy laws in the UK," Vaz said. "Religions are very special to people.  And therefore I have no objection to [a blasphemy law] … but it must apply equally to everybody.  If there were to be new blasphemy laws, it should apply to all religions.  If we have laws, they should apply to everybody...  If somebody brings it forward in parliament I'll vote for it… Obviously it depends what's in the bill. But I have no objection to it being brought before parliament and having a debate about it."

Which is a dangerous step toward the type of repression of free speech you see in so many places in the world -- the end result of which is a dictatorship like Saudi Arabia, where you can be sentenced to death by beheading for "offending the prophet."  Or, in the case of poet Ashraf Fayadh, simply for bringing to light the government's determination to keep a stranglehold on all forms of free speech.

Don't get me wrong.  Ridiculing people's dearly-held beliefs isn't nice.  But once you start legislating which ideas are off-limits for ridicule, where do you stop?  Is all satire forbidden?  Do all religions fall equally under the hands-off policy?  (That seems to be what Vaz intends, but if you look around the world, it seldom works out that way in practice.)  What about other dearly-held beliefs?  What if someone is a passionate believer in astrology?  Or spirit survival?

Do we really want to try to figure out which ideas merit protection from criticism, and which do not?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Religious claims are, at their basis, no different than any other claim.  By suggesting that we set them aside from criticism, we are making an imaginary distinction, and then trying to legislate behavior regarding which side of the distinction some statement falls.

Note, however, that I'm not talking about true hate speech, in which people or groups are threatened or insulted.  Here, we're talking about ideas.  And in the realm of ideas, free speech has to trump "niceness."  While I might not like it if someone ridicules my atheism (for example), making such speech illegal is the first step down a very troubling path.

I'll end with a quote by one of my favorite writers -- someone more people in our modern, offense-phobic society should read:

Hallmark, censorship, and the culture of persecution

So apparently, someone over at the Hallmark Channel thought it'd be a good idea to censor out the word "god" in their broadcast of the movie It Could Happen to You.

The backlash was immediate and vitriolic.  The Facebook page for Hallmark Channel USA erupted in comments like the following:

I watch you [sic] channel all the time. WHY DID YOU BLEEP OUT THE WORK [sic] GOD IN THE MOVIE IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU.  Same [sic] on you.....Without GOD you would have no network. 

REALLY HALLMARK!!!!  BLEEPING OUT THE WORD GOD!!!!  HAVE WE FORGOTTEN THAT YOU USED TO BE A CHRISTIAN NETWORK!!!  WTH!!!  HOW ABOUT NOT OFFENDING CHRISTIANS!!!! 

We are very disappointed in Hallmark's decision to delete the word GOD from their presentation of "IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU"...  We will wait for Hallmark to issue a public apology before resuming our support of the Hallmark Channel etc... 

Why did you bleep out the word God from the movie "It Can Happen To You" broadcast today? I think it is time to block your channel. You make a lot of money off the rising of God's only son who died and rose again day of rising [sic], yet you bleep his Name.  I am beyond disgusted. 

Some freak High on pot says it was ok for them to do this.  I bet he collects a check on our dime.  This is exactly what is wrong.  When you are high~~you think you are god! 

I am so furious and upset. I am sick and tired of "god" offending people.  Hallmark has some explaining to do!  I have written Glenn Beck, Bill O' and Hannity.  This country is so far gone!

Marvelous.  Go ahead and tell Hannity, Beck, et al., and they'll make a capital case out of it, giving the pathological persecution-culture that is becoming more and more common amongst American Christians further fertilizer to grow on.

And fertilizer it is, friends, as in the bovine variety.  Because the reason that Hallmark censored the word "god" in It Could Happen to You wasn't because they were trying to eliminate the mention of a deity from the movie; it was because it occurred in the phrases "oh my god" and "I swear to god," and therefore constituted biblically-forbidden instances of taking the Lord's Name In Vain.  Yup -- that's right; they didn't bleep out "god" because it was holy, but because it wasn't holy enough.

[image courtesy of photographer Kevin Probst and the Wikimedia Commons]

And it's not the first time this sort of thing has happened.  Back in 2002, a mention of "Jesus" by the co-host of The View (in the context of saying "Thank you, Jesus," for her losing weight) was censored out on similar grounds, leading to a petition by outraged Christians who thought that this constituted suppression of religion.  In 2007, an ABC censor mistakenly bleeped out all mentions of the word "god" in the in-flight version of the movie The Queen, because he thought it contravened the rules against blasphemous use of religious language.

Each time, censors erred not because they were trying to offend, but because they evidently knew that these people have the sensibilities of petulant children.  For all the good it did.  If there's nothing to be angry about, they'll find something.  The phrase "damned if you do, damned if you don't," comes to mind.

Okay, I know that Hollywood is a pretty liberal place, and that much of what's on the air these days is there because of its capacity to shock (Family Guy, I'm looking at you).  But picking on The Hallmark Channel?  Really?  The network that was created from the merger of the American Christian Television System and the Vision Interfaith Satellite Network?  You'd think that someone watching a movie on Hallmark would take for granted that whatever was being done was somehow motivated by an attempt to honor Christian values.  I mean, I can see assuming the worst of Syfy or Comedy Central, but Hallmark?

I found out about this from a Facebook post, where I saw yet another comment by an outraged Christian, to wit: "14% atheists in the US, and 71% Christians, and for some reason we're letting the atheists run the show!"  Which might qualify as the single most moronic statement I've seen in months.  "Run the show?"  Being an atheist in the United States pretty much automatically dumps you into the category of "politically powerless."  If we were running the show, do you seriously think that there would be a bill that looks likely to pass in Louisiana declaring the bible to be "the official state book?"  Would there be a bill still in conference in South Carolina declaring that the mammoth is the official state fossil -- and that it was created on the Sixth Day?  Would the governor of Iowa have just signed a proclamation stating that July 14, 2014, be set aside as a "day of thoughtful prayer and humble repentance according to II Chronicles 7:14?"

Running the show, my ass.

Censor that, Hallmark.

Irony, irrationality, and self-contradiction

It is a source of immense frustration to me that people seem to be quite good at accusing those they disagree with of being irrational, while ignoring completely the irrationality of their own arguments.

And I'm not pointing fingers at any particular political or philosophical stance here; liberals and conservatives both seem to do this with equal frequency.  For example, take the recent Chick-fil-A kerfuffle.

Probably all of you know that the controversy started when Dan Cathy, CEO of Chick-fil-A, told the Baptist Press that his company is "very supportive... of the biblical definition of the family unit."  This started a firestorm of reaction, with gay rights advocates clamoring for a boycott (and organizing a "kiss-in," in which same-sex couples would kiss in a Chick-fil-A).  All of the "sanctity of marriage" folks responded by singing Cathy's praises.  Mike Huckabee organized a "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day," and from the preliminary numbers, it looks like the company may have had its best sales day ever.

Now, I have no intent in this post to address the human rights issue; I've stated my opinion on that subject loud and clear in other posts.  What I'd like to look at here is the fact that Chick-fil-A's supporters characterized this as a free-speech issue -- that Cathy had a perfect right to state his opinion, and those supporting a boycott were advocating a restriction on constitutionally protected free speech.

Interesting that when the tables were turned, exactly the opposite happened.

Remember the "rainbow Oreo?"  Of course, the huge rainbow cookie itself was never manufactured; but a photoshopped image of an Oreo with rainbow layers was widely publicized, and Kraft Foods captioned the image, "Proudly Support Love."  Gay rights supporters gave the advertisements shouts of acclamation, while religious conservatives advocated boycotts, with one outraged customer stating, "I'll never eat an Oreo again" -- and the gay rights supporters objected to the conservatives' proposed boycotts on the basis of free speech!

It puts me in mind of Ted Rall's quote, "Everyone supports the free speech they agree with."

Honestly, my own position is that if you don't like a particular company's political stance, it is entirely your choice not to patronize it.  But in this country, a CEO -- like the rest of us -- has the constitutionally-protected right to state his or her opinion.  And this includes opinions that might not be popular.

The acceptance of contradictory stances (often while decrying the contradictory stances in our opponents) doesn't end there, however.  Take a look at this website, entitled "Confuse a Liberal Use Facts and Logic" (lack of punctuation is the author's).  A brief look at the statements there (I hesitate to dignify them with the name "arguments") will suffice, because the majority of them are classic examples of the Straw Man fallacy -- take an example of a view held by the most extreme of your opponents, exaggerate it, and then knock it down, and claim that thereby you have destroyed his/her entire political party's platform.  The most interesting ones, however, are:

• Ask them why they oppose the death penalty but are okay with killing babies.
• Ask them why homo****** parades displaying drag, tran******s and bestiality should be protected under the First Amendment, but manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.
• Ask them why criticizing a left-wing actor or musician for the things they say or do, and refusing to attend their concerts, buy their albums, or see their movies, amounts to censorship, but boycotting Rush Limbaugh's or Laura Ingraham's advertisers is free speech. 

Okay, fair enough (even though I have to wonder why this guy thinks that "sexual" is a dirty word and needs to be bleeped out; but let's ignore that for the moment).  Does he really not see that the same arguments could be flipped around, and would be equally contradictory?  "Thou shalt not kill" means, so far as I can see, "thou shalt not kill;" if you're using that to argue against abortion, you have a lot of explaining to do if you support the death penalty.  (One commenter said, when confronted with this question, "A fetus never brutally murdered an innocent person," which is true but doesn't answer the question.)  Liberals who support gay-pride parades and the like as free speech, but object to a manger scene at Christmas, are espousing a contradiction, sure; especially if the manger scene is in someone's yard or in a privately-owned business, and the issues of taxpayer money and church/state separation don't enter into it.  But the reverse is an equal contradiction -- as long as the gay paraders follow the law, they are just as covered under free speech as the Christmas crèche creators are.  And conservatives are just as guilty of #3 as the liberals are; ask the Dixie Chicks.

The bottom line is that you have no real right to call out your opponents for holding self-contradictory stances while you're doing the same thing.  Both sides do it, with equal abandon, and neither one seems to notice as long as these crimes against logic are being committed by people whose position on the issues they already agree with.  And if you haven't already had enough irony in your diet from reading this, I'll end with a quote from Jesus (Matthew 7:5):  "Thou hypocrite!  First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."