From the National Review online—why must I always cite conservative sites in defense of free speech?—we have an angry but also humorous letter from Professor David Gelernter at Yale, addressed to the cowards who signed the letter protesting the appearance and “hate speech” of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. You’ve probably heard of Gelernter: he’s a polymath who does computer science, art, and writing, and was permanently injured by one of the letters sent by the “Unabomber,” Ted Kaczynski.
To the Yale Muslim Students Association and its many sister organizations that have co-signed a letter protesting Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s lecture on Monday:
I love your new free-speech concept! Obviously this woman should have been banned from campus and had her face stomped in; why couldn’t they have just quietly murdered her in Holland along with her fellow discomfort-creators? These people are worse than tweed underwear! They practically live to make undergraduates uncomfortable. But let’s deal with the harsh realities. Your inspired suggestion, having Official Correctors speak right after Ali to remind students of the authorized view of Muslim society, is the most exciting new development in Free Speech since the Inquisition — everyone will be talking about it! You have written, with great restraint, about “how uncomfortable it will be” for your friends if this woman is allowed to speak. Uncomfortable nothing. The genital mutilation of young girls is downright revolting! Who ever authorized this topic in a speech to innocent Yale undergraduates? Next thing you know, people will be saying that some orthodox Muslim societies are the most cruel and benighted on earth and that Western societies are better than they are (better!) merely because they don’t sexually mutilate young girls! Or force them into polygamous marriages, countenance honor killings, treat women as the property of their male relations, and all that. Can’t they give it a rest? You’d think someone was genitally mutilating them.
We all know that Free Speech doesn’t mean that just anyone can stand up and start spouting. Would you let your dog talk for an hour to a Yale student audience? What’s next, inviting Dick Cheney? Careful study of contemporary documents makes it perfectly clear that when the Bill of Rights mentions Free Speech, it is alluding to Freedom of Speech for the Muslim Students Association at Yale. We all know that true free speech means freedom to shut up, especially if you disagree with your betters. And true free thought means freedom to stop thinking as soon as the official truth is announced by the proper Authorities — and freedom to wait patiently until then.
Now take this Ayaan Hirsi Ali. First of all, she’s a black woman, and they’re not quite ready for prime time, know what I mean? And she’s against the systematic abuse of women in Muslim societies. What about people who are for the systematic abuse of women in Muslim societies? Furthermore, she lacks “representative scholarly qualifications.” Want the whole campus flooded with quacks expressing their so-called opinions based on “experience” and “knowledge” instead of academic authority? And she’s Dutch. More or less. Enough said.
Thank you for protecting us from having to listen to uncensored ideas and make up our own minds, Yale Muslim Students Association. Or at least trying. We will treasure your letter and keep it under our pillows forever.
This is a great letter, far more effective than had Gelernter simply penned an angry rebuke (something that I might have done). I love the bits about the Official Correctors and the proper Authorities.
But where are the liberals who are supposed to be protecting free speech: my comrades who stood with me in college to protest the war in Vietnam and the inequities of segregation? It would appear that many of them, including the members of the Yale Women’s Center (who really should know better), the Black Students Alliance (ditto), and, most shamefully, the Yale Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics, seem to have made cause with those who would prefer censorship to offense, sexism to equality, and barbarism to humanism.
It’s dispiriting to see that the shibboleths of the left; multiculturalism, and post-modern relativism, cannot be broken from. The right has it’s own (authority, patriotism, etc) but real liberals should have no excuse.
Spot on and well stated. Particularly the bit about post-modern relativism.
It really is that there is a fight in the liberal mind between embracing multiculturalism and fighting harmful institutions. The only way they can resolve it is to play it safe & pick the multiculturalism route instead of reasoning through the dilemma and realizing that speaking out against barbarism doesn’t mean that you are damning all Muslims.
I imagine liberals malfunctioning like the Terminator does in T3 when Arnie gets his CPU compromised & he can’t determine if he is supposed to kill John Connor or protect him. Or like a violation of one of the 3 laws of robotics causing some sort of weird feedback loop.
This is where I cringe because people like Dinesh D’Souza start to make sense because conservatives don’t have this struggle. He has even articulated the liberal struggle accurately.
You know you’re really wrong about something when you make D’Souza seem reasonable.
“reasoning through the dilemma and realizing that speaking out against barbarism doesn’t mean that you are damning all Muslims.”
Exactly so. I think the unwillingness to confront the dilemma is just laziness. It’s an example of simple fixation.
It’s far more relativism than multiculturalism that is the problem. I live in Canada, where multiculturalism is a national principle (“we’re not a melting pot, we’re a mosaic!”), and in Toronto, perhaps the most multicultural city on the planet, and for the most part it is fantastic — great food, great music, vibrant communities, etc. etc. etc.
The place where things get sticky is not where most of culture happens, but when there are clashes between traditions and certain “Western” values. This is usually just a narrow subset of “culture”. I think we need to be careful and not require homogenous “culture” as a price of fighting against inequalities and other illiberalisms.
Indeed, part of the problem is that the word “culture” is so broad and vague. Similarly “diversity” and “multiculturalism”. Almost as bad as “free will” and “scientism” in fact.
Different cultures = different clothes, food, music, literature etc – no problem
Different cultures = different attitudes to sexism, racism, anti-gayism, sectarianism etc – can be a problem
“Different cultures = different attitudes to sexism, racism, anti-gayism, sectarianism etc – can be a problem
In fact it is becoming a VERY BIG problem in Europe.
Diana MacPherson has it right – and well stated.
“a fight in the liberal mind between embracing multiculturalism and fighting harmful institutions”
The liberal mind, informed by relativism, clearly cannot make value judgements about culturally informed behaviors (unless perhaps it’s part of whatever is perceived as the dominant culture) and defaults to a position that all cultural practices are equally valuable, ethical, appropriate, etc.
I recommend Diane Ravitch’s The Language Police. It’s 10 years old now but I think still relevant. She points out how both (some) liberal groups and conservative groups are into the censoring business; the difference is not that conservatives censor while liberals don’t, its that the two types of groups try to censor different things. (Some) conservatives groups tend to want to censor sex and profanity; (some) liberal groups tend to want to sensor hateful or derogatory speech.
Oh yes, “The Language Police.” It’s a terrific book. I suspect that, apart from certain details, it hasn’t dated at all.
Sure, just like both groups like to spend public money, just on different things.
But if we throw in a second axis of authoritarianism/libertarianism, that might explain this similarity.
Yes it probably would. With that axis in place, the response to Jerry is that many liberals today are liberal/authoritarian. Certainly not all, but then again not all conservatives are authoritarians either.
A liberal authoritarian is an oxymoron.
Those wannabe leftists, who are ready to support/defend/”understand” every misdeed, so long as it’s committed by “the other” and not their own group, are not liberals.
I think that’s a ‘no true Scotsman’ argument, and I find nothing oxymoronic about the combination. School speech codes serve as a good example. If you think a reasonable amount of political correctness is a good thing (such as: calling minority groups by non-offensive labels of their own choice), you’re probably a liberal, at least about that issue. If you want to force students on a campus to talk that way because you think the harm caused to minority students by speaking nasty labels/generalizations outweighs the harm of restricting student speech, you’re an authoritarian liberal. You’re ‘liberal’ because of your position on politically correct speech; you’re ‘authoritarian’ because you want that position enforced on others.
I think that you are no longer a liberal the moment you try to enforce your position on others. I am not suggesting that a liberal position may never justify enforcing it on others, but it has to be kept for extreme situations.
Speech which doesn’t violate any recognizable right isn’t such a situation.
Many on the right are also libertarian, I think that’s where the overlap occurs. It diverges when they extend the libertarianism to economics. For some inexplicable reason, they just can’t let go of the invisible hand.
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“But where are the liberals who are supposed to be protecting free speech?”
I’ve been asking this question myself for more than a decade. I had a raft of friends and colleagues over the years whom were perfectly content to decry the evils of religious fundamentalism when it comes in the form of a white catholic guy from Pennsylvania like Rick Santorum. But when a far more toxic batch of the same brew comes from Saudi Arabia or Qatar, they simply mewl about the importance of respecting other cultures. Where’s the courage of conviction? That is just cowardly political correctness.
In response to the abuse charges against Adrian Peterson, Charles Barkley said that beating children is part of the culture of the south, as if that makes it okay. If beating kids with a switch is part of your culture in 2014, then your culture is fucking WRONG. If your culture systemically abuses women to the point that honor violence is normative, then your culture is also fucking WRONG. In a million years, I’d never thought other liberals would expect an apology for pointing out and strongly rebuking systemic abuse.
While certainly far more rational and palatable than conservatism, progressive politics has been in a pretty sorry state in America for my entire life and I’m damn near forty.
Time for the famous Charles Napier quote about honoring local custom and tradition:
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”
Seems an appropriate response to people like Barkley. You say it’s traditional to hit your kid with a switch? Very well. Its our tradition to throw people who hit kids in jail. You exercise your tradition, then we will exercise ours.
Good point. Bring it up when someone tries to import sharia Law.
Yes absolutely. Are you trying to imply I’m not consistent? Is this the “you only pick on us, you never pick on them” whine common amongst conservative Christians?
“Are you trying to imply I’m not consistent?”
No, not at all. Sorry for the ambiguous wording. Focus on the ‘Good point’ part.
Okay, sorry about my aggressive response. It is sometimes hard to tell sincerity from sarcasm on the screen.
“While certainly far more rational and palatable than conservatism, progressive politics has been in a pretty sorry state in America for my entire life and I’m damn near forty.”
Too bad, you just missed the last era the “good days.”
I’m waiting for someone to point out the obvious to Barkley: You say “It’s part of the culture of the South to whip kids. Can all those parents really be wrong?” It used to be part of the culture of the South to whip Blacks. Could all of those whites really be wrong?
I’m sure any reporter who pointed out this obvious fact would be labeled a racist.
It is truly backasswards. When Santorum and dominionist fellow travelers are at their worst, it very much appears that if they had their way they might behave like the toxic scumbags of Saudi Arabia. I can’t for the life of me see why “liberals” will tolerate people who, in another culture, already behave the way we fear Santorum might behave.
“I can’t for the life of me see why ‘liberals’ will tolerate people who, in another culture, already behave the way we fear Santorum might behave.”
I’ve never thought about it those terms before, but that is an excellent way of stating it.
Both liberals and conservatives use censorship the same way they use legal power, to forcibly stop others from doing or saying things they don’t like.
This is wrong, but at least understandable.
The Yale Humanists stop others from saying things they like while defending the rights of they natural opponents to say things they can’t like
Among the less repugnant (crusaderish) comments on Gelernter’s great letter is this beauty, speaking of Yale and epitomising (as I read it) Jerry’s views stated above:
I do hope that our liberal and humanist brothers and sisters see the light that sometimes it is ok to not get along with everybody. In any case, this is an excuse for me to link to a great Red Dwarf scene that seems appropriate.
Ha ha! That was great! I love the “leaflet campaign”.
Mark, that ‘red dwarf’ sketch is outstanding, still tears in my eyes; a worthy successor to Monty Python, as it where. Thank you for the link.
Thanks. I have the 1st 5 years of the series on VHS. After that they go pretty much downhill.
Hilarious and perfectly appropriate. Never heard of ‘red dwarf’, will have to keep that on my radar. Thanks!
The tv series, which ran for several years, is derived from a series of books by Grant Naylor. So you can read them too.
You might find that the books followed the tv series.
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The original series were many years ago now, you may be able to get them on DVD. It’s worth following them in order if you can because, while each episode was fairly self-contained, there were some plot elements that extended through the seasons. But they’re still funny if you don’t.
We have to change the mindset that somehow it is “rude” to criticize religious belief.
We really have to move past the ridiculous respect automatically granted to the religious.
Like Sam Harris said
“The president of the United States has caimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”
I thought everybody knew…?
Only the Horned One speaks through hairdryers. Jesus speaks through cheese graters.
b&
Everyone knows God communicates through nanoscopic Ceti Eels that are dropped into the unsuspecting ear at Baptism.
Baby fish?
b&
For some reason I thought that nice quote was Hitchens’.
So did I. In fact, I searched for the Hitchens quote so I would get it right, and up popped Sam Harris.
Great quote. I love how logic can expose the absurd so effectively.
I love the “nudge, nudge” approach of sardonic juxtaposition. Sadly, those eloquent nudges may be lost in a sinkhole of bowdlerization. The systematic proclivity to appease the hypervigilant factions of the offended appears to trump the need to let the cat out of the bag. We desperately need to haz cat out of the bag.
Count me amongst those befuddled by the left. I just don’t get why they just don’t get it.
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That’s me too. I read stuff like the Muslim Students’ letter, and it’s pretty much what I expect. Then I see who’s supporting them and I wonder how they can be so f**king naive. These kids are probably just trying to do the right thing, but they still haven’t developed the ability to analyse deeply enough. They’re stuck, hopefully temporarily, at the extreme left-wing liberal level. Their thought processes still need to get a bit more nuanced.
The Gelernter letter is great, the art of sarcasm, have we lost it?
One thing is certain, the liberal left has ‘lost it’ indeed.
Along with their sense of humor.
I’m an atheist and a lefty, and don’t understand the coddling attitude by so many of my fellow lefties. It’s embarrassing.
+1 on that.
Gelernter seems inconsistent in his views. See Jeffrey Shallit:
Meet David Gelernter, First Amendment Hypocrite
“ I’m very glad that Gelernter is such a stalwart defender of the 1st Amendment of the US constitution.
But then, let’s read what he says about atheists who have rightly objected to forcing nontheist schoolchildren to publicly acknowledge their belief in the Christian god: the children have a choice, Gelernter says, because they can just shut up…“
Maybe, and I don’t know much about him, but can’t we just admire this letter for the great piece of work it is?
People are always devaluing Hitch because of his stand on Iraq. But he did good stuff as well.
Gelernter’s letter is fine and admirable — you won’t get any argument from me. The treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali is grotesque and deplorable.
But if you learn a little more about Gelernter the person, his dislike of atheists, his disreputable views on other subjects, and his hypocrisy, you might be a little less willing to claim him as an ally.
You can start here: http://recursed.blogspot.ca/2014/01/david-gelernter-hypocrite.html
and
here:
http://recursed.blogspot.ca/2009/12/david-gelernter-on-tolerance.html
I always used to be disappointed when I found that someone I admired had views i found offensive. Then I adopted this attitude:
“I must stand with anybody that stands right; stand with him when he is right and depart with him when he goes wrong.”
–Abraham Lincoln
That is a great quote. I wonder to what degree the “taint” of agreeing with or praising some the work of someone we might otherwise disagree with is essentially a “supernatural” quality? Like the way people don’t want to own a sweater they are told was owned by a serial killer? Or to what degree the “taint” is justified, having identified a person as having many positions we strongly disagree with, so that we should consider endorsing the one we agree with cautiously?
Well, for me the test is, is Gelernter genuinely a First Amendment supporter? Or is he a First Amendment opportunist, speaking up only in favor of speech (like Hirsi Ali) that he agrees with?
My reading of him, based on his columns, is that he is an opportunist, pure and simple.
I don’t know. At the moment I don’t particularly care. He’s written an excellent and on-point comment about this particular situation.
I’m not getting married to him. And I’m not going to criticize a good idea if it is spoken (allegedly) by someone with flaws.
He certainly seems to be a fan of Honest Abe, perhaps more sincerely than a believer in any particular Amendment; and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
One test I can think of is whether they’re “right for the wrong reasons”. Some religions preach things which I agree with, or at least would like to see more often – fellowship towards one another, pacifism, desiring inner peace, encouraging awe and wonder at the world, etc. – but once I start hearing those virtues described as “Christian” or “Buddhist”, my hackles raise, and when the metaphysical and pseudoethical nonsense gets recruited to support them, I basically part company.
I suppose there are advantages in two sides calling for a mutual ceasefire in order to oppose a much worse third position. It’s prioritizing. But when your “enemy’s enemy/friend” is supporting you for rubbish reasons, it’s probably more valuable to just prune what you want from them and then cut the dead weight that’s left.
Establishment of religion and freedom of speech are distinct principles. It seems incorrect to characterize his views on the two issues as “hypocrisy”, simply because both concepts happen to be written down as part of the same Amendment. A member of the British Church of England who supports the principle of free speech is not a hypocrite.
The Pledge of Allegiance problem is a situation where the free speech and church/state principles could be seen to be in tension, and perhaps he feels that letting an “under God” majority “speak freely” outweighs the church/state issue. I don’t agree, but his position is not hypocrisy.
On the contrary, if freedom of speech means anything, it means both the right to speak without fear of government censorship* AND the right of people not to have certain forms of speech coerced and compelled by the government.
* within limits of course, such as those in Smolla’s fine book, Free Speech in an Open Society.
He might be inconsistent. Aren’t we all? But this is, admittedly, a great letter to read and appreciate.
Exactly.
Dismissing everything a person says because they’re wrong on other things is not warranted. I don’t see how Jerry is calling Gelertner an ally in any way beyond his (Gelertner’s) brilliant support of Hirsi Ali.
I’m not convinced this conservative is defending free speech, but rather he’s defending someone who espouses a point of view that he likes very much, and free speech is a convenient weapon.
So why isn’t this message being delivered by (my fellow) liberals? That’s the actual question here. Why do liberals allow conservatives to “own” this free speech issue? Gelernter may be making the correct argument for the wrong reasons. But at least he’s making the correct argument.
Liberals do own free speech…..when it’s conservatives that are trying to shut it down.
And to be fair, what percentage of liberals are actually against what Ali has to say? All it takes is a loud group or two to make it seem like it’s a huge social movement.
I don’t know what the percentage is. Someone could do some polling to find out but I’m not aware of it.
What I am aware of is my own experience. Which entails being told by fellow liberals that I’m a bigot for being a strident atheist and for supporting people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I get it all the time from fellow liberals, including my own brother. These folk are very upset when I express hostility to religion, especially when I target Islam.
Owning free speech only when conservatives are trying to shut it down (ironic note: conservative Muslims are excepted) is not “owning” it.
“Owning free speech only when conservatives are trying to shut it down…is not “owning” it.”
Irony, my boy, irony.
Ravitch was citing concerns about politically liberal speech censors 10 years ago. I also thought about mentioning Unlearning Liberty in my first post, but I didn’t because I know Jerry’s already read it. But in response to your post, it seems appropriate. No, this is not just one or two loud groups. Multiple academics have cited all sorts of cases, across the US and not just originating from a few bad apples, where liberal groups want to censor free expression. The groups at Yale aren’tt unique, they are representative of many other similar liberal groups on other campuses.
Lastly, how can you possibly defend the notion that this is just one or two squeaky wheels when the signees to the letter looks like this?
The Women’s Center
Asian American Student Alliance (AASA)
Black Church at Yale (BCAY)
The Slifka Center
Council on Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
Yale Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics (AHA)
Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship
Hindu Student Council (HSC)
St. Thomas More Undergraduate Council
Youth Evangelical Fellowship
The Arab Students Association (ASA)
Black Student Alliance (BSA)
Yale African Student Association (YASA)
Jews and Muslims at Yale (JAM)
Korean American Students at Yale (KASY)
South Asian Society (SAS)
Yale Friends of Turkey
Nepali Association of Yale-Undergraduate Affiliates (NAYA)
Yale Friends of Israel (YFI)
Japanese American Student Union (JASU)
Yalies for Pakistan
Students of Nigeria
Chinese American Student Association (CASA)
Albanian Students at Yale College
Dominican Student Association
Taiwanese American Society (TAS)
Women’s Leadership Initative (WLI)
Students for Syrian Relief
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)
Building Bridges
Survivor’s Inbox
Asian American Political Action and Education Committee (PAEC)
J Street U
Broad Recognition
DisOrient
Greg, seriously, how can you look at that list and think the problem here is limited to a few bad apples or one or two vocal groups?
I guess because I don’t know who any of these groups are. How do I know that any of them are liberal? And they could each comprise one or two people.
In your original #13 post you opined that the National Review Online is not really defending free speech so much as speech they like. Then in response to GBJames you made a generalization about conservatives trying to shut it down where liberals do not. I think you’re clearly showing a bias here. When it comes to liberal groups, you demand all sorts of detailed information (how many in it? What do they stand for?) before you’ll accept that there might be a trend here. But for conservatives, you toss out the generalization pretty much evidence-free.
I urge you to read Unlearning Liberty and The Language Police. Heck, just read this, which is a promo/author interview for the former. The vast majority of the discussion is not about conservative causes and idealogies being protected from criticism, its about liberal ones.
Ack, my link did not visually show up but it’s there. The words “read this” are a link. Sorry about any confusion over that.
Now it looks like the link is broken. I get an F for HTML use today. Here’s the plaintext link:
http://www.thefire.org/unlearning-liberty/
I made no statement that conservatives were worse on this issue than liberals…my point was that both are often hypocrites. While many on both sides pay lip service to free speech, they only get high and mighty about it when it’s speech they favor.
Many liberals are eager to criticize liberalism, because, in the vein of the XKCD cartoon, it’s a way to feel superior to both. I think it’s legitimate to ask whether the facts support such criticism.
Thanks for the references to the two books; they seem like they could be interesting, although they look anecdote-oriented. That doesn’t really answer my original question.
Of course they are not going to answer your question (“what percentage of liberals are actually against what Ali has to say?”). One book was written 10 years ago and the other is about legal cases brought by a free speech law firm against US University or student-imposed censorship. Neither concerns Hirsi Ali directly.
What they will show you is that you’re wrong in thinking this is just a problem of one or two groups. Its many liberal groups, operating independently, spread out across both time and location.
As for your anecdote issue.. You said: “Liberals do own free speech…..when it’s conservatives that are trying to shut it down.” Since you pooh-pooh anecdotal studies such as the legal free speeches collected over the corse of 10 years, I take it you must have some non-anecdotal, statistically significant data backing up your position? Somehow, I doubt it. What’s far more likely here is bias: you are demanding a very high level of evidence from the position you don’t agree with, that you never achieved with the position you do agree with.
Greg,
For a less ‘anecdote-oriented’ treatment of speech codes and what they concern, you can try FIRE’s annual speech code reports. Link:
http://www.thefire.org/spotlight/reports/
My brief scan of the 2014 report gives me a roughly 7-1-2 count in terms of the categories of speech codes that shield liberal causes, conservative ones, and policies that would equally apply to both. Examples of each would be illegal or overbroad anti-bullying codes (a liberal cause), profanity codes (the lone conservative cause), and the ‘zoning’ of free speech zones (affects both).
I think this is BS. Speaking for myself, I (a liberal) criticize other liberals when they are, in my view, wrong about something. I don’t criticize liberalism. I criticize liberals when they abandon liberal principles.
Great! Yes, I too protested against Vietnam and pro Civil Rights and anti Nixon at William and Mary 1967-1971. I can remember one prof in phylosophy and one prof in psychology who participated in the protests. The many liberal profs were afraid to protest. The two above had to leave the college.
Interesting…I just read the following interview of Ali in Reason magazine:
http://reason.com/archives/2007/10/10/the-trouble-is-the-west/singlepage
She seems to advocate suppressing free speech in order to further civil liberties, which is the reasoning that is being applied to her above. She says:
Yes, and? I don’t recall any addendum to the first stating that if you advocate for restrictions on speech, you should be restricted in your speech for the good of society.
You’re implying an argument similar to the one McCarthy used against suspected Communists: we can’t let them speak because they advocate for a change in our system (including maybe our rights to free speech). It was a bad argument then and its a bad argument now. Yes, we do and we should allow people who advocate for changes in first amendment protections to speak. I disagree with them, but how am I ever to know whether my own position is flawed unless I allow them to argue against it?
I didn’t say that her speech should be restricted, only that she’s a hypocrite. That does affect the degree of sympathy I feel for her.
I think there’s some context that’s important here – Hirsi Ali has already stated that she finds Islam to be inimical to civil liberties. In her construction, disallowing radical preachers is akin to prohibiting school prayer – you are prohibiting a kind of expression precisely because it is contrary to the principle of civil liberty.
I am in favor of banning religious expression by the state, I am also in favor of free speech. I don’t feel any cognitive dissonance there.
“disallowing radical preachers is akin to prohibiting school prayer ”
I don’t agree that this is the same thing at all.
Right on, Greg. In the latter it is the government who is constrained, as it should be in promoting religion. In the former it is the speech of an individual. A vile, loathsome individual maybe, but precisely the person whose rights the 1st amendment was written to protect.
Way to strip context Greg – I said, “In her construction” as in she is contextualizing “radical preaching” as a thing that is inimical to civil liberties. State support of religion is also a thing that is inimical to civil liberties – but if you don’t like the analogy, how about our rules against discrimination? We have freedom of association right? But we have also deemed that discriminating against certain classes of people in public accommodation is wrong. We curtail liberties in the name of greater goods all the time. This is what she’s suggesting – I think you’re just seeing it more narrowly than she intends it to be construed.
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Thanks for posting this.
Wow! Now they are feeling uncomfortable. The literary equivalent of being flayed.
Man, that is one good letter.
I once had an English teacher in high school say that “sarcasm is the lowest form of discourse”. And she hated it being utilized by her students. I’ve always loved sarcasm, so was subsequently scolded on more than one occasion. I wonder what she would say about Gelernter’s letter? “F for the day” probably.
Agreed. If I had to complain, it would be that sarcasm is sometimes overused and poorly conveyed, but that’s true of any rhetorical technique. I sometimes wonder if the dismissal of sarcasm as a form of discourse is simply hipster-thinking: “The masses like it and can use it, so it sucks now!”
Hemant Mehta has posted criticism “by Muhammad Syed, the co-founder and Executive Director of Ex-Muslims of North America”:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/09/16/an-open-letter-to-the-yale-muslims-and-humanists-who-opposed-ayaan-hirsi-alis-speech/
I think the essay gets to one of the cruxes of the issue, without sounding nasty about it. The Islamic groups and their allies in this only get fussy about people speaking about Islam if they are *critical* of it – thus making the bulk of their supposed complaints out to be hypocrisy.
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Ritual genital mutilation of young children is a common practice all over the world. It’s an indefencible, abhorrent practice. A society which doesn’t grant children bodily autonomy – except for essential medical interventions – is a primitive society.
I actually e-mailed the Yale Humanists to assist me in the process of creating a secular club at my university, Southern Connecticut State University a while back. Now that I have read this and previous appalling confirmations of their support of banning someone from expressing the fallibility and cruelty of Islam first-hand, I am reconsidering withdrawing any contact with them.
Lovely Hitchslap from Gelernter!
Sarcasm is such an antidote to hypocrisy.
The problem with so many liberals is that they – we – are more concerned with being thought good people (by some imaginary liberal super-ego) than actually being good people.
It looks like Ayan Hirsi Ali’s Yale speech went fine:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/09/ayaan-hirsi-ali-comes-to-yale.php
Congratulations to the University for ignoring efforts to silence her.
it is truly refreshing to read such a forthright and articulate put down of the weak minded ‘offence police’…