In my column, Free Expression Denied, I said this: "Free Speech is an ideology that has as its heart humility, tolerance, and optimism. It is humility that allows for the possibility that what you believe might not be as "set in stone"? as you once thought. It is humility that moves you to evaluate an argument for the sake of truth and not because you like the person giving the argument. It is also humility that forces you to evaluate the argument of the person you might find objectionable personally" ?again for the sake of truth! Just because you find someone objectionable does not mean they CANNOT have something valid to say. Free Speech has as its heart tolerance. I do not mean tolerance for someone preaching harm to another or for committing a crime. That is the line Free Speech does NOT cross. If someone wants to hold a public meeting and tell you how to build a bomb to blow up Chicago, then rational thinking dictates that is the line Free Speech does not cross. Free Speech has at its heart a tolerance for those with whom we don't agree or understand."?[1] And now, from the Arab world we are hearing this: "The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy began when twelve editorial cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad were printed in the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005..."?[2] The Arab world response to this is as follows: "Whoever defames our prophet should be executed," said Ismail Hassan, 37, a tailor who marched through the pouring rain along with hundreds of others in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "Bin Laden our beloved, Denmark must be blown up," protesters in Ramallah chanted. In mosques throughout Palestinian cities, clerics condemned the cartoons. An imam at the Omari Mosque in Gaza City told 9,000 worshippers that those behind the drawings should have their heads cut off."[3] This is exactly why President Bush's belief that the people of Iraq (or any other Arab world) would jump at the chance to implement a democratic government would not work! The principles of democracy, especially as applied to Free Speech is as foreign to them as their desire to kill those who "defame"? their prophet is to Americans. "Execute them, blow up Denmark, cut their heads off"?" ?the rantings of a civilized mind? On the denial of Free Expression, Philosopher John Stuart Mill said this: "[T]he peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."?[4] [1] http://ezinearticles.com/?id=67225
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Drawings
[3] Muslims Again Protest Muhammad Caricatures By QASSIM ABDEL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060203/ap_on_re_mi_ea/prophet_drawings
[4] http://www.spectacle.org/296/rulebk.html |
