January 15, 2015

Offenders of the Western Faith

Western civilization’s creed is free thought and expression, the lubricant of everything from democracy to human rights. Even a simpleton in the West accepts that protecting free expression is not the easy task of ensuring the right to read Homer’s “Iliad” or do the New York Times crossword puzzle. It entails instead the unpleasant duty of allowing offensive expression. Westerners fight against pornography, blasphemy or hate speech in the arena of ideas by writing and speaking out against such foul expression. They are free to sue, picket, boycott, and pressure sponsors of unwelcome speech. But Westerners cannot return to the Middle Ages to murder those whose ideas they don’t like.

Western civilization’s creed is free thought and expression, the lubricant of everything from democracy to human rights.

Even a simpleton in the West accepts that protecting free expression is not the easy task of ensuring the right to read Homer’s “Iliad” or do the New York Times crossword puzzle. It entails instead the unpleasant duty of allowing offensive expression.

Westerners fight against pornography, blasphemy or hate speech in the arena of ideas by writing and speaking out against such foul expression. They are free to sue, picket, boycott, and pressure sponsors of unwelcome speech. But Westerners cannot return to the Middle Ages to murder those whose ideas they don’t like.

“Parody” and “satire” are, respectively, Greek and Latin words. In antiquity the non-Western tradition simply did not produce authors quite like the vicious Aristophanes, Petronius and Juvenal, who unapologetically trashed the society around them. If the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo loses the millennia-old right to ridicule Islam from within a democracy, then there is no longer a West, at least as we know it.

Unfortunately, when we look to prominent defenders of the Western faith in free speech, we find too often offenders.

Start with Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League. He recently made a series of silly statements about the terrorist attack in Paris. The gist was that the slain Charlie Hebdo staffers were nearly as much to blame for their deaths as were their killers, given their gratuitous blasphemy against the Islamic religion.

Does Donohue believe that satirists who poke fun at Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Judaism – and there are many, including the editors of Charlie Hebdo – are in similar mortal danger worldwide? Would Donohue wish such crass artists and writers to be? Do atheists find Donohue’s wink-and-nod apology for the radical Islamic killers offensive to the ideals of the secular Enlightenment? If so, should they assault Donohue for his de facto attack on unfettered free speech?

Cowardice also explains the failure to defend Western free expression. The New York Daily News recently ran a photo of editor Stephane Charbonnier, who was killed in the attack, holding an issue of Charlie Hebdo, but with the obnoxious cover-page cartoon caricaturing Islam pixelated out.

Would the Daily News – usually proud of its often lurid and graphic tabloid covers – extend such an exemption to Mormons’ displeasure over the Broadway play “The Book of Mormon,” which trashed their religion? Is it careful not to repeat blasphemies against Christianity or Buddhism?

Of course not. The editors assume that aggrieved Mormons will not storm their Manhattan offices with assault weapons. The Western media loudly proclaims its courage in taking on everyone from the Tea Party to gun owners, but it goes silent when the offended have a bad habit of lopping off heads rather than just arguing back.

We expect the president of the United States to be the foremost defender of the Western faith of free expression. Unfortunately, Barack Obama – who has a habit of weighing in on everything from his own resemblance to Trayvon Martin to the likely Final Four – has been utterly confused about free speech.

In 2009, during the Iranian Green Revolution, Obama kept quiet when millions of Iranians hit the streets to demand freedom from theocracy. Obama, who once made a last-minute trip to Denmark to lobby for Chicago to host the Olympics, was the sole major Western leader absent from a huge rally in Paris to reiterate the West’s commitment to free expression. Sports are one thing; defending free speech from radical Islam is quite another.

So far Obama has remained mum about the remarkable Cairo speech of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who called on imams and Islamic clerics to speak out against terrorist violence in their midst and to inculcate greater tolerance among Muslims. In Obama’s own 2009 Cairo speech, he invited the illiberal Muslim Brotherhood to attend in order to hear mostly half-true claims about the historical glories of Islam, while Obama cited Western colonialism, globalization and the Cold War as understandable incitements to Muslims.

After the September 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Obama wrongly blamed filmmaker Nakoula Nakoula for sparking the violence by posting an anti-Islamic video. Obama chose to go before the United Nations to attack Nakoula (who was conveniently jailed by a federal judge for a minor probation violation): “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”

Actually, Mr. President, the future belongs to civilized men and women who do not murder satirists who choose while in the West to ridicule any religion they please. Islam wins no special exemption.

The issue is not whether the late editors and cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo were obnoxious or clever, self-destructive or courageous – but only whether Westerners reserve the right on their own soil to express themselves as they please.

Too bad so many of our leaders do not understand that.

© 2015 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.