May 8, 2015 | Politics
From No, there’s no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment - The Washington Post:
I keep hearing about a supposed “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, or statements such as, “This isn’t free speech, it’s hate speech,” or “When does free speech stop and hate speech begin?” But there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. Hateful ideas (whatever exactly that might mean) are just as protected under the First Amendment as other ideas. One is as free to condemn Islam — or Muslims, or Jews, or blacks, or whites, or illegal aliens, or native-born citizens — as one is to condemn capitalism or Socialism or Democrats or Republicans.To be sure, there are some kinds of speech that are unprotected by the First Amendment. But those narrow exceptions have nothing to do with “hate speech” in any conventionally used sense of the term. For instance, there is an exception for “fighting words” — face-to-face personal insults addressed to a specific person, of the sort that are likely to start an immediate fight. But this exception isn’t limited to racial or religious insults, nor does it cover all racially or religiously offensive statements.
May 7, 2015 | Politics
From Texas Attack: It's Not (Just) About the Cartoons:
A misleading and dangerous narrative has formed in the wake of the shooting in Garland, Texas that is music to the ears of Islamists.
"The Islamic Community Center of Phoenix says Simpson was a consistent attendee and Soofi sometimes also came. Simpson was popular among the other young attendees."As pointed out by former CIA officer Clare Lopez, the mosque's Facebook page says it is owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity whose links to Hamas earned it being called an unindicted co-conspirator designation in a terrorism-financing trial."Lopez also notes that the mosque's imam, Sheikh Mahmoud Abdul-Aziz Ahmad Sulaiman, is a member of a the North American Imams Federation, a group so radical that it is interconnected with the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, an anti-American Islamist organization that supports Hamas and forbids Muslims from serving food to the U.S. military."The Federation had (or has) an official linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami group in Bangladesh; Sulaiman was even convicted as a war criminal there. Daniel Greenfeld discovered that the mosque held an event with Lauren Booth from PressTV, a propaganda outlet for the Iranian regime. Lopez also noticed that Simpson converted to Islam around the same time as he began attending the mosque, strongly indicating that his original interpretations of Islam were shaped by what was being preached at the mosque."
May 7, 2015 | Politics
From Baltimore Is Not About Race - WSJ:
...the disaster of inner cities isn’t primarily about race at all. It’s about the consequences of 50 years of progressive misrule—which on race has proved an equal-opportunity failure.Baltimore is but the latest liberal-blue city where government has failed to do the one thing it ought—i.e., put the cops on the side of the vulnerable and law-abiding—while pursuing “solutions” that in practice enfeeble families and social institutions and local economies.These supposed solutions do this by substituting federal transfers for fathers and families. They do it by favoring community organizing and government projects over private investment. And they do it by propping up failing public-school systems that operate as jobs programs for the teachers unions instead of centers of learning.If our inner-city African-American communities suffer disproportionately from crippling social pathologies that make upward mobility difficult—and they do—it is in large part because they have disproportionately been on the receiving end of this five-decade-long progressive experiment in government beneficence.How do we know? Because when we look at a slice of white America that was showered with the same Great Society good intentions—Appalachia—we find the same dysfunctions: greater dependency, more single-parent families and the absence of the good, private-sector jobs that only a growing economy can create.
May 7, 2015 | Politics
From Free Speech vs. Hate Speech - NYTimes.com:
There is no question that images ridiculing religion, however offensive they may be to believers, qualify as protected free speech in the United States and most Western democracies. There is also no question that however offensive the images, they do not justify murder, and that it is incumbent on leaders of all religious faiths to make this clear to their followers.
But it is equally clear that the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest in Garland, Tex., was not really about free speech. It was an exercise in bigotry and hatred posing as a blow for freedom.
Here is the cartoon that the NY Times has written such hateful and disparaging things about -- you decide.
Comments Steve Simpson at Voices for Reason - Attacks on Free Speech Come to the U.S. | The Ayn Rand Institute:
As I wrote last week, many intellectuals in America and elsewhere have taken an attitude of appeasement toward the terrorists and their sympathizers, thus ensuring that their attacks will continue. Of course, violence is not justified, they say, but should we really go out of our way to celebrate those who offend others or humiliate “marginalized” groups? (In this case, the answer is “yes.”)Already, we are seeing that attitude toward the organizers of the event in Garland, who are being called “Islamophobes” and purveyors of “hate speech,” always with the caveat that of course violence is not justified.But this attitude is a form of justifying violence, in the same way that criticizing a rape victim for dressing provocatively is a justification of rape. It says, you brought this on yourself, or you provoked your assailant, or you are the type of person who deserved this. In all events, the message is that your actions, not the actions of your assailants, are the relevant cause of the attack.There are many circumstances in which it’s appropriate not to take sides in a debate or to criticize one side or the other or both. But that applies only when there actually is a debate to take sides in or to ignore. It seems too obvious to point out, but a debate does not exist when one side is trying to kill the other.The moment someone resorts to violence in response to speech is the moment that the issue is no longer about the merits of any side’s position or the character of the speakers but about whether we are going to have the freedom to take positions — that is, to think for ourselves — at all. If we fail to support those who are trying to speak, we necessarily end up condoning, and therefore supporting, those who are willing to resort to violence. There’s no middle ground in a dispute like this, because there’s no middle ground between speech and force. Free speech cannot exist when some people are willing to resort to force.Whatever one thinks about Charlie Hebdo and the organizers of the Garland event or of any of the arguments or positions they take or support, there is no question that Islamists who threaten and use violence want to shut down all debate, all discussion, all thought, and all criticism of their religion. That is why they resort to violence.
May 6, 2015 | Politics
by SmilophileThis is a public announcement that I have recently become an adherent of the religion of the yellow smiley-face. A core tenet of our faith is that any depiction of an image of the yellow smiley-face is the height of sacrilege, the worst possible moral depravity. Therefore, I now expect all of you to cease and desist from ever using yellow smiley-faces, because it deeply, deeply offends me. (Personally, I am completely against violence, but you never know what other yellow smiley-face adherents might do. Don't provoke them. If you do, it's *your* fault, you bring it on yourself.) My religion sounds crazy to you? Hate speech! How dare you, you hater! Are you yellow-smiley-face-ophobic? Can't you respect my religion? (And by 'respect' I don't mean merely remaining silent with a smirk on your face while allowing me the political freedom to worship as I see fit; I mean I want you to show deep, serious attention and consideration to my religion, and treat it with the same seriousness that I do. In fact, I demand it.)What's that? The yellow-smiley-face is just a harmless, meaningless image to you? Amusing, even? Don't *provoke* me, you insensitive jerk! Why would you go out of your way to use a yellow-smiley-face when you *know* it offends me? WHY? Why would you do that? Why can't you just cow yourself into submission to my completely irrational, completely groundless demands?You've never heard of a religious prohibition against the depiction of a yellow smiley-face? Cultural imperialist! Get out of your shell of Western 'privilege', and start informing yourself about all the different idiotic, nonsensical things that people all over the world believe, so you can stop offending us! You racist bigot! (Yes, I've decided that my religion is also a "race". It turns out that this set of ideas that I've adopted is actually deeply rooted in my DNA. And if that makes no sense to you STOP OPPRESSING ME!)Thank you for your attention. I now expect the full support of CNN, the NYT, and all other media outlets to roundly condemn and vilify any of you who dare to mock me or provoke me by using the yellow smiley-face.
May 6, 2015 | Politics
From How images of the prophet Muhammad became ‘forbidden’ - The Washington Post:
It’s so commonly reported that Islam forbids Muhammad’s portraiture that it seems almost a waste of space to repeat it. After all, isn’t that why some Muslims were so outraged in 2006 when the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten depicted Muhammad in an unflattering light? Isn’t that why the Metropolitan Museum of Art pulled three paintings of the prophet? Isn’t that why the TV show South Park had to censor all mentions of Muhammad in a 2010 episode? “Islam forbids images of Muhammad,” CNN boomed in a headline last week.But the reality is substantially more complicated. The Koran, in fact, does not directly forbid the portrayal of Muhammad. And the second most important Islamic text, the Hadith, “presents us with an ambiguous picture at best,” wrote Christine Gruber of the University of Michigan. “At turns we read of artists who dared to breathe life into their figures and, at others, of pillows ornamented with figural imagery.” The most explicit fatwa banning the portrayal of Muhammad, she notes, isn’t tucked into some ancient text. It arrived in 2001. And its creator was the Taliban. The ban is a very modern construct.
