HItchens Does It Again

Christopher Hitchens has a magnificent column up at Slate that makes a few points that need making, as incredible at that may seem in the country that Thomas Jefferson helped found. I recommend reading the whole thing, but I've excerpted my favorite parts here. He pretty much nails the medievalists of Islam and the cowards of our State Department to the wall.

And he puts together a lot of things that have been floating around in my head lately much better than I have here.

As well as being a small masterpiece of inarticulacy and self-abnegation, the statement from the State Department about this week's international Muslim pogrom against the free press was also accidentally accurate.

"Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images, as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief."

Thus the hapless Sean McCormack, reading painfully slowly from what was reported as a prepared government statement. How appalling for the country of the First Amendment to be represented by such an administration. What does he mean "unacceptable"? That it should be forbidden? And how abysmal that a "spokesman" cannot distinguish between criticism of a belief system and slander against a people.

...

[T]here is a strong case for saying that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and those who have reprinted its efforts out of solidarity, are affirming the right to criticize not merely Islam but religion in general. And the Bush administration has no business at all expressing an opinion on that. If it is to say anything, it is constitutionally obliged to uphold the right and no more. [bold added]

Thank you! So he covers the difference between free speech and slander, and the fact that the government's job is to protect the former.

And here, he echoes a sentiment I have often expressed here, applicable not merely to Islamists, but to any religionist who would force me to live by the dictates of his faith.

... Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet -- who was only another male mammal -- is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent. This current uneasy coexistence is only an interlude, he seems to say. For the moment, all I can do is claim to possess absolute truth and demand absolute immunity from criticism. But in the future, you will do what I say and you will do it on pain of death.

I refuse to be spoken to in that tone of voice, which as it happens I chance to find "offensive." ( By the way, hasn't the word "offensive" become really offensive lately?) The innate human revulsion against desecration is much older than any monotheism: Its most powerful expression is in the Antigone of Sophocles. It belongs to civilization. I am not asking for the right to slaughter a pig in a synagogue or mosque or to relieve myself on a "holy" book. But I will not be told I can't eat pork, and I will not respect those who burn books on a regular basis. [bold added]

And then, on the matter of allowing other people to put words in our mouths (and, I suppose, deeds on our shoulders)...

The question of "offensiveness" is easy to decide. First: Suppose that we all agreed to comport ourselves in order to avoid offending the believers? How could we ever be sure that we had taken enough precautions? On Saturday, I appeared on CNN, which was so terrified of reprisal that it "pixilated" the very cartoons that its viewers needed to see. And this ignoble fear in Atlanta, Ga., arose because of an illustration in a small Scandinavian newspaper of which nobody had ever heard before! Is it not clear, then, that those who are determined to be "offended" will discover a provocation somewhere? We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt. [bold added]

Amen. And then he gets to the nut of the matter, which is the desire by the Moslems to preempt debate, always a confession, in my book, of the inability of a system of beliefs to withstand critical examination.

There can be no negotiation under duress or under the threat of blackmail and assassination. And civil society means that free expression trumps the emotions of anyone to whom free expression might be inconvenient. It is depressing to have to restate these obvious precepts, and it is positively outrageous that the administration should have discarded them at the very first sign of a fight.

I have often expressed my support, reluctant though it has often been, for the Bush administration. But if there is one thing that it is unforgivable not to support unstintingly, it is freedom of speech, the very basis of our Republic, and on which its life and progress ultimately depend.

Now is not the time for weasel-words, Mr. President.

-- CAV