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Fight Like Hell for the Right to Draw Muhammad…Then Choose Not to
“Words are like eggs dropped from great heights; you can no more call them back than ignore the mess they leave when they fall.”– Jodi Picoult
Let’s get something straight up front. For every terrorist attack, the blame belongs with the attackers. I don’t blame Reagan for the Beirut bombing in 1983, I blame the terrorists. I don’t blame Clinton for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, I blame the terrorists. I don’t blame Bush for 9/11 or Obama for the Boston Marathon bombing. I blame the terrorists.
I cringe at anyone who places blame on a lack of defensive security. I don’t mind a post-attack review of security to ensure a safer America, but not to assign blame to the victim. We shouldn’t need any security at all, but because Islamofascists and other enemies exist, we do.
Similarly, I don’t blame Pamela Geller for the terrorist attack at her “Draw Muhammad” contest in Garland, Texas on Sunday. I blame the two dead terrorists.
I’ve long been a Pam Geller fan, often steering people to her Atlas Shrugs blog to give them awareness of not only how brutal Islamofascism is to its own people, to women, to gays, to Christians, and Jews, but also to learn how considerably large the number is of Islamists who practice “honor killings,” female genital mutilation, and other horrors. She chronicles the monstrosities the rest of the media ignores.
Like Pam, I too believe the number one threat and problem-maker in the world is radical jihad. I supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As long as Islamofascists are fighting against us (ISIS, al-Qaeda, etc.) we ought to be fighting against them.
I also understand, as Pam Geller does, that there may be millions of Muslims who don’t want to kill us. The media offers that like I’m supposed to be grateful. I’m not. They owe us that. However, the number of Muslims who do want to kill us isn’t small (a constant media misrepresentation is that it is small). We aren’t talking about a lone wolf, a rogue actor, a cell, a small group, or a fledgling movement. Jihadists who want us dead run entire nations with armies, navies, tanks, guns, planes, and bombs.
Sure there are some patriotic American Muslims. Let me introduce you to Cpl. Kareem Kahn.
This is a picture of his mother hugging his gravestone. He lived two towns south of me. After 9/11 he joined the military and said he did so specifically to make the point that Muslims should fight against Islamic terrorism. Point taken, Corporal, and our enduring thanks are with you.
I don’t use him as an exemplar to say, “See, this is how all moderate Muslims really act.” By and large they don’t. I use him as an example of how moderate Muslims should act, but I don’t see them doing that. Cpl. Kahn is the standard they just aren’t meeting.
Some people, like our President Barack H. Obama (pbuh), like to say that these jihadist terrorists aren’t really Islamic, they are bastardizing Islam. Well, they aren’t bastardizing Christianity and they aren’t bastardizing Judaism. That should make them an embarrassment to all other Muslims. This cancer is under their religious skins, not mine. It’s up to them to speak against Islamofascism, work against it, fight it and kill it. We’ll be glad to help since we are the target, but I just don’t see enough Cpl. Kahns coming out of the oft-heralded peaceful Muslim community, in this or other countries.
After two terrorists tried to kill Pam Geller on Sunday, I should have seen Muslims falling over themselves to stand with her in solidarity. Instead I read nothing but criticism of her, even from non-Muslims. Good grief. What the hell is America coming to?
I hope I disabused anyone of the notion that I’m not hawkish against America’s enemies, as I now wish to discuss why I don’t like the idea of a “Draw Muhammad” contest. Pam Geller isn’t the first to do this. Recall Molly Norris and her “Everyone Draw Muhammad Day,” which I objected to on Ricochet as well.
Islamofascists don’t hate me because they are Muslim. They hate me because I’m not Muslim. They are beyond intolerant of my religion, and I don’t want to exist on their plane by being intolerant of anyone else’s religion (to which I have Cpl. Kahn in mind, not them). I must remain better than them in all things, religious toleration and manner of speech included.
While I despised the artist Serrano’s work “Piss Christ” and Chris Ofili’s work “Holy Virgin Mary” (showing the blessed mother surrounded in elephant dung and pornographic images), I knew my recourse against them is the marketplace of ideas, not bullets or beheadings. Yet I certainly don’t wish to join Serrano and Ofili in disrespecting the sacred images of others. Why would I want to be Cpl. Kahn’s Serrano? To prove the First Amendment exists to someone else? I’m armed with too many good words and ideas to stoop to being another’s blasphemer.
Islamofascists have no respect for my religion or my right to have it. They wish to demoralize my religion and strip me of it, and then make me wear Islam like a straitjacket. I don’t want to be like them.
I also don’t want to be like Barack Obama, who is on an offensive against Christianity the likes of which none of us has seen from an American President. Every time the subject of Islamofascist terror comes up, he brings up the 1,200-year-old Crusades in a whirling dervish of relativistic spin. What he fails to admit is that the enemy back then was voracious Islamic jihadists pushing their way West, turning churches into mosques and establishing by force their religious caliphate governments over unwilling Christians, as they did in the area of modern Spain, for example. I guess some things never change. We are still fighting the same enemy with their same goals. Unlike Obama, I can separate the good from the bad here. Islamofascists are the bad.
My problem with drawing Muhammad is that it is a very low form of speech. It is an attempt at insulting irreverence toward a religion or even at blasphemy (I understand that word can be subjective). In short, it has us acting like them. We are scorning their religion for no other purpose than proving we have the free will and legal right to do that. We do… but when else does our side, conservatives in particular, take an anti-religious stance? Even our conservative atheists don’t do that.
Pam Geller has no real interest in the finer aesthetics of historical and contemporary artwork involving Muhammad. Her art show was a pretext to be “provocative,” as in to seek a response. It’s unassailably true that she calculated a very high risk that the response would be violent, evidenced by her spending $50,000 on armed security, a swat team and bomb squad. Of course she was right, as she knows the enemy better than our own President.
Whether she meant to or not, she accomplished something very valuable – she proved that either ISIS or ISIS wannabes (same murderous thing) are here in America. There had been no real confirmation of that, but she laid the bait and caught the animals. Now no one in the Obama administration can still claim ISIS isn’t our main worry instead of the Crusades. I hope.
It’s not lost on me why she did it. If all things were equal I don’t think Pam intends blasphemy, sacrilege or irreverence toward anyone. She knows when a Jehovah’s Witness is turned away from her door, or she refuses an Evangelical’s request for cash on television, or ignores a Hare Krishna at the airport, none of those folks will try to kill her. Islamofascists are doing just that to others around the globe and they tried to kill her Sunday.
Pam has an American urge to fight back. I get that. She did. She made her point. If no Muslim tried to kill anyone, my money says Pam never draws Muhammad. That’s why she isn’t bothering to provoke Jehovah’s Witnesses. She’s calling out the aggressors.
What I suggest she do now is take her well-made point and not do this again, as a way of returning to her perch far above them on the decent human scale. Let’s put aside that baiting the hook with our friends is fraught with peril. Instead lets prove our American exceptionalism; our sublime use of language and civilized communication.
We can’t prove any points by having more draw Muhammad contests. Where would that end? Shall we draw one on Cpl. Kahn’s tombstone? Or on our own? Shall our legacy be, “Here lies the winner of the blasphemy contest?” Do we want that for ourselves? If we are going to set insult, blasphemy and sacrilege as our low bar, then are we not a mere deviation away from a Kristallnacht against Muslim owned businesses, mosques and homes? How low are we willing to let ISIS drag us?
A laudable goal would be to get others to accept the virtues of free speech, but I’m certain that a poor commercial for it is teaching them first that insults are as protected as compliments. They certainly are, but that’s a terrible attempt at persuasive advocacy.
It’s not lost on me how difficult convincing these people of anything will be. There is always going to be a huge challenge to assimilating Islamic people who have lived with dictators and Sharia law into American culture. I’m not sure it’s possible.
There is a distinct cultural difference that comes from a nation with Christian lineage than an Islamic one. Americans are rapt in the free will endowed upon us by our Creator, and love our country not only for its religions founders who escaped Europe and the Star Chamber, but also for weaving the thread of free will and free religion throughout our founding documents. As a matter of history (religion too, of course) that lineage comes from the resurrection of Jesus, whose life informed the enlightenment period philosophers, whose work informed America’s founding fathers.
People from countries with medieval Islamic lineage have no enlightened period from which to draw an understanding of the value of the individual and his free will. America is just not a good fit for them. Perhaps it can’t be. The cultural divide may be too wide.
Look at the mistake Lebanon made with a faulty attempt at assimilating Muslims. Lebanon was once a majority Christian nation that was thriving and Beirut was the jewel of the Middle East. After the creation of Israel, they opened their borders to Palestinians who they hoped would assimilate into Lebanese culture. They didn’t. As their immigrant numbers grew, with it grew the military and political strength to basically conquer Lebanon from within, and they turned it into another Middle Eastern hellhole. We’d be smart to take a lesson from that and start gearing immigration policy toward the likelihood of assimilation based upon shared values.
Perhaps we will always be in a state of war with Islamofascists and nothing will convince them to give up murder of outsiders and oppression of their own insiders. Until we settle on that realization, we must continue to lead the race for better ideas.
Degrading religious symbols won’t due as one of our identifiers. It’s un-American and uncivilized at its core. It’s legal, mind you, and yes I’d die for anyone’s right to disparage religion. However, my dying words are equally permitted to be, “Hey Pam Geller, how about you raise our discourse to a superior place?”
I know that one point of the First Amendment is to protect the expression of the worst of ideas. That doesn’t mean we have put those ideas in practice to prove it.
Look at Charlie Hebdo. Had 12 of them not been killed and they laid before us their usual work of drawing nuns getting raped by priests using crucifixes, none of us would consider them artists, rather useless, juvenile insult-makers.
No wonder 200 writers are boycotting Charlie Hebdo’s receipt of a PEN American award for “Courage in Free Speech.” PEN American confuses vulgarity with award-worthy speech. Were any of their drawings really courageous?
I suppose if I were to walk through the poorest section of Baltimore yelling the N-word, I can get shot and killed too. Would that in any way make me courageous? Must I do so to prove I may? Would my death elevate my speech to award-worthy? I see no difference between that and Charlie Hebdo, but I do note that their editor strained all credibility yesterday by saying Charlie Hebdo drawing Muhammad was different than Pam Geller drawing Muhammad. I understand he said so with a straight face. The only difference I see is that Pam thankfully didn’t die.
Like Pope Francis said after the Charlie Hebdo attack, “One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people’s faith, one cannot make fun of faith. If a dear friend were to utter a swear word against my mother, he’s going to get a punch in the nose. That’s normal.”
That quote bothered people. Americans in particular hold our free speech rights dear, so the thought that anyone might punch us for words is troubling. Of course punching is still frowned upon; however, America has always had a “fighting words” exception to free speech. “Fighting words” aren’t protected by the Constitution.
In CHAPLINSKY v. STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, 315 U.S. 568 (1942), the Supreme Court upheld the arrest of a man under the “fighting words” exception to the First Amendment, when he called a police officer a racketeer and a fascist. The Court held:
It is well understood that the right of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circumstances. There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting” words — those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality. “Resort to epithets or personal abuse is not in any proper sense communication of information or opinion safeguarded by the Constitution, and its punishment as a criminal act would raise no question under that instrument.”
Strange concept in exception to the First Amendment – criminalizing face-to-face words of confrontation.
I do note that in all cases that have gone before Supreme Court under the fighting words doctrine since then, the prosecution has failed, so the obvious trend is toward expanding free speech. Chaplinsky has not been over turned so it is still good law, but it is barely law. See, TERMINIELLO V. CITY OF CHICAGO , 337 U.S. 1 (1949) (conviction for anti-Semitic remarks at a rally overturned); COHEN v. CALIFORNIA, 403 U.S. 15 (1971) (wearing shirt to court reading “[Expletive] the Draft” deemed not fighting words); GOODING v. WILSON, 405 U.S. 518 (1972) (conviction overturned after yelling “White son of a [expletive], I’ll kill you,” and “You son of a [expletive], I’ll choke you to death” because the statute in question outlawed more than fighting words); the same reasoning was used in LEWIS v. CITY OF NEW ORLEANS, 415 U.S. 130 (1974) and HOUSTON v. HILL, 482 U.S. 451 (1987).
If you have a fear that the Court might someday uphold a law banning the drawing of Muhammad, fear not. That would be nearly identical to the cross burning case of R.A.V. v. ST. PAUL, 505 U.S. 377 (1992). There the St. Paul, Minn., Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance, prohibited the display of a symbol, as follows:
Whoever places on public or private property, a symbol, object, appellation, characterization or graffiti, including, but not limited to, a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender commits disorderly conduct and shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
Sounds like one could include a Muhammad drawing in that list.
Justice Scalia found the law unconstitutional, most notable in these paragraphs:
Although the phrase in the ordinance, “arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others,” has been limited by the Minnesota Supreme Court’s construction to reach only those symbols or displays that amount to “fighting words,” the remaining, unmodified terms make clear that the ordinance applies only to “fighting words” that insult, or provoke violence, “on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender.” Displays containing abusive invective, no matter how vicious or severe, are permissible unless they are addressed to one of the specified disfavored topics. Those who wish to use “fighting words” in connection with other ideas — to express hostility, for example, on the basis of political affiliation, union membership, or homosexuality — are not covered. The First Amendment does not permit St. Paul to impose special prohibitions on those speakers who express views on disfavored subjects.
Then this:
As explained earlier, the reason why fighting words are categorically excluded from the protection of the First Amendment is not that their content communicates any particular idea, but that their content embodies a particularly intolerable (and socially unnecessary) mode of expressing whatever idea the speaker wishes to convey. St. Paul has not singled out an especially offensive mode of expression—it has not, for example, selected for prohibition only those fighting words that communicate ideas in a threatening (as opposed to a merely obnoxious) manner. Rather, it has proscribed fighting words of whatever manner that communicate messages of racial, gender, or religious intolerance. Selectivity of this sort creates the possibility that the city is seeking to handicap the expression of particular ideas. That possibility would alone be enough to render the ordinance presumptively invalid, but St. Paul’s comments and concessions in this case elevate the possibility to a certainty.
Of course you also get a couple of lines only Scalia can summon:
St. Paul has no such authority to license one side of a debate to fight freestyle, while requiring the other to follow Marquess of Queensberry rules.
And then:
Let there be no mistake about our belief that burning a cross in someone’s front yard is reprehensible. But St. Paul has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent such behavior without adding the First Amendment to the fire.
It appears then that any fear about the necessity to protect Pamela Geller’s right to draw Muhammad is misplaced. I only object to her willingness to do so.
I know that in a free society with free speech, it comes with the territory that occasionally you have to take one on the chin. America is obviously forgetting that, particularly with the rise of this silliness called “micro-aggressions” and the like. I acknowledge oversensitivity exists. There really is no agreed-upon yardstick for what is legitimately speech of bad manners and what is oversensitivity toward otherwise innocuous speech.
I know that many don’t understand how drawing a cartoon is sacrilege, me included. However, if Serrano didn’t think “Piss Christ” was sacrilege, does his conclusion delegitimize my claim that it was?
“South Park” skillfully pointed out that Muslims are holding us to an undefined standard, when they drew Muhammad in a bear suit and basically asked if that is still a drawing of Muhammad. Touché.
At least on matters of religion, I prefer to be deferential to the aggrieved, accepting that I really might not understand them as Serrano misunderstood me. What does it cost me if I maintain my right to say, draw or do something but avoid doing it for the sake of another’s feelings? Nothing.
So I would fight like hell for the right to draw Muhammad. I would die for Pam Geller’s right to do it and would fight a war to kill her aggressors. But toward the good ends of being civilized in a plural society, I choose not to draw Muhammad, for the same reason I refuse to call someone the “N” word.
Published in Culture, Law
Then ask for THAT!! I would think you’d start with the death threats. That’s the place where the problem is most acute and uncivilized. Drawing a cartoon in order to make a point about free speech is about as civilized as it gets.
We ought not compare death threats and cartoons. We ought instead to compare useful and proper free speech to cheap stunt free speech.
Both are permissible but we don’t need to be cheap to make a point.
That the media is fearful and that Geller and Spencer are not, I will not argue.
But the thing the media is not doing is not the same kind of thing that this event is doing.
Speech and yes literature that mocked religious fundamentalism helped the West move out of the Middle Ages into the good times of the Renaissance. There was the Spanish ‘Book of Good Love’ which makes fun of the priestly class (the author went to jail for it); there was Rabelais, the French priest who invented a giant baby who peed all over Paris until it flooded—churches and all.
A little bit of mockery ain’t gonna kill anyone. Unless you support the fatwas against mockery.
I don’t disagree entirely, but for Islamists it’s a distinction without a difference. They don’t care if it’s a reprint of something because it’s in the news or if its an intentional provocation. The former has all but ceased out of fear, the latter has ramped up in spiteful response. If the former didn’t happen, I’m convinced the latter by and large wouldn’t either.
Why not compare death threats with cartoons? Molly Norris drew a cartoon and then her life was in danger. Pam Geller held a draw Mohammed event and two gunmen showed up. It’s not as though these are random separate events.
The event went well beyond being a cheap stunt. It highlighted the clash of values between two civilizations.
Drawing Mohammed wasn’t always a “low form of speech.” Among the exhibits in Garland were historical depictions of Mohammed…. by Muslim artists, preserved by Muslim rulers and collectors whose ideas about art as blasphemy were at least more malleable than the views of ISIS, the Taliban and so on who now target such art for destruction. The art is targeted for destruction, that is, by Muslims like those Cpl. Khan went to fight.
Mr. De Seno, do you honor Cpl. Khan’s memory by de facto conforming your behavior, whether for high motives or low, to the dictates of his enemy’s concept of Islam?
In the civil war of ideas we are in, Western dupes and Liberal Cognitive Egocentrics advance the (so far mostly external) enemy’s case. Let us not advance it – for the best of motives, of course – advance it here.
My military takes great pains to make sure our strikes are surgical to reduce collateral damage.
Again, a non sequitur. Those in the target’s CEP have no choice but to be there (unless they’re innocents and terrorists in Gaza…), no matter the care our military takes, other than not releasing at all.
There is no CEP for a picture. No one is forced to look at it.
As for whom Geller was addressing, your mind reading skills surpass mine.
Eric Hines
That the media is fearful and that Geller and Spencer are not, I will not argue.
But the thing the media is not doing is not the same kind of thing that this event is doing.
True–what the media is doing is far worse. Their timidity is far more provocative, and it puts all of us in danger from these terrorists, not just the proximate audience of a contest.
Eric Hines
lesserson:
Ah, but our enemies don’t care whether we refrain from fear or nicety. They want to control our conduct. They would prefer de jure (explicitly under Sharia) but will accept de facto. For now.
Wow, as an artist it seems difficult to reconcile ‘free’ when someone puts a gun to your head and says:
‘If you draw the wrong thing I will kill you.’
and then others who say,
‘Well you shouldn’t have drawn that.’
So if Christians/Buddhists/Taoists decide its insulting to draw ‘select your favorite death image here’ then we should exercise our ‘freedoms’ to not draw those either?
And if someone had tried to kill the ‘Piss Christ’ artist you’d be writing the same commentary? Because without the Mother angle this is very thin on freedom, but is useful to throw back at all commenters as how insulting they are being in respect to her, concerning using their freedoms that is.
Can we push back with the 3000 innocents on 9/11 or is that too impersonal?
That is exactly it. ( I added that because it seemed that it mattered to Casey that it was one or the other).
Are you making a “useful idiot” argument against me? I hope Mona Charon wouldn’t approve.
I supported 2 wars against Islamofascists and call for a 3rd with the rise of ISIS. I don’t know how much more prejudice I can show against them than to call for their summary execution in the field of battle.
That’s an awful lot of killing I’m asking for. I can certainly, with respect to innocents, be careful of them, civil toward them and treat them respectfully.
If I run over the innocents on the way to killing the bad guys, I’m just a barbarian.
I think the military would approve of my ideals here.
Of course, one can compare them. But I don’t think Tommy was. I’m certainly not.
I’m not particularly fond of awareness campaigns generally, which I suppose is my bias.
I don’t see where Islamists are making any distinctions beyond Us vs Them.
I don’t think this is really the scenario though.
The gunman has a gun with one bullet and has two people in front of him he wants to kill. One insults him and one stays silent so he kills the insulter. But he wasn’t holding the gun to silence the two. He was holding the gun with the intent to kill. One went down making a point that the killer really didn’t care about.
Eric there was a moment from Operation Desert Storm I saw (I wish I could find the clip) that helped shape me.
President George H. W. Bush got choked up watching a clip of an American soldier and his team, who had just captured a group of Iraqi soldiers.
The Iraqis were on their knees. One in particular seemed to be pleading with the Americans (he probably thought we were as barbaric as them). He seemed really scared.
The American soldier said to him words that I recall being, “Don’t be afraid. You are in American hands now, and you will be treated with dignity and respect.”
I recall President Bush was moved and so was I at the humaneness of our soldier.
Here was a guy who moments before was going to kill him, and our soldier assures him he will be treated with dignity and respect.
So I ask you – who am I to treat anyone differently here? Aren’t we the better people when in the face of brutality we don’t lose our high moral place?
That’s what I’m going for here. Nothing more.
If that soldier can act that way, I’d better do it too.
But he wasn’t holding the gun to silence the two. He was holding the gun with the intent to kill.
Yes, he was holding the gun to silence the two. Merely holding it successfully intimidated the one, as far as he can tell. He shot the other, who was so impertinent as to not otherwise be silenced.
Eric Hines
Now see, if the event went off to highlight this point I think we’d really have something.
Skip the contest and the eye-poking. Have a gallery display Islamic art and historical depictions and invite prominent Muslim scholars along with invitations to prominent political leaders to put them on the spot. Build a website explaining the history of Islamic art and of the depictions.
This would seem to make a more useful point in a much better way.
Here was a guy who moments before was going to kill him, and our soldier assures him he will be treated with dignity and respect.
Key here is the fact that those captured Iraqis were just that–under control and in no position to do further harm.
The question of free speech is addressed, not to prisoners or to the free mild-mannered, but to terrorists who are out to suppress our freedoms or take our lives.
Like I said at the top: when they stop trying to kill us, we can stop speaking bluntly to them. Not sooner. Until then, killing is their chosen language.
Eric Hines
You won’t even acknowledge the existence of the innocents.
I think you and I are stuck then.
Nobody is forcing Kahn’s mother to draw a picture of Mohammad.
If Kahn had been Jewish I would have no problem eating a ham sandwich in front of her.
If Kahn had been Mormon I’d have no problem drinking coffee in front of her.
If Muslims don’t like pictures of Mohammad, that’s their problem, not mine.
Muslims are free to honor their religious restrictions. They are not free to force others to honor their religious restrictions.
I think you are misunderstanding the enemy. These people want to kill us because we are not Muslim. And they want kill other Muslims because they are not Muslim enough. Our actions only change our place in line.
So I think it behooves us to be a little more discerning in our actions.
You won’t even acknowledge the existence of the innocents.
I think you and I are stuck then.
There’s an interesting claim. Maybe you’ll quote what I said that gave you that impression, and then walk me through your logic in getting from what I said to that conclusion.
Eric Hines
So I think it behooves us to be a little more discerning in our actions.
It’s a multi-front war. It’s not only our lack of sufficient Muslim-ness that these thugs are attacking, our freedom of religion; it’s each of our freedoms, currently, also, our freedom of speech.
Eric Hines
If you want me to accept that you personally have no standards for decorum, I reject that.
If it is true, I’d like to be at the next party at your house. It must be one donnybrook after another.
Tommy De Seno:
If we are fighting Islamofascism (and I think the word may be flawed enough to be confusing, but that’s another topic) then to extend the analogy, there is a fifth column inside our gates, and there are indeed useful idiots as well. Worse, the useful idiots have a strong position on the commanding heights of public discourse, so it requires constant struggle to keep their idiocy from infecting us, or, if infected, to fight the infection off. I think you might be catching something, though.
Mona Charen is very smart, and very nice. She probably would disapprove if I called you a useful idiot, though I’m not going that far. However, someone who tacitly or actively fosters the march of Sharia compliance in the USA is not an innocent. That’s its own problem, though it certainly complicates that 3rd war against whatever-it-is. I think Pamela Geller’s recent Time Magazine piece outlines the situation well.
I’m a great admirer of Natan Sharansky. He wrote that in the Gulag, each person had to draw his own line when it came to dealing with the State. His was: no cooperation at all. That’s why when the Soviet agent told him told to walk straight across the Glienicke Bridge, he zigzagged.
But in the sense that they are ours. Not in that they are freedoms.
Nice idea; if it’s your vision, run with it. Pamela Geller has hers. But since when did free speech require approval by art critics or academics?
Never. Hence, I’ve made no claim to such.