Respect is being redefined as agreement
Salman Rushdie knows a thing or two about free speech and the other thing.
“We are in danger of losing the battle for freedom of speech,” Mr. Rushdie said. It is being recast as a Western imposition, not a universal human right. Respect is being redefined as agreement, and censorship disguised as a virtuous defence of diversity…Freedom of expression and imagination “is now very much back in question, and is strongly under attack by religious authorities and religious armies of different sorts, and not only Islam,” Mr. Rushdie said.
And religious newspaper columnists are doing their bit, too.
Well if you frame it that way, of course it sounds bad. ;-)
If we didn’t have the word “respect”, would the politically religious be asking for “tolerance” or “deference”?
I strongly suspect the latter.
One could also argue that we were never close to winning this battle in the first place. The US constitutional protection on freedom of speech is rather anachronistic compared to how the subject is treated historically in the rest of the western world. Two major factors seem to have contributed towards it – first it appears highly contingent on the particular outlook of the founding fathers (a mindset that doesn’t appear to have been repeated in the subsequent generations of US leaders). And second, a reluctance, compared to almost every other western nation, to hold referenda in order to amend the constitution to fit in with the prevailing public sentiment. This latter point is brought to mind by the reaction to Mike Huckerbys suggestion, a few years back, that the constitution might be altered to change the provisions affecting the separation of church and state (I don’t agree with his motives or aims but it’s at least a democratic point).
In my opinion “freedom of speech” is very much tempered in the public mind by the idea of “freedom from offense” – just look at the (lack of) reaction to the Irish blasphemy law from the public at large and the Irish media.
dirigible: they’d ask for tolerance while actually meaning deference, of course. That’s normal.
Sigmund: as far as I can tell, while Western countries apart from America may be more amenable to restrictions on hate speech, they do a pretty good job protecting freedom of speech in their legal frameworks. I could be wrong–not a lawyer, etc. But from a layman’s perspective it looks like the threat to free speech doesn’t come from laws but from public reactions to offensive comments that are met with violence and death threats. People feel that it’s ok to blame the victim of the violence rather than the perpetrators.
Not true of the UK, Jenavir – cf Simon Singh; Harry Taylor; various other recent cases, some of them covered here. Canada – cf Mark Steyn, and there’s that other fella whose name I forget. France – people prosecuted for saying mean things about Islam.
No, the threat to free speech sometimes does come from laws and/or prosecutors, these days. It’s not common, but it certainly happens.
The US constitutional protection on freedom of speech is rather anachronistic compared to how the subject is treated historically in the rest of the western world.
And, I would add, cheers for this ‘anachronism’. Freedom is never safe when it can be watered down by popular opinion.
More ‘not giving offense’ madness….
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=3036199
dirigible #2 wrote
Forbearance. The religious want others to hold back on criticism, as if there is an implicit assumption that we need to “make allowances.”
They say that people tend to think small, in that we automatically translate larger issues into being similar to situations we’ve actually been in. We prefer anecdotes, to statistics, and think that “personal experience” trumps controlled research.
I wonder if this confusion of respect with forbearance is related to this tendency. People think of times when a party or dinner conversation was ruined by someone bringing in a controversy — and disagreeing. How sad. How bullying. People have the right to believe whatever they want. Consider the delicate situation, and forbear. It’s all about getting along; we’re just trying to eat together.
Dinner Table Diplomacy, as a public policy.