Dworkin
Dworkin also good. I don’t agree with all of it, but there’s plenty of welcome clarity.
Freedom of speech is not just a special and distinctive emblem of Western culture that might be generously abridged or qualified as a measure of respect for other cultures that reject it…Free speech is a condition of legitimate government…So in a democracy no one, however powerful or impotent, can have a right not to be insulted or offended. That principle is of particular importance in a nation that strives for racial and ethnic fairness…Whatever multiculturalism means – whatever it means to call for increased “respect” for all citizens and groups – these virtues would be self-defeating if they were thought to justify official censorship.
Yes, what does it mean to call for increased ‘respect’ for all groups – and ‘cultures’ and religions and practices and beliefs? It means complete and total abdication of judgment, as far as I can tell, and that seems like a bad idea. It’s disrespectful to people who recognize the need for judgment.
It is often said that religion is special, because people’s religious convictions are so central to their personalities that they should not be asked to tolerate ridicule of their beliefs, and because they might feel a religious duty to strike back at what they take to be sacrilege…But religion must observe the principles of democracy, not the other way around. No religion can be permitted to legislate for everyone about what can or cannot be drawn any more than it can legislate about what may or may not be eaten. No one’s religious convictions can be thought to trump the freedom that makes democracy possible.
That’s the basic point. No religion can be permitted to legislate for everyone – about anything, actually, not just what can or cannot be drawn or eaten or worn or read, but about anything. Religion is the wrong tool for legislation, so it can’t be treated as universally applicable.
What the officials and government figures who bent over backwards to say what they had no business saying (that the cartoons shouldn’t be published) seem not to realise is that by doing so they are handing power placed in their hands by an electorate over to religion. If someone like Jack Straw were openly to announce that he was handing over the power to decide on these issues to a moderate C of E clergyman, masses of people would rightly object and yet such a situation is utterly benign compared to what is actually happening. Because what is happening is that without making such an announcement to which people could object, quite a few leaders have made statements indicating that in practice they are permitting decisions on these issues to be made not by a moderate of a religion that largely coexists with democracy, but by the most extreme fringe elements of a religion that explicitly insists there can be no sharing of power with temporal agencies. Because it is a creeping takeover it has a real chance of success, which is why those barriers set up to defend our freedoms from precisely that kind of thing must be themselves defended without any compromise. Better to offend gratuitously, I’m afraid, than to let ourselves be walked over. It’s a precedent we simply can’t afford.
“Because it is a creeping takeover it has a real chance of success”
Exactly. It already has succeeded to a considerable extent. Student editors suspended, papers shredded, national newspapers congratulating themselves on not publishing. It’s incredibly bizarre. If it were Fred Phelps causing all this groveling, everyone would see how disastrous it was…
Am I right in thinking that everybody in London who is interested in defending freedom of expression will be in Trafalgar Square on Saturday, 25 March, at 2 PM?
http://marchforfreeexpression.blogspot.com/
I was keen on reading Dworkin’s piece after your intro, OB, but it got off to a bad start. I agree with what you say about what he says, and what he says there. But it is all sort of nullified by his blindness to the need to use it or lose it.
It is superficial to say we can’t give up our right to free expression except when it is challenged. That is what the Islamic chauvinists are saying in essense: “we say this goes too far so stop it”. “Right, gov”, says Dworkin just as much as Straw. The only difference is that Straw is consistent and justifies kissing the imam’s arse while Dworkin says his lips really never touched skin.
It actually makes me resent the cogency of the argument Dworkin makes because it is in favour of what he didn’t do. It just makes a mockery of logic.
(And, no, I don’t think there are no circumstances when we should refrain from exercising our right of free speech. He opposed publishing the cartoons on the grounds more people would be offended and they would then kill more people, but that is simply giving in to threats. And he doesn’t even mention the need for us all to be Danes at that time.)
I hope to see everybody on Saturday the 25th at Trafalgar Square!
I know, Juan. I started out that post by disagreeing with those first two paragraphs of Dworkin’s – then changed my mind. But yeah.
And I’ve been meaning to do one about March 25th!