A great way to start off your day – check out the free feature on WSJ.com with all the late night jokes on Dick Cheney shooting a fellow hunter. Great stuff.
Jon Stewart: "What kind of hunting story begins with getting out of your car? As I sighted the great beast before us, my shaking hands could barely engage the parking brake. Slowly, I turned off the A/C and silenced my sub-woofers…"
I think what’s going on with the Danish cartoon controversey is incredibly important, given the larger issues it’s raising.
The Economist articulates my view more eloquently than I ever could. Bottom line: free speech should override religious sensitivities, though we should be responsible in how we exercise such expression. I’m ashamed at the U.S. government and mainstream media’s response – it’s cowardly.
For somewhat of a counterbalance, though, check out the always interesting Stanley Fish in today’s NYT op/ed page. He argues that this is really about putting self-censorship on the agenda, and it has nothing to do with Mohammed or Islam:
But in the public sphere, the argument goes, one’s religious views must be put forward with diffidence and circumspection. You can still have them and express them — that’s what separates us from theocracies and tyrannies — but they should be worn lightly. Not only must there be no effort to make them into the laws of the land, but they should not be urged on others in ways that make them uncomfortable. What religious beliefs are owed — and this is a word that appears again and again in the recent debate — is "respect"; nothing less, nothing more.
The thing about respect is that it doesn’t cost you anything; its generosity is barely skin-deep and is in fact a form of condescension: I respect you; now don’t bother me. This was certainly the message conveyed by Rich Oppel, editor of The Austin (Tex.) American-Statesman, who explained his decision to reprint one of the cartoons thusly: "It is one thing to respect other people’s faith and religion, but it goes beyond where I would go to accept their taboos."
Clearly, Mr. Oppel would think himself pressured to "accept" the taboos of the Muslim religion were he asked to alter his behavior in any way, say by refraining from publishing cartoons depicting the Prophet. Were he to do that, he would be in danger of crossing the line between "respecting" a taboo and taking it seriously, and he is not about to do that.
This is, increasingly, what happens to strongly held faiths in the liberal state. Such beliefs are equally and indifferently authorized as ideas people are perfectly free to believe, but they are equally and indifferently disallowed as ideas that might serve as a basis for action or public policy.
Strongly held faiths are exhibits in liberalism’s museum; we appreciate them, and we congratulate ourselves for affording them a space, but should one of them ask of us more than we are prepared to give — ask for deference rather than mere respect — it will be met with the barrage of platitudinous arguments that for the last week have filled the pages of every newspaper in the country.
One of those arguments goes this way: It is hypocritical for Muslims to protest cartoons caricaturing Muhammad when cartoons vilifying the symbols of Christianity and Judaism are found everywhere in the media of many Arab countries. After all, what’s the difference? The difference is that those who draw and publish such cartoons in Arab countries believe in their content; they believe that Jews and Christians follow false religions and are proper objects of hatred and obloquy.
But I would bet that the editors who have run the cartoons do not believe that Muslims are evil infidels who must either be converted or vanquished. They do not publish the offending cartoons in an effort to further some religious or political vision; they do it gratuitously, almost accidentally. Concerned only to stand up for an abstract principle — free speech — they seize on whatever content happens to come their way and use it as an example of what the principle should be protecting. The fact that for others the content may be life itself is beside their point.
This is itself a morality — the morality of a withdrawal from morality in any strong, insistent form. It is certainly different from the morality of those for whom the Danish cartoons are blasphemy and monstrously evil. And the difference, I think, is to the credit of the Muslim protesters and to the discredit of the liberal editors.
The argument from reciprocity — you do it to us, so how can you complain if we do it to you? — will have force only if the moral equivalence of "us" and "you" is presupposed. But the relativizing of ideologies and religions belongs to the liberal theology, and would hardly be persuasive to a Muslim.
This is why calls for "dialogue," issued so frequently of late by the pundits with an unbearable smugness — you can just see them thinking, "What’s wrong with these people?" — are unlikely to fall on receptive ears. The belief in the therapeutic and redemptive force of dialogue depends on the assumption (central to liberalism’s theology) that, after all, no idea is worth fighting over to the death and that we can always reach a position of accommodation if only we will sit down and talk it out.
But a firm adherent of a comprehensive religion doesn’t want dialogue about his beliefs; he wants those beliefs to prevail. Dialogue is not a tenet in his creed, and invoking it is unlikely to do anything but further persuade him that you have missed the point — as, indeed, you are pledged to do, so long as liberalism is the name of your faith.
Good article in the New Yorker about George W. Bush’s loyal speechwriter Michael Gerson. Speechwriters are an interesting breed since their choice of words can literally shape a vision or policy or attitude. Gerson was the one who choice the phrase "axis of evil," a phrase that has stuck with Bush for years.
Someday I will read a serious memoir by a presidential or corporate speechwriter; in the meantime, I’ll make do with having one of my favorite books Clinton & Me on my shelf. Mark Katz was the humor speechwriter for Clinton and Core and is absolutely hilarious.
I’m sure everyone has been closely following the developments of the shocking (and funny) Kansas teen-sex trial. Dahlia Lithwick has a good summary of the latest developments. In short: "Kansas Attorney General Phil Kline reinterpreted his state law to require all health-care workers, doctors, counselors, social workers, and others to report every single instance of intimate contact between consenting teens under 16, on the theory that each such incident constitutes a rape, regardless of the parties’ mutual consent."
Keep up the good work Kansas state government officials!
Over the next year I really need to buckle down and try to understand that part of the world. I think it will be a major challenge confronting my generation.
I pretty much agree with all that Andrew Sullivan is saying on the Danish cartoon stuff: I think there should be a freedom of press to publish without censorship, and I believe riots in response are ridiculous. I am grateful that Arab and Muslim youth have set up a web site to apologize to Denmark and Norway over "the actions of the few." It’s sad that the Arab world is represented in the U.S. mainstream media by such fanatics. Hopefully with the internet and blogging, a more representative picture will emerge. Someday.