Constitutional Law, Free Speech, Politics, Religion, Supreme Court

Deplorable

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

A press statement issued in the name of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, condemns the attacks on the mission in Benghazi. Also include in the statement is:

The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.

What is deplorable is that nowhere in the statement is a commitment to free speech that goes back to the very beginning of our nation.

Our embassy in Cairo issued a statement saying that it “condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” The Constitution is clear, the First Amendment guarantees the right to religious “free exercise.” There is no right protecting religious feelings from getting hurt. There is no right protecting religious beliefs from denigration.

The freedom of speech in this case involves a movie that ridiculed the prophet Mohammed. While it would be reasonable to condemn the movie based on its fallacious arguments, criticizing the movie because it “hurt the feelings” of Muslims is pandering. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Romney to criticize the State Department for pandering to religious sensibilities.

Others have called the movie an “abuse” of the freedom of speech. The movie is an exercise of the freedom of speech and would only rise to an “abuse” if the rights of others have been violated. Since there is no right protecting your feelings from getting hurt, free speech, that only hurts feelings, is protected.

Debate in the marketplace of ideas leads inevitably to the denigration of ideas. If this denigration is valid, it should not be condemned but exalted. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in his dissent in Abrams v. United States:

… the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution.

Those who oppose free speech do so because they fear their own beliefs are incoherent. After a millennia of arguments from the greatest minds, religion is no more coherent today than when it was invented.

H/T: Eugene Volokh, William Saletan.

178 thoughts on “Deplorable”

  1. Puppet Master Wannabe 1, September 16, 2012 at 10:15 am

    Paranoia runs deep. It eats at you. The problem with most paranoid people is that they start it, then run away because they are afraid. They know that people are talking about them, in some cases they are correct, in most cases its the paranoia taking over.
    ===========================
    Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after me.

  3. I have no idea who you all are, and I don’t know how you communicate. I came to this blog by coincidence.

    ID707’s commentary does seem to be inappropriate.

  4. Paranoia runs deep. It eats at you. The problem with most paranoid people is that they start it, then run away because they are afraid. They know that people are talking about them, in some cases they are correct, in most cases its the paranoia taking over.

  5. Blouise, That was a disgusting false comment made by Idealist. It was even worse than what “Not as Insane” said about me and my family. What’s with these people?

  6. “Have yor stopped beating your grandchild, not the one in Japan, or was that one someone elses?”
    “Interested? If so, let us go on. Would you like to invite me again???” (id707)

    Wow …

  7. HenMan
    1, September 16, 2012 at 3:16 am
    —————————————
    yes

  8. We manage life with the equipment which nature has shown to be useful in survival and procreation.
    I propose here to address the three commonest forms of meeting situations in life.

    Our first reflexes are tested routinely as part of the birthing process. We have need of them, life has decided over time.

    We are not aware of all of them and their usefulness can be taken for granted (mostly). They are there when needed without the control of thought to initiate their use.

    Prejudices though? The much maligned condition of having prejudices. Usch, say we.

    Were not acquiring prejudices once useful, and the process still so today? We can not afford in even a primitive life have reason to not acquiring them to avoid the time and effort to process every familiar situation in life.

    We prejudge, ie we fetch them from previous life experience a prejudgemtn which is adequate.

    How do they then become a problem? Society changes: norms, material situations, data, All can be subject to rethinking and correction of now inappropriate prejudices.

    Does that sound logical? But surprise! We are not equipped to find our prejudices, we are not aware of them, they are just part of us, and are not apparent or visible to us.

    We are also not equipped to changing them. If we found a prejudice, would it need fixing and what would you do to fix it? Have you learned? Did they teach you in school?

    OK. how big a problem is this? It was once not a proboem simply because that “life and society and technology” were changing so slowly that a generation could retain their prejudices. Then came the tightening of mankind’s density with attendant problems to be solved, the thunderingly rapid changes of the modern era, and presto we are all bombarded with constant need for change.

    Solutions? I’ll save that for another time. Early and extended education, indirect solutions or direct, is one possibility.

    Exercises:
    —-make a list of known prejudices.
    —-search for an unknown prejudice in yourself, evaluate it. How did you acquire it. Is it important, adequate? How would you change it?

  9. Hubert,

    Your images are so evocative!

    Why did Sec. Clinton not hold up a large cross resting in a glass of her own urine as proof that we do get upset, but that we allow such offensive “speech” to be made.
    And that not even the government may abridge that right (which we know is a lie, but not on religious grounds—yet).

  10. Blouise,

    How could you believe I brought up what was to me an important and new realization, if I did NOT want to discuss it.
    As for playing “who is smartest (would neve dare) what I did was to reveal another area of insight, which presuming you had read the bbefginning and important pointmaking comment upstream. Try looking for my comment pointing out my analogous situation to the Roman merchant who had spent most of his life in Brittanica. For the essentiial part of this comment, see below the fold below.

    Meanwhile I will try to explain how your evaluation of me perhaps needs revising or re-orientation (or your prejudices vv me need changing. NB prejudice is NOT used as a negative or pejorative word. They are necessary as I explain below the fold.

    Instead of my springing to do what I thought was your bidding, and analyzing Darren vs GeneH comments to the guest blogger, I suggested you look at my comments which greatly upset Darren and Bob Kauten day before yesterday. I felt that was a better and offered a proof based NOT on satisfying you and thus suspected of being written to satisfy you—heavens forbid.

    Do you always invite guys up to dance with those kind of phrases?

    Do I play dumb? Do explain your evaluation of that.

    Have yor stopped beating your grandchild, not the one in Japan, or was that one someone elses?

    ========================

    Seriously, if you had not kicked me on the shins when inviting, and set a caveat I would have rushed to discuss this matter I brought up.

    Why? A very important reason, that I the night before had discovered all by myself. How often do you. Rare in my case.

    Viz, my discovery explains why we haveve prejudices, why we aren’t aware of them, why we are averse to changing/replacing them, and why doing so is necessary—-and increasingly so in the modern era.

    Curious? I hope so, because this knowledge can suggest ways to ease this serious problem of replacing prejudices. Easing their fading is not so good a remedy, as is often suggested

    That I hit the target bullseye on the choice between Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama is due to my discovery of the natural and necessary role that the much maligned “prejudice” plays in all mammals’ lives, and particularly ours, in a complex society with complex people who can not afford complex decisions on meeting all the days decision points.

    Interested? If so, let us go on. Would you like to invite me again???

  11. It is however, ok to denigrate Christianity or Catholicism. They need to make that clear. You can force tax dollars to pay for an “artist” to put a crucifix in a jar of urine but don’t go after other faiths.

  12. Gene H.-

    A hearty “Amen!” to your post of 9-15-12 at 6:15 P.M., and your other posts here in general.

    President Obama has so thoroughly bought into the “Kill the terrorists” mentality that he can no longer distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. Subjecting a man to gulag conditions in an American prison (Bradley Manning) for exposing American governmental wrongdoing shows how far Obama has regressed since his days as an alleged “Professor of Constitutional Law”.

    Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are both far more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama ever was.

    The injustice of Bradley Manning in prison awaiting a military kangaroo court’s premeditated guilty verdict while Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al live in luxury, untroubled by their mass killing of Iraqi Civilians and American Servicemen and Women, is a stain that will never be washed away.

  13. Theresa,

    That story was addressed here. It was a non-binding resolution but had they tried to pass it as law, it would most certainly have not passed Constitutional scrutiny under the Lemon test as an Establishment Clause issue nor prior restraint examination as related to free speech.

  14. After giving this considerable thought, Secretary Clinton said what she had to say under the circumstances. It was neither the time nor the place to give a lecture on the American Constitution to an audience that was made up of both Americans and foreigners. Of course she deplored an inflammatory film that was apparently made with the idea of fomenting unrest in the Muslim community. It was a crappy film and obviously another version of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater. She was in the position of trying to defuse and explosive political situation in an area where we have little influence.

    As for the Obama administration asking YouTube to review the film and see if it violated their ‘terms of service’ standard is also within bounds. They did not tell YouTube to shut it down, but to review it under YouTube’s own standards. Videos get yanked all the time for a variety of reasons.

    After more thought about what I would say if I were suddenly thrust into that situation, I would probably say much the same thing. It is one thing so sit on the sidelines and snipe at what politicians say, but they are on the front lines of of diplomacy.

  15. “There is no right protecting religious feelings from getting hurt. There is no right protecting religious beliefs from denigration…”

    Does that belief extend to all groups?
    Last month, the California State Assembly passed a resolution urging state educational institutions to crack down on criticism of Israel on campuses, which the resolution defines as “anti-Semitism.” So now the police have the discretion to arrest anybody who criticizes the actions of the state of Israel, religion as well as its politics.

  20. No one plays dumb. This site is becoming deplorable with the negatative people. I did, I didn’t, yes you did, no I didn’t.

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