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My point is, why is free speech such as sacred right? Shouldn't rights beconsidered in their concrete context, and not treated as sacred absolutes? And shouldn't rights be placed in some kind of hierarchy, in which, say, the right not to be killed should be nearer the top than the right to free speech? And shouldn't rights always be balanced against responsibilities, including the demand for citizens to speak responsibly? And if free speech is so important, why should I defend someone like Geert Wilders, whose number 1 agenda item is banning a book, the Koran?
(By the way, in England, the classic counter-example, for some reason, against free speech as an absolute is shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre, which apparently is illegal here. Would it be protected in America?)
So, no I don't think speech should be banned for causing offence. But I am simply not going to bother defending the free speech of someone like Wilders whose raison d'etre (ironically achieved well by being proscribed in both the UK and the Netherlands) is offending people and sowing hatred. (Just as I would not defend the rights of someone like Qaradawi to speak in England, even if the free speech principle appeared to protect him.)
Kirsty Wark did a great job chairing a discussion of this on Thursday night. I fully agree with what Dr. Jay Smith said, someone who should be much better known across the UK as we seek to get serious about the roots of Islamism. Maajid Sawaz, not surprisingly, didn't entirely agree with Jay about the value of the film but was also excellent on the arbitrary and counterproductive nature of the ban.
I then went on the official Newsnight blog to congratulate the team on all this. The extent of paranoid, mocking, anti-semitic, holocaust-denying, pseudo-intellectual claptrap that was then permitted deeply shocked me. Maybe someone from here would like to have a go? Even just in complaining to the license-funded authorities. I feel I've done my bit for now.
Interesting confirmation of that bad meme we once talked about, the one previous time I popped up, Bob. Interesting and shocking, how it has already grown in power. So, mostly disagree with you on Wilders - though disagree with Wilders about banning the Koran, even in Holland - but wish you well.
I find parts of the Koran unsavoury, but the idea it should be outlawed is wrong, and the idea that it is equivalent to, say, Mein Kampf (a claim Wilders makes) is also excessive. Hatred of Jews is the essential core point of Mein Kampf. Hatred of Jews (and other unsavoury things) is there in the Koran, but not right at its heart. I know lots of Muslims, and they are not the Muslims Wilders portrays.
I need to check out the Newsnight broadcast. Gosh, what a lot of nutters and haters there are on the discussion board there. Where do they find the time?
I also don't quite get how a personal preference has any role to play in the merit of an argument.
So what exactly is Graeme's saying? That personally he wouldn't mind if Wilders is gagged? How does that help me understand better the principle involved? Aren't the "rights" of people supposed to transcend the personal preferences of certain constituents? Are we supposed to extrapolate from Graeme's comment that our subjective feeling about another's right to anything is a legitimate parameter for denying or according that right to that individual?
I just don't get it.
What puzzles me is the complete absence of any poetry or richness or wit or originality in the proffered cliches. Always the same adjectives, nouns, etc. There is a sameness about this which not only disgusts but is so boring that it can't even induce a yawn.