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“Free Speech vs. Hate Speech” [Darleen Click]

The headline above is from the NYTimes … and succinctly reveals the ostensible American who has decided Liberty is just too over-rated.

There is no question that images ridiculing religion, however offensive they may be to believers, qualify as protected free speech in the United States and most Western democracies. There is also no question that however offensive the images, they do not justify murder, and that it is incumbent on leaders of all religious faiths to make this clear to their followers.

But it is equally clear that the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest in Garland, Tex., was not really about free speech.

How so?

It was an exercise in bigotry and hatred posing as a blow for freedom.

Well, fuck you.

First off, I don’t ever recall you simpering little dhimmis writing anything similar about “The Book of Mormon” or “Corpus Christi”.

Secondly, there is no “vs.” here. So-call hate speech is free speech. It isn’t forbidden by the Constitution nor in any statute in any state.

If nothing else, this exercise by Pamela Geller has made the line between those who actually take the Constitution seriously and those who only pay it lip service, bright and unavoidable.

30 Replies to ““Free Speech vs. Hate Speech” [Darleen Click]”

  1. McGehee says:

    The New York Times also thinks freedom of the press is only for those who actually own an industrial-scale printing press, so, you know.

  2. Shermlaw says:

    It is curious how hatred and bigotry only seem to flow in certain directions and not others.

  3. Parker says:

    You misunderstand.

    They stand four-square for freedom of speech.

    For themselves.

    Only.

  4. Silver Whistle says:

    Well done, Darleen, especially the “Fuck you”. Nicely hateful speech. Couldn’t agree with you more.

  5. It’s an Inigo Montoya moment.

  6. McGehee says:

    The NYT‘s opinion has been duly noted and will be accorded all the respect it deserves.

  7. happyfeet says:

    I’d like to know Natalie Portman’s thinking on this subject before I venture an opinion myself

  8. sdferr says:

    It might be more useful to turn to someone much closer to the center of power in the United States to see what is permissible and what is not, what can be said and what cannot be said, hf — namely, this guy, ’cause he knows much better than some fickle Jew-girl:

    *** Speaking to teachers as Iran marked its national teacher’s day, Khamenei said that negotiating under threat is “unacceptable.”

    “How dare US officials threaten Iran militarily?” Khamenei asked. “Recently two US officials threatened to take military action against Iran. What does negotiation mean under ghost of a threat?”

    “Negotiation under threat is meaningless and the Iranian nation does not tolerate negotiation under the shadow of threat,” he said, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

    “First of all, you can’t do a damn thing,” he added. “Secondly, as I had already stated during the term of the former US president, the era of hit and run is long gone and the Iranian nation will not let go anyone intending to make an aggression.” ***

  9. Drumwaster says:

    There is no question that images ridiculing religion, however offensive they may be to believers, qualify as protected free speech in the United States and most Western democracies….

    But it is equally clear that the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest in Garland, Tex., was not really about free speech.

    But isn’t that what even the critics of the show claim they were doing? “Ridiculing religion”? (Neither the supporters nor the artists involved say this, mind, but the critics who blame the potential victims for “bringing it on themselves”.)

    It seems clear that they wish to draw a distinction between making fun of Islam (groupthinkBAD) and making fun of any of the other religions who won’t go around shooting the place up when the next showing of PissChrist or “Book Of Mormon II: The Magic Underwear” hits the front page of the Entertainment section.

    The solution seems quite clear to me, but I have enough trouble with the NSA already, thankyouverymuch.

    (returns to keeping the bangdust dry…)

  10. 11B40 says:

    Greetings:

    Alas, I repeat myself but in a formally noble cause.

    Strange as it may seem to some, what this situation brought to my mind was my favorite Platoon Sergeant’s repeated teaching that “in the infantry game, there are two basic plays, “Find ’em, fix ’em, and finish ’em” and “Let ’em find you, fix ’em, and finish ’em.”

    Islam is nothing more than the globalization of 7th Century A.D. (if I may) predatory Arab tribal culture under a thin veneer of religion. If your plan doesn’t include constraining, undermining, or eradicating Islam, you don’t have a plan. What you have is a hope.

    That Geller broad, she has a plan.

  11. bgbear says:

    These people need to remember that these Jihadist will lop off your head if you even if you only criticize Islam/Mohamed. They want to write the rules we live by.

    A draw Mohamed contest just points out one of the most absurd rules they want us to live by.

  12. McGehee says:

    I’m waiting for someone to tell Chowderhead or one of his ilk that this absolutist veneration of the illiterate goat-herder (piss be upon him) constitutes idolatry.

    ‘Cause it does.

  13. Drumwaster says:

    I can’t wait until someone points out that Islam prohibits not just drawing of the prophet, but ALL depictions of the human form (which is why their mosques are covered with geometric forms, rather than those of religious folk or “heroes of the faith” ). Once they have “gentled” us into not lampooning Piss Be All Over Him, they will force the next step.

    Camel’s nose inside the tent, indeed.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Islam

    “An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humour in Islam. There is no fun in Islam.” — Ayatollah Khomeini

  14. Merovign says:

    So, protesting religiously-inspired violence is “hate.”

    Huh.

  15. Neo says:

    Get drunk and get raped .. not your fault.
    Draw a cartoon and get killed .. your fault.

    I see the truth of it

  16. guinspen says:

    Fortunately, it’s still safe to picture myself in a boat on a river.

    So far.

  17. sdferr says:

    Today Orson Welles would have been 100 years old. To put that in a sort of perspective, Vienna loving W.A. Mozart wrote his Turkish rondo in 1783, roughly 100 years after the Ottoman siege of Vienna was broken.

    Fuck Islam. With a frozen Seljuk, sideways.

  18. geoffb says:

    “Conservative news people get the cookie they debased themselves for.

    When you sell your integrity, your soul, the first time is always the hardest. Then the slope steepens and the slide to the abyss gets easier. Just look at how fast O’Reilly moves, and headfirst too.

  19. newrouter says:

    levin is hitting this hard. mitchy’s pal rand paul looks like another establishment clown.

    How Five Republicans Let Congress Keep Its Fraudulent Obamacare Subsidies

  20. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Somebody ought to hop in the way-back machine and see what the Times had to say about the rubes upset at Maplethorpe’s Piss Christ, or what they said about Giulianni’s tirades against that study of The Virgin done in elephant shit.

    You know, for shits ‘n giggles.

    As for Rand Paul, all I can say is that a hog begets shoats.

  21. Ernst Schreiber says:

    “An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humour in Islam. There is no fun in Islam.” — Ayatollah Khomeini

    Boy, that Khomeni fellow sure sounds like that raciss islamophobic bitch Gellar.

  22. Ernst Schreiber says:

    What is he? Hindu? Zoroastrian?

  23. newrouter says:

    piss nyt

  24. newrouter says:

    piss on the nyt and record it on youtube. piss on the lot of them abc nbc cbs npr et al

    link

  25. newrouter says:

    >This is about class. This is all about class.

    This is about, specifically, the careerist, cowardly, go-along-to-get-along mores of the Upper Middle Class, the class of people whose parents were all college educated, and of course are college educated themselves; the class that dominates our thought-transmitting institutions (because non-college educated people are more of less shut out of this industry).

    It is a class which is deathly afraid of social stigma, and lives in class-based fear being grouped with the wrong people, and which is more interested in Career, quite frankly, than in the actual tradecraft of that Career, which is clarity of thought and clarity of expression.

    Thus, our institutions of thought propagation are dominated by the very people who can be easily cowed by the Social Justice Warriors, and who will, therefore, adjust their speech in order to not run afoul of the thoughtless — and frequently lunatic — thugs of the censorious left.

    The very people we need to be most immune to the menaces of stigma, and the blandishments of career advancement, are, due to the absolute primacy of the Upper Middle Class imperative of advancing one’s career and avoiding scandal, stigma, and controversy, the very people most sensitive to such distortions.<

    link

  26. newrouter says:

    >LET US now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.

    The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children’s access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under pressure from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself. The executors, therefore, behave essentially like everyone else, to a greater or lesser degree: as components of the post-totalitarian system, as agents of its automatism, as petty instruments of the social auto-totality.

    Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence ín people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.<

    link

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