Both steveaz (in a comment to my earlier post on “Misery Porn and the Linguistic Turn”) and David Thompson (via email) have pointed me to this Oliver Kamm defense of free speech—one that is likely to resonate with those readers who’ve found persuasive my frequent broadsides against the totalitarian makeup of a political correctness that, under the auspices of enforcing “tolerance” (improperly understood and applied), manages to insinuate itself into public policy, and, as a result, weaken the appeal to individual freedoms at the heart of classical liberalism:
[…] those who find their deepest convictions mocked will be offended, and it is possible (though not mandatory, and is incidentally not felt by me) to extend sympathy and compassion to them. But they are not entitled to protection, still less restitution, in the public sphere, even for crass and gross sentiments. A free society does not legislate in the realm of beliefs; by extension, it must not concern itself either with the state of its citizens’ sensibilities. If it did, there would in principle be no limit to the powers of the state, even into the private realm of thought and feeling.
The debate has not been aided – -it has indeed been severely clouded –- by an imprecise use of the term ‘respect’. If this is merely a metaphor for the free exercise of religious and political liberty, then it is an unexceptionable principle, but also an unclear and redundant usage. Respect for ideas and those who hold them is a different matter altogether. Ideas have no claim on our respect; they earn respect to the extent that they are able to withstand criticism… It is not, in fact, a fine sentiment to require respect. Respect is not an entitlement. It is, at most, a quality that is earned by the intellectual resilience of one’s ideas in the public square…
If those with deeply held convictions find they receive compensation for injured feelings, then mental hurt is what they will seek out. As one group succeeds, then others will perceive the incentive to fashion comparable demands… Respecting the beliefs and feelings of others is a lethal affectation in public policy. It is easy to depict freedom of speech as liable to cause hurt, precisely because it is true. The policy that follows from that is counterintuitive but essential: do nothing.
Kamm takes issue with the metaphor of “respecting” ideas, noting—correctly—that respect is something earned, and that certain ideas, having been vanquished in the discursive or philosophical marketplace, have no cause to demand our respect.
Where this gets tricky is precisely when we confuse the respect of one’s ideas with a respect for one to have and hold ideas we might find totally reprehensible and wrongheaded.
For it is as that point where true tolerance takes hold. We “tolerate” certain ideas that we don’t respect; and it is this tolerance for ideas we don’t respect—or, alternately, this “respect” for the rights of those with whom we disagree to hold ideas we can only tolerate—that is at the heart of free speech.
The gambit of those who’ve engaged in an attempt to undermine free speech by way of promoting an enforced, feel-good linguistic egalitarianism has been to usurp the meaning of “tolerance” and reposition the object of respect onto the idea rather than onto the right to hold it.
And it has worked—and will continue to work—so long as we capitulate to the wrongheaded interpretive prescriptions of those who have worked long and hard to untether the locus of meaning from its intentionalist moorings by disguising those moorings as semiotic “drift” and in the process handing over control of meaning solely to those who reconstruct it.
Respect entitlement.
Meanwhile, some looney-toons were going to counter-protest a protest against the funeral of Falwell with a bomb.
Nobody in the MSM is liable to note how downright weird it is to protest the burial of someone you hate, though.
Mencken put it something along the lines of: We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the same way we respect his theories that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
I do have one bone to pick with Kamm’s otherwise cogent argument:
In Birmingham two years ago protestors forced the closure of a play, Behzti by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, which depicted the abuse of Sikh women by Sikh men. [Followed by examples of other plays being canceled because of protests by those offended.]
I do agree that it is not good policy or law to take into consideration the feelings of the offended (besides, isn’t taking offense a deliberate act on the part of the offended?), but in the cases he cites, the government did not get involved (as far as I can tell).
It’s one thing to make a law or a policy to not offend. It’s quite another for one private party to complain to another private party and resolve the dispute amongst themselves. It’s no different from asking your neighbor to turn down his stereo or to not blow his cigarette smoke, to which you are allergic, over the fence and into your back yard.
Protesters can protest all they want, but the theater owners are under no obligation  social, legal, or otherwise  to bow to their demands. The government should get involved only if it literally comes to blows (e.g., a riot), and not before. And even then, the interference should only be to stop the riot, not to decide who’s right.
Meanwhile, some looney-toons were going to counter-protest a protest against the funeral of Falwell with a bomb.
Radical clerics, students and rogue military elements. Oh my!
Meanwhile lets get back to meaning.
I agree, dicentra, to a point. I agree that the market can handle itself. But I think that in capitulating (which is the path of least resistence oftentimes for businesses), the wrong message is being sent.
(I discussed this, I believe, when Burger King pulled its swirly cone graphics because they looked, to someone, like the name of Allah, were you to fill in certain lines and turn the thing sideways and squint.
It also helped if you were stoned out of your mind).
Bingo! Give brainiac the fluffy doll!
There are a number of factors involved of course – people whose sense of fairness was fostered by their fantasy life and unblunted by reality are one major contributor.
Rent-seekers, leeches, power-seekers, oppositional defiants, ad nauseum… when you create a system of reward for grievance, well, you know what happens when you subsidise something.
It isn’t just silly or counterproductive, it’s downright dangrous, but we now have a large population dependent on (or who think they’re dependent on) the “system” of political correctness that it now has a large constituency beyond its ideological core that will fight for it.
It doesn’t help that the ideological core now proselytizes not only in schools but on the interwebs.
…
BOY I wish I had the solution.
7%?
The old reactionary leftist bait and switch:
“You have to respect my opinion!”
Well, no I don’t. I respect your right to an opinion. I don’t respect your opinion when it’s wrong.
Dan Collins –
Cocaine, destruction of childhood legends, lies, adultery, war… it fits!
N. O’Brain –
They will use any tactic, any tactic at all. It’s never a debate so much as it is unraveling the trap.
I think Kamm and Jeff make good points about respect. What’s missing here is the dollar element.
People get offended all the time. I recall a few years ago there were Taco Bell commercials featuring Shaq that involved bending your head while eating a taco. Turns out there’s actually a medical syndrome involving this. So the commercials were scrapped. Of course, they didn’t HAVE to be scrapped: I doubt if there are many people, with money, with this syndrome. But money is where it’s at, and nowadays if you say anything in a forum where money is involved—which is to say, most fora—then there will be hyper-sensitivity and thus the known suppression of spontaneous speech, which is where we’re at.
I should add that while the Internet solves the money problem—unless people go on personal vendettas, and we all know about that—it raises another, inasmuch as the distance, anonymity, and absence of, for a better word, I might call Smith’s Disinterested Spectator, uninhibits exchanges to the point that they frequently don’t get anywhere. Something to keep in mind.
Some people can’t tell the difference between good-natured ribbing and ill-intentioned harassment – and those people are on both sides of the subject.
That’s another part of the equation.
I think I would rather read a strenuous endorsement of scoffing. There has to be space to do a bit more than “venture boldly” that something is “deeply offensive.” And it’s a great word, and it should be used. Not this Associated Press crap where all you have is a choice of “slams,” “hits,” or “lashes out.” I think this is another facet of that unmooring business.
But I think that in capitulating (which is the path of least resistance oftentimes for businesses), the wrong message is being sent.
Well, yes, the message being sent is that Intimidation Works. As Dennis Prager says, you can’t count on Corporate America to serve as a bulwark against cultural onslaughts. Either they’ll cave or they’ll find a way to profit off it. But they won’t operate on principle.
Given that, if we’re not going to use public policy or law to enforce tolerance and sensitivity, how do you stop businesses from being such moral cowards?
More intimidation?
scoffing can be highly effective
“I scoff at you and your putrescent ideas, whilst recognizing that you have every right to hold them.”
Something like that?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge in a different context said that the good purpose of the state was
to perpetuate what is best, to tolerate the tolerable, and to restrain none but those who would restrain all, and subjugate even the state itself.
maybe we could start with baby steps
…we can work up to the putrescence
More or less. You counter the protest of the speech with a protest of the protest of speech. Chances are you’ll be in the majority, given that it is generally minority fringe elements who suffer the kinds of identity group outrages under consideration.
And in your counter protest, you point out to the business that the First Amendment is there for a reason, and that you don’t like to patronize places that would sell out an integral part of what makes our country great just so they can avoid a minor headache.
A few years ago, one of the big companies Jesse Jackson tried to shake down told him to get bent. And they didn’t suffer like he said they would—and in fact, I’m sure that had they publicized that they told him to get bent, they would have actually benefited from taking the firm stand they took.
Somebody needs to tell these risk-averse PR people that sometimes a conscientious stand really does resonate with the American people more so than a simple quiet capitulation, which is the easy way out.
Ultimately, it’s the company’s business and the company’s call. But again, as in the case with the Allah cone, once it’s publicized—and then you capitulate—you are sending the wrong message, and setting yourself up for future attempts by grievance groups to get you to mold your communications to their likings.
They were targeting the Aldulterous Female market segment.
Well, when I hit the lottery )or the Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol™ arrives at my door) my website is going down so fast…
‘Cause I figure it’s the fact I don’t have any money that explains why no one’s ever taken notice of me.
Yeah.
That’s the ticket.
I discussed this, I believe, when Burger King pulled its swirly cone graphics because they looked, to someone, like the name of Allah, were you to fill in certain lines and turn the thing sideways and squint.
But that could be a great marketing statement.
“It’s like a jihad in my mouth, and everyone’s invited!”
Used to be you had to cut one of your own fingers off and mix it into your chili to get any traction with “big burger”. Now it’s “I see you have ‘Ham Sandwich’ on your menu. You’ll be hearing from my attorney.”
The world of tolerance and a future of possibilities !
I strongly believe that today’s world is a deep rooted cause of two phenomena’s of human nature. Intolerance and cynicism. These are not natural phenomena, and they can be defeated.
Intolerance is about wanting others to be like us so that we can feel right about the way we are.
Whenever we apply our values to others against their will we are intolerant. Religious fanaticism and bigotry are forms of intolerance. Being democratic and forcing democracy upon others is a form of intolerance. Being “righteous” is a form of intolerance. Wanting to drag others down to the same level as ourselves is a form of intolerance.
Tolerance is about love.
Love and “liking” are not related. Love is about accepting others as they are regardless of whether we like them or not. Love is not how we feel, it is what we do and say.
Intolerance can be “collective”, tolerance is individual. It is up to every single one of us to be tolerant, thus defeating intolerance. This is one of the great teachings of Gandhi.
Cynicism is about believing that the future is like the past, believing that what was not possible in the past is not possible in the future. But the only link between the past and the future is our own imagination. Everything that has not happened in the past can still happen in the future.
The alternative to cynicism is a future of possibilities. Everything that was not possible in the past is still possible in the future. People that had no hope in the past can still have hope in the future.
I ask you to read this message carefully and understand it profoundly. If only one of you takes on its meaning, make it his own and passes it on to his friends, and they pass it on to their friends and so on…
Perhaps we can create a new world order, a world of tolerance and a future of possibilities. A world where people that now hate each other see the possibility of accepting each other as they are. A world where people that had no future realise the possibilities of the future.
Read Full…
“Isn’t taking offense a deliberate act on the part of the offended?”
Yes indeed, and taking offense when none is intended has become a national pastime. It’s an intolerant practice.
We tend to believe that there are things that one mustn’t tolerate, on behalf of onesself or others, and those are precisely the things that prevent people from being as they are.
No. Quite often, intolerance is expecting others to get out of your face so you can get on with your own life. I do not, for example, tolerate the kind of antics carried out by the Critical Massholes.
I’m also intolerant of people demanding I acquiesce to the ritual demands of their particular religion, whether that’s avoiding alcohol, pork, music, or women.
Tolerance in its real sense is ignoring the things that don’t have no or little impact on you. I tolerate the religious beliefs of 95% of the people around me; they don’t have any impact on me. I tolerate the sales of Girl Scout cookies at the exit of the local grocery store; they won’t do anything but look hurt when I refuse to buy any.
And appeals to Gandhi are, shall we say, misplaced. He got much better press than he deserved.
You’re talking about me, aren’t you Dan? Where do you come off? You with your “musn’ts” and “shan’ts”. YATHINKYERBETTERNMEEE? YATHINKYERBETTERNMEEE!?!?
That’s bullcrap.
Hee Hee. You wrote “pork” and “women” in the same sentence.
That should must be haram.
And the Islamists are banging at the door.
Witness Disney’s cop-out on the “Jihad Mickey Mouse”— Disney didn’t issue a condemnation because (to paraphrase) “we thought everybody already knows how we feel about it.”
Sheesh.
I think the reason that he included the prostesting of the plays and closing of those plays is that we have taken tolerance to the point that we even accept threats of violence and actual violence from muslims in the name of tolerating their religion.
I believe that those protests came with threats of violence if the plays did not close. And, a) those threats of violence were very credible coming as they did from muslims, and b) the government did nothing about those threats, and there was no real gauruntee that the gov’t would do anything about actual violence, as it is in the business of “tolerating” islam, which seems to include tolerating violence.
Same thing with the Mohammad cartoons.
My local paper’s cartoonish Falwell coverage prompted my comment to them about PC.
Naturally, my “intolerance” for their intolerance was taken to immediate task in the comments by a PC’er/Falwell slanderer…who, interestingly, invoked a wrathful and presumably Christian God awaiting me in the afterlife.
Earlier I’d questioned this same paper for its general editorial stance. I suggested they consider elevating their credibility in the private free market by not publishing what amounts to a constant torrent of mindless PC.
I figured that if they’d eventually become a repuitable newspaper that I’d finally buy a copy, having not done so in 13 years. I think I alluded that there were other potential customers in this market left similarly unsatisfied.
I was promptly excoriated in the comments for inciting censorship and from that, fascism.
You can’t make this stuff up. Sometimes you don’t even have to lift a finger.
Not activly paying those people = censorship.
Same as with art grants.
“The debate has not been aided – -it has indeed been severely clouded –- by an imprecise use of the term ‘respect’”
Hmmm. Maybe some input from Aretha Franklin and Rodney Dangerfield (oh right, I know about him) would clarify it.
Somebody needs to explain Danegeld to corporate America.
This topic touches so much on the hate crime topic that it points out the problem with allowing for thought crimes, either criminally or civilly.
The legislature could help put a stop to this nonsense from two directions.
First, instituted loser pays in the tort system. Much of the motivation to play the litigation lottery for the shifty is that the entry fee is relatively low for a very big pay off through settlement with the defendents.
Second, make it illegal to award anything at all for any nonphysical damages (I know there are problems with this, someone more intelligent than I can figure out what are legitimate nonphysical damages) or perhaps that awards for nonphysical damages go to a related charity rather than; a. the lawyer, b. the plaintiff, c. more to the lawyer.
Now, since that was clear as mud, as nonphysical damages I’m thinking most “emotional distress” and certainly quasi “civil rights” nonsense that have no real impact on the allegedly damaged person or group.
Company’s shouldn’t have to fear the potential customers feelings being hurt through any mechanism but lowered sales.
Rodney Danegeld?
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