Flagellation for Fun and Profit.

Why can't we all just be nice and love one another!

During his highly memorable but probably best forgotten Cairo speech, President Obama apologized to the world in general and Islam in particular for the grievous sins of the United States, all of which had occurred before He ascended to the presidency. Instead of intoning "mea culpa, mea culpa mea maxima culpa" he said "they have sinned, they have sinned, they have sinned most grievously." Most of the major media outlets hung on every utterance and disparaged as prejudiced, racist, bigoted Neanderthals those who disagreed. More recently, He came out four-square in favor of construction of a mosque-recreation center close to Ground Zero and then back tracked a smidgen. Even more recently, He pitted all of the power of His bully pulpit, possibly including the FBI, against the allegedly crazy and bigoted promise of a previously unknown small town fundamentalist preacher to fifty congregants to burn some Korans on September 11^th.

[T]he White House has been treating this lunatic as a greater threat to national security than Osama bin Laden.

The president himself went on TV to plead with him not to burn the books. And Gen. David Petraeus -- in a decidedly ill-advised move -- publicly warned that if Jones followed through, US troops would be put at risk.

Is the Reverend Mr. Jones a Lunatic? I don't know; it's difficult to tell these days. Is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who promotes the mosque, etc. as a gesture of religious tolerance and understanding a lunatic? I don't know. Do they both foam at the mouth when they go "Wuff, Wuff" (sort of rhymes with Rauf, Rauf)? Victor Davis Hanson has it right, as usual:

We are reaching the point where the damage done to America’s image by 50 book-burners is outweighed by the damage done by hypersensitivity on the part of the United States government, which hopes to assuage the hurt feelings of those abroad who equate that tiny number with our culture at large — often in an abjectly hypocritical fashion. We know where this leads — to endless efforts to micromanage all elements of American life to protect the sensitivities of those who, by act and deed, are far more intolerant of different religions and cultures.

In any event, good marketing fellas, with special honors to the Reverend Mr. Jones.

With only a threat to burn a Koran, he became a household name across the world and never had to strike a match. He saw an effigy of himself, wrapped in an American flag, burned by rioters in Afghanistan, shouting "death to the Christians." Every newspaper, every network scrambled for face time with him.

In any event, they went hog-wild. What's the big deal with self-flagellation, or in the case of President Obama, flagellation of others? Has His rejection of American Exceptionalism done so little harm to the country that it is now necessary to eliminate or turn it upside-down?

Of course Muslims in the United States have the same freedoms of religion and of speech as do others in the United States, and much more such freedoms than do non-Muslims (and apparently Muslims) in Islamic countries. That has not been seriously questioned. Evidently however, those who think the so called Ground Zero Mosque should be built have more freedom of speech than do those who think otherwise, and those who promise to burn some Korans are viewed as demanding to exercise more freedom of speech than those who burn the United States flag to protest some real or imagined grievance. America is becoming truly exceptional, but in ways which are not encouraging. By cowering in the face of violent outrage by Islamists (I generally use this term when referring to radical Muslims), on the apparent theory that if we don't cower they will become even more antagonistic than has become customary, she is becoming exceptionally ridiculous and weak. Does anyone in his right mind think that if The Reverend Mr. Jones and the others who have promised to light their matches all actually put them away the easily offended would become less antagonistic and more tolerant? Self delusion is a poor basis for governance.

Iran's President Ahmadinejad plays the fiddle, calls it all a Zionist plot and we dance. He may, unfortunately, be correct in his final analysis.

"The Zionists and their supporters are on the path to collapse and decline and such desperate actions will not save them, but will accelerate their fall and annihilation," the president said during a meeting between Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian officials in Tehran.

Under the Constitution, freedom of speech has traditionally meant (with unfortunately increasing exceptions) that there can be no official prior restraint by the government of offensive but non-obscene speech, no matter how offensive some might find the thoughts expressed. Promising to burn, stone or lash the Koran is not "obscene," except perhaps in the view of those who find it offensive, and merely offensive is not "obscene" under any definition with which I am familiar. President Obama, officials of his administration and the media are free to condemn such speech and to praise the proposed mosque construction close to Ground Zero but should not claim to represent the United States in doing so.

There are many in the Islamist world who demand that the United States government prohibit the burning of Korans and all other public slights to their religion. They apparently think that the government has the power to do so and must exercise it in the name of human rights. The United States government has no such power and, under the Constitution, can't. The sooner they learn this the better for us all. This is doubtless a very difficult concept to grasp, particularly for those who live privileged lives under governments of substantially unlimited power and even for those who don't have that privilege but nevertheless favor the concept; for the pastor in Florida and others to cave into demands for conformity with the will of the administration as he ultimately appears to have done is not a good teaching point. Instead, it leads to this sort of nonsense:

Following the uproar over the threatened burning of the Quran by a small Florida church, a leading international Islamic body said Thursday that the United Nations should outlaw “all forms of offense against religions.”

* * * * *

“The Florida Dove World Outreach Center Church’s plan to burn copies of the Holy Quran on September 11 … requires immediate action to outlaw all acts of defamation of religions and religious sanctities,” the Morocco-based Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) said in a communique.

“It is a blot on humanity that such discriminatory attack against Islam and Islamic holy sites is continuing in the absence of deterrent legal measures, local and international.”

ISESCO, an arm of the 56-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), called on the U.N. “to issue an international law criminalizing all forms of offense against religions under any circumstances.”

* * * * *

ISESCO’s call was an expected opening salvo in a fresh push by the OIC to use both the Quran-burning threat and the Manhattan mosque dispute to move forward its decade-old campaign to get the U.N. to outlaw what it calls “religious defamation” worldwide.

The OIC argues that legal deterrents are necessary in the light of instances of “Islamophobia” which it says have increased significantly since 9/11 [strange, that]. OIC publications use the label “Islamophobia” to cover a range of incidents and trends, from anti-Muslim graffiti to criticism of human rights abuses in Islamic states [of which there have clearly been none] to counter-terrorism profiling [some of which might be a good idea].

Why am I reminded of Al Capp's SWINE (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything)?

Even in the highly unlikely event that this prohibition would apply to Islamist practices "offensive" to Christianity, Judaism and other non-Islamist religions, it would take far better orators than President Obama and TOTUS to get such a monster ratified and a far better lawyer than Attorney General Holder to find a way to read it as compliant with the United States Constitution, under which ratified treaties are the equivalent to statutes and must therefore be compliant with the Constitution.

Me? I am burning barbecuing a nice pork loin. It's yummier than a musty old Koran and don't worry, our dogs will get their fair shares.

The Yale University Press and a Book about Cartoons

First published on Blog Critics on 19 October 2009

Refusal to reprint dastardly cartoons offensive to Islam was a giant step forward for free speech.

The Yale University Press is dedicated to principles of independence, academic freedom and scholarship; it adheres steadfastly to those principles without fear or favor; without regard to whether its actions cause anger, adverse comment or praise. Its honorable decision to publish The Cartoons That Shook the World minus a reproduction of the actual cartoons demonstrates YUP's fearless adherence to its principles.

YUP is to be commended for its willingness to court popular criticism. Few publishers of significance would be willing to risk outrage of the sort engendered by publication of only a bowdlerized version of The cartoons book. In an August 14, 2009 press release announcing its decision, YUP modestly declined to acknowledge that its courageous goal was to stimulate such criticism and thereby to encourage the sort of freedom of expression it well knew would be directed against it. Instead, it took the much disputed position that its decision was made to promote public safety.

After careful consideration, the Press has declined to reproduce the September 30, 2005, Jyllands-Posten newspaper page that included the cartoons, as well as other depictions of the Prophet Muhammad that the author proposed to include.

The original publication in 2005 of the cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad led to a series of violent incidents, and repeated violent acts have followed republication as recently as June 2008, when a car bomb exploded outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing eight people and injuring at least thirty. The next day Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the bombing, calling it revenge for the "insulting drawings."

Republication of the cartoons—not just the original printing of them in Denmark—has repeatedly resulted in violence around the world. More than two hundred lives have been lost, and hundreds more have been injured. It is noteworthy that, at the time of the initial crisis over the cartoons in 2005–2006, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe declined to print them, as did every major newspaper in the United Kingdom.

Despite this self-effacing explanation, it should be obvious that YUP's motivation had nothing to do with public safety; the chances of violent attacks against YUP or even Yale University as a whole resulting from publication of the already widely seen three year old cartoons in a scholarly volume, likely to be read by few, are laughably remote. Any suggestion that the copious free publicity for YUP certain to result from its decision was a motivating factor must also be rejected. YUP does not need publicity, good or bad. It is already one of the top thousand or so academic book publishing companies in the United States and would be shocked at the prospect of massive demand for one of its learned books. YUP fears the publication of a best seller as the gods fear Sarah Palin. Even more ludicrous is the mean-spirited charge that Yale University was motivated by a desire for financial assistance from such Moslem countries as Saudi Arabia. YUP doubtless has plenty of money, and the thought that Yale University might stoop to such mercenary thoughts is unthinkable.

These nonsensical theses must be put aside. YUP was merely following cherished Yale University Guidelines, known to and respected by all members of the university community.

[T]he history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.

YUP courageously desired to subject itself to violent criticism from the proponents of free speech precisely to encourage such attacks. And vehement attacks there have been. Here is an article reporting and elaborating upon some of them.

Cary Nelson, the President of American Association of University Professors (AAUP), quickly responded on August 13 with a biting letter, "We do not negotiate with terrorists. We just accede to their anticipated demands." Yale's action struck the AAUP as creating much more harm. Yale violated "an author's academic freedom and [damaged] the reputation of the press and the university." These actions would impact "other university presses and publication venues" and "[had] the potential to encourage broader censorship of speech by faculty members or other authors."

It goes on and on, as do many other such articles; indeed, they continue to this day, more than two months after the initial announcement.

How better to encourage "unfettered freedom," thoughts of the "unthinkable", mention of the "unmentionable," and challenges to the "unchallengeable?" Indeed, how better to boldly go where no man had dared to boldly go before? By actively promoting a heretofore unthinkable freedom to suggest that YUP may have had some ulterior motive or, indeed, even that it was strangely misguided, was a truly courageous and brilliant exercise in generous self sacrifice of a type, magnitude and generosity rarely seen. Sadly, "the Yale faculty has mostly yawned."

It is, nevertheless regrettable that some even within the enlightened Yale Community were taken in by YUP's heroic hoax decision, and blamed it on cowardice. One undergraduate commendably proclaimed in the Yalie Daily that there are legitimate limits to freedom of speech.

While most of us would defend the free-speech rights of "birthers" or Klansmen or fraternity misogynists, we defend those rights in a manner that makes clear we don’t want to see those rights exercised in violation of our sensibilities and beliefs. Some ideas are not welcome at Yale, nor should they be.(emphasis added)

I cannot agree with that too much! Indeed, it warms the very cockles of my heart and sole (sic) to learn that Yale is a far better and more liberal place than when I floundered around intellectually there as an undergraduate more than forty years ago, and that only the right to exercise freedoms which do not offend is now desired.

Despite this entirely reasonable statement of principle, doubtless taught by the illustrious academics at Yale, the author attributed the YUP decision to fear, and expressed the odd view that

I would be prouder to belong to a university whose officials censored a book because of what they believed in, and not because of what they feared.

But, as demonstrated above, fear had nothing to do with YUP's selfless and productive decision. Voluntarily going into harm's way, by encouraging attacks on one's adherence to noble principle is not inspired by fear. It is inspired by courage and willingness to suffer the adverse consequences of one's actions. Lux et Vomitus Lux et Veritas! -- a motto now engraved on the hearts of all Yalies in Latin, Arabic, and also for the moment in Hebrew.