The French Come Through
The New York Times won't publish the Danish cartoons...but the
French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo did.
Tres bon!"When extremists extract concessions from democracies on points of principle, either by blackmail or terror, democracies do not have long left," Charlie Hebdo editor Philippe Val wrote.
Exactement!
But before we start to thinking of the French as macho men...Jacques Chirac wimped out
. "Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided," Chirac said. "Freedom of expression should be exercised in a spirit of responsibility."
Mon Dieu!Anything that can hurt the convictions of someone else, in particular religious convictions, should be avoided?
Oh, for chrissakes.
I believe that I saw a UFO when I was a boy, and I can't imagine a heaven without dogs and dolphins. Really. And if you want to go ahead and make fun of me for it, you go right ahead. I might get offended. But I won't burn you in effigy or blow up your home. (Or blow you up, for that matter.)
Particularly irritating in Chirac's statement is the suggestion that, somehow, religious convictions are more, um, sacred than other convictions, and we must tiptoe around them more than we would any other deeply-held beliefs. That is annoying as hell. Chirac's just created a privileged class. Never mind, you atheists and agnostics and Darwinists; your convictions are just a little less important than those of people who believe that a big ark carried all the animals of the world through a big thundershower.
As a journalist, I certainly believe in the responsible exercise of free speech. But I also believe in the
irresponsible exercise of free speech. It's not my thing. But then, I'm not always so sure what's responsible and what isn't, and I wouldn't trust anyone to determine what constitutes irresponsible speech. (I'm American that way.)
So...better to err on the side of more speech rather than less. Unless you'd like the government making those judgments. Or maybe Pat Robertson? Or Osama bin Laden?
That's why, for example, I deplore the burning of flags, whether it's done by American left-wing fanatics or Islamic religious fanatics. But I oppose an anti-flag burning amendment to the Constitution, and I support the right of Islamic fanatics to burn as many flags as they want....
It's when they start burning buildings and killing people that we have to worry.....
