Like magnets, the front lines of freedom of speech and religious tolerance continually smash together before drawing apart once more.
But while commentators across the world are heaving for highly incongruent solutions to insensitive religious speech — as though there were one — there is one point the Western World seems to be dodging: It is not insensitive speech that needs to be addressed, but rather hypersensitive reactions.
It’s a tough stand to take in such turbulent times, but it’s lamentable that as soon as the wrong camp is offended we can forget that satire and criticism are Western institutions to be held in the highest regard.
It’s lazy to say there should simply be less offensive speech, because our religious freedoms arose from offensive speech.
So if violent reactions persist in response to Western media, who needs to change: us, or a painfully vague them?
Thankfully, President Obama addressed these points yesterday in a speech to the U.N.
“We [protect free speech] not because we support hateful speech, but because our Founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and protect their own faith may be threatened,” Obama said. “We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics or oppress minorities.”
We reached the conclusion that freedom of speech is paramount to a free society, and we reached that conclusion through the mixture of many cultures and ideas, not the hegemony of one. Diplomacy should come with that same understanding — we should have faith that the remaining firebrands will be extinguished by the cool head of the common man and woman.
And this certainly is not to call out only the Muslims of the Middle East — or of the world — whose splinter sects and minority groups have rioted against the West’s insensitivity.
Anyone who passed by the Student Union Tuesday saw the long dresses, bonnets and beards of our beloved campus proselytizers, shouting the obscene accusations we’ve all come to know and love.
Students of any stripe would be offended by being told they’ve got an eternity of torture awaiting them if they spend too much time studying and too little time hating themselves, but we take the offense and get McDonald’s in the Union regardless.
Hell, even the Amish can’t seem to keep their cool these days, with seven recent arrests for what appears to be gang-like violence this week.
But they had the luxury of escaping the world almost entirely — though not if a reality television producer on TLC has anything to say about it, of course.
That luxury is becoming more and more of an impossibility, however. And whether you agree with his policies or not, Obama must be praised for standing up for our right to speak freely, even in the face of death threats and destruction.
“If we are serious about those ideals, we must speak honestly about the deeper causes of this crisis,” he said.
In short, the president told the U.N. that America will stand by its freedom of expression and expect the world to recognize that no speech warrants violence.
Individual liberties will come with cultural and technological modernization, i.e. globalization.
And with this in mind, we must not apologize for our offensive speech — for our Terry Jones’, our Free Speech Plaza preachers or our insensitive critics and satirists.
“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”
No more relevant or crucial character could have said this than Voltaire, and this ideal is an American one at its core.
We have enjoyed an atypical brand of freedom in the United States.
We should not alter our behavior for our neighbors, and, just like the moderate Muslim majority, we need not apologize for our outliers.
