I guess the hardscrabble streets of Argentina must produce similar individuals to the kind found in New Jersey: "Yo, insult my Mother again and I'll kick your ass! Nobody, I mean nobody insults my dear Momma!..." Well, his words don't need my poor effort at imitating Jersey-speak, so here's thug Pope Frankie himself: “One cannot react violently, but if [someone] says something bad about my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s to be expected." Whoa! Didn't expect that one! And he continues: "There are a lot of people who speak badly about other religions. They make fun of them. What happens is what happens with my friend [who insults my mother]. There is a limit.” http://on.wsj.com/1G1Imn4 You know, "what happens is what happens!" You've been warned!
I don't know what to make of this quote and I sure wish I could have been a reporter on that flight because I think some follow up questions were in order. But, let's give the Pope the benefit of the doubt and say he was simply pointing out the "reality" that some people react violently when mocked, like little children or mentally challenged adults, for example. People who are too stupid to understand the difference between actual violence and words. People who have fragile egos. People who have little faith in their religion. So, he wasn't saying we should "limit" speech, he was just giving us a "dose of reality" that we should expect to get punched by dumb people occasionally, and that's the price of freedom...
Or was this a veiled threat? Mock us Catholics and you know what will happen! You see what will happen if you keep calling us misogynist pedophiles....
The truth is that people who really believe in their religion are not offended by mockery. If you want to see people who have faith, look no further than Mormons. Forget a small time cartoon mocking you. They have an award-winning Broadway-caliber play that travels the country brutally mocking them. Some have denounced the play and the Church has made efforts to "counter" the "misinformation" of the play, but no threats of violence, no acts of violence. They believe. They have faith. After all, what can mockery do to an all-powerful, all-knowing God who could wipe out all of civilization in one swipe?
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Embrace Freedom Against ALL Enemies
Shooting people is easy. And when it is done in broad daylight against unsuspecting civilians by men wearing masks with old Russian rifles, one can hardly call it 'sophisticated.' Yet 'sophisticated' seems to be the go-to word whenever Americans or Europeans get attacked. I will concede it is more sophisticated than hitting someone in the head with a hammer, but sneaking guns across boarders to ambush cartoonists who had little security is not sophisticated. Learning to fly jumbo jets and coordinating multiple simultaneous plane hijackings is sophisticated. To execute the Paris ambush, the plotters needed three items: rifles (easily obtainable in this heavily militarized world and Paris is very close some hot regions I must remind my geographically challenged readers), a few unhappy people (not hard to find anywhere, but especially in the aforementioned hot regions) and some basic military training for the unhappy recruits (anyone heard of paint ball?).
While it clearly doesn't seem like we are describing things accurately when we ascribe "sophistication" to shooting at unarmed civilians, what seems apparent is that we are making the attackers out to be "larger than life" evil villains, rather than just ordinary, misguided and angry. We give them power and cede to their goals when we misrepresent them.
This misrepresentation has led us to start changing our rules of jurisprudence to deal with this supposedly completely "new threat" ("extraordinary rendition; Guantanamo; Drone Strikes...) even though sowing fear as a strategy (a.k.a. "terrorism") is as old as warfare itself!
Our reactions are understandable. When "terror" attacks occur, many people feel guilty and they say to themselves, "how could we let this happen? What did we do wrong?" Some people take the last sentence literally: they feel like they "sinned" and thus "deserve it." Other people just feel "dumb" and blame themselves for letting their "guard down." I remember the collective guilt following 9/11. No one could look in each other's eyes as they walked down the streets in the days following, but the anger was palpable, simmering underneath. Whatever form of guilt overtook us, we (almost) all gladly supported attacking... someone, anyone. We just need to attack back! The former because their "duty" is to fight "evil." The latter because "surely if we just redouble our efforts--buy more guns, attack more Muslims, etc.--we will have our justice!" Guilt and shame are the precursor to violence.
Don't get me wrong: I feel like I want to attack too! And I admit I probably would if I were in a position of power and had actionable intelligence.
But this is exactly the fight Muslims are expecting. One of the primary teachings of Islam is that they will be attacked by non-Muslims. So when we attack, we reinforce their belief and it becomes a self-sustaining cycle. From the Crusades onward, Muslims have been proven somewhat correct, which is why the cycle continues unabated... and around and around we go....
The primary missing ingredient to the West's anti-"terror" strategy is that they are still afraid to defend free speech with fearless and uncompromising diligence. We need police and military support in defense of free speech. We should not support countries like Saudi Arabia. I'm not saying we can force them to change, but at least we shouldn't in anyway enable them to continue their brutality to their people. We need coherence in our ideals. We all should be allowed to mock anyone or anything, including a person's religion, and we all should be willing to enforce this right even by force if necessary. We as a society need to vigorously protect this most fundamental freedom. We can't proclaim America to be "exceptional" unless it does something exceptional, like protect freedom when most of the world cowers.
The only people who fear freedom of speech are the ignorant and dictators.
Freedom is still a new concept for humankind. We can't know what was going on millennia ago, but it appears that France, England and U.S. are at the forefront of allowing true freedom of expression in human civilization. But they drift back and forth. Freedom waxes and wanes even in the "West." Do we need to be reminded that every year a significant numbers of US Congressmen vote for a Constitutional Amendment to prohibit the "physical desecration" of the American Flag? And don't let all of this pro-freedom sentiment in Europe mislead you: the European high court recently forced Google to allow anyone in Europe to petition Google to remove from public access PUBLIC information if those people don't want it displayed! Yes, again, I am talking about public information like newspaper articles that my reference the person that you could search and find at your local library or in a stack of old newspapers..., but public stuff that Google went to great effort and to great public benefit to provide. And there is the ongoing battle fought by Ebay and others against French and Germany prohibitions against Nazi paraphernalia. Really, still trying to tell people that a symbol is "just too much" for our weak minds?
The Europeans clearly missed the important lesson of WWII: Instead of banning Nazi stuff, they should be vigorously defending everyone's right to "speech," free elections, accountable government and the fair application of the rule of law. They seem to have gotten the last three mostly right. And I'm very pleased by their seeming unity following the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Now it is time they step up and allow for all forms of "blasphemy."
The US has two big problems: a strong Old Testament tradition and a new-old religion I'll call "American Exceptionalism." Both generate the kind of violent anti-blasphemy sentiment, so they are equally dangerous. "New" because American Exceptionalism has lately gained great traction with the Republican control of Congress and "old" because American's have long seen themselves as special, since even before they declared their independence. American Exceptionalism leads to things such as the effort to ban flag "desecration," for example. The flag is "sacred" to some and so, by the force of law, you cannot disagree with this interpretation of this symbol... or at least that is the goal of the Exceptionalists. As it turns out the evils associated with religion are not confined to the traditional "religions."
While it clearly doesn't seem like we are describing things accurately when we ascribe "sophistication" to shooting at unarmed civilians, what seems apparent is that we are making the attackers out to be "larger than life" evil villains, rather than just ordinary, misguided and angry. We give them power and cede to their goals when we misrepresent them.
This misrepresentation has led us to start changing our rules of jurisprudence to deal with this supposedly completely "new threat" ("extraordinary rendition; Guantanamo; Drone Strikes...) even though sowing fear as a strategy (a.k.a. "terrorism") is as old as warfare itself!
Our reactions are understandable. When "terror" attacks occur, many people feel guilty and they say to themselves, "how could we let this happen? What did we do wrong?" Some people take the last sentence literally: they feel like they "sinned" and thus "deserve it." Other people just feel "dumb" and blame themselves for letting their "guard down." I remember the collective guilt following 9/11. No one could look in each other's eyes as they walked down the streets in the days following, but the anger was palpable, simmering underneath. Whatever form of guilt overtook us, we (almost) all gladly supported attacking... someone, anyone. We just need to attack back! The former because their "duty" is to fight "evil." The latter because "surely if we just redouble our efforts--buy more guns, attack more Muslims, etc.--we will have our justice!" Guilt and shame are the precursor to violence.
Don't get me wrong: I feel like I want to attack too! And I admit I probably would if I were in a position of power and had actionable intelligence.
But this is exactly the fight Muslims are expecting. One of the primary teachings of Islam is that they will be attacked by non-Muslims. So when we attack, we reinforce their belief and it becomes a self-sustaining cycle. From the Crusades onward, Muslims have been proven somewhat correct, which is why the cycle continues unabated... and around and around we go....
The primary missing ingredient to the West's anti-"terror" strategy is that they are still afraid to defend free speech with fearless and uncompromising diligence. We need police and military support in defense of free speech. We should not support countries like Saudi Arabia. I'm not saying we can force them to change, but at least we shouldn't in anyway enable them to continue their brutality to their people. We need coherence in our ideals. We all should be allowed to mock anyone or anything, including a person's religion, and we all should be willing to enforce this right even by force if necessary. We as a society need to vigorously protect this most fundamental freedom. We can't proclaim America to be "exceptional" unless it does something exceptional, like protect freedom when most of the world cowers.
The only people who fear freedom of speech are the ignorant and dictators.
Freedom is still a new concept for humankind. We can't know what was going on millennia ago, but it appears that France, England and U.S. are at the forefront of allowing true freedom of expression in human civilization. But they drift back and forth. Freedom waxes and wanes even in the "West." Do we need to be reminded that every year a significant numbers of US Congressmen vote for a Constitutional Amendment to prohibit the "physical desecration" of the American Flag? And don't let all of this pro-freedom sentiment in Europe mislead you: the European high court recently forced Google to allow anyone in Europe to petition Google to remove from public access PUBLIC information if those people don't want it displayed! Yes, again, I am talking about public information like newspaper articles that my reference the person that you could search and find at your local library or in a stack of old newspapers..., but public stuff that Google went to great effort and to great public benefit to provide. And there is the ongoing battle fought by Ebay and others against French and Germany prohibitions against Nazi paraphernalia. Really, still trying to tell people that a symbol is "just too much" for our weak minds?
The Europeans clearly missed the important lesson of WWII: Instead of banning Nazi stuff, they should be vigorously defending everyone's right to "speech," free elections, accountable government and the fair application of the rule of law. They seem to have gotten the last three mostly right. And I'm very pleased by their seeming unity following the attack on Charlie Hebdo. Now it is time they step up and allow for all forms of "blasphemy."
The US has two big problems: a strong Old Testament tradition and a new-old religion I'll call "American Exceptionalism." Both generate the kind of violent anti-blasphemy sentiment, so they are equally dangerous. "New" because American Exceptionalism has lately gained great traction with the Republican control of Congress and "old" because American's have long seen themselves as special, since even before they declared their independence. American Exceptionalism leads to things such as the effort to ban flag "desecration," for example. The flag is "sacred" to some and so, by the force of law, you cannot disagree with this interpretation of this symbol... or at least that is the goal of the Exceptionalists. As it turns out the evils associated with religion are not confined to the traditional "religions."
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