Slaves choosing slavery: Slate says that U.S. overvalues free speech

The Leftist media commits suicide, calling for an end to the First Amendment and surrender to Islamic supremacism -- as I wrote about here. And these would-be dhimmi slaves want to take us down with them.

"The World Doesn’t Love the First Amendment: The vile anti-Muslim video shows that the U.S. overvalues free speech," by Eric Posner at Slate, September 25 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

The universal response in the United States to the uproar over the anti-Muslim video is that the Muslim world will just have to get used to freedom of expression. President Obama said so himself in a speech at the United Nations today, which included both a strong defense of the First Amendment and (“in the alternative,” as lawyers say) and a plea that the United States is helpless anyway when it comes to controlling information. In a world linked by YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, countless videos attacking people’s religions, produced by provocateurs, rabble-rousers, and lunatics, will spread to every corner of the world, as fast as the Internet can blast them, and beyond the power of governments to stop them. Muslims need to grow a thick skin, the thinking goes, as believers in the West have done over the centuries. Perhaps they will even learn what it means to live in a free society, and adopt something like the First Amendment in their own countries.

But there is another possible response. This is that Americans need to learn that the rest of the world—and not just Muslims—see no sense in the First Amendment. Even other Western nations take a more circumspect position on freedom of expression than we do, realizing that often free speech must yield to other values and the need for order. Our own history suggests that they might have a point....

Americans have not always been so paralyzed by constitutional symbolism. During the Cold War, the U.S. foreign policy establishment urged civil rights reform in order to counter Soviet propagandists’ gleeful reports that Americans fire-hosed black protesters and state police arrested African diplomats who violated Jim Crow laws. Rather than tell the rest of the world to respect states’ rights—an ideal as sacred in its day as free speech is now—the national government assured foreigners that it sought to correct a serious but deeply entrenched problem. It is useful if discomfiting to consider that many people around the world may see America’s official indifference to Muslim (or any religious) sensibilities as similar to its indifference to racial discrimination before the civil rights era.

The final irony is that while the White House did no more than timidly plead with Google to check if the anti-Muslim video violates its policies (appeasement! shout the critics), Google itself approached the controversy in the spirit of prudence. The company declined to remove the video from YouTube because the video did not attack a group (Muslims) but only attacked a religion (Islam). Yet it also cut off access to the video in countries such as Libya and Egypt where it caused violence or violated domestic law. This may have been a sensible middle ground, or perhaps Google should have done more. What is peculiar it that while reasonable people can disagree about whether a government should be able to curtail speech in order to safeguard its relations with foreign countries, the Google compromise is not one that the U.S. government could have directed. That’s because the First Amendment protects verbal attacks on groups as well as speech that causes violence (except direct incitement: the old cry of “Fire!” in a crowded theater). And so combining the liberal view that government should not interfere with political discourse, and the conservative view that government should not interfere with commerce, we end up with the bizarre principle that U.S. foreign policy interests cannot justify any restrictions on speech whatsoever. Instead, only the profit-maximizing interests of a private American corporation can. Try explaining that to the protesters in Cairo or Islamabad.

In other words, surrender before they hit us again.

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The hard-fought freedom of speech
is to say everything (so long it is true)

e.g. Muhammad was a pedophile (Q.65:4)

http://schnellmann.org/anti-islam-film-is-correct.html

"Free speech must yield to other values and the need for order"---

The "values" of Islam and the order of the Islamic caste system-sharia-, where muslims can say and do whatever they want and non-muslims must STFU and submit... or else!.

Also, look what he writes:

"The rest of the world—and not just Muslims—see no sense in the First Amendment-free speech-"---

Is he talking about China, Cuba, North Korea... etc.?. ¿Those countries that don't respect universal human rights like free speech?. interesting how he never elaborates on that sentence; Eric Posner is either your typical ultra, radical, anti-american, pathological mythomaniac cold war abortion or he's an ignoramus dolt. Free speech is a universal human right, it isn't an American concept that only Americans have the right to practice. I'm colombian and we have freedom of expression here, we're the oldest latin-america democracy... but of course, that's gonna change as soon as FARC is given mass pardon, this will turn into another Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua... etc. and free speech will be no-more.


Countries who believe in freedom of speech should bail put of the UN.

Sure they want to free speech? Assign china is the top dog and the muslim world will be a la Xinjiang. The muslim world will be infested by Han Chinese "immigrants" (aka infidels) to subjugate the mohammedans

He seems to be suggesting everyone outside of the US thinks this way - he should push his little marker closer to the Islamic world and - the few despots around the world who might derive some sense out of it.

This is basically about Islam - period!

It is useful if discomfiting to consider that many people around the world may see America’s official indifference to Muslim (or any religious) sensibilities as similar to its indifference to racial discrimination before the civil rights era.

A little bit of a low-blow self-hatred - possibly!!

It's the whole nanny mentality the Left have - the robo-helper!!

And this is the issue - the Left is treating respect for "Islam" as if it were a civil rights issues. When not only do they not have the right to tell people what to say - they do not have the right to tell people what to think on this a religious issue.

And in this - with all their initiatives - already tried and failed in Europe - they cross the line - to infringe upon people's right to freedom of conscience.

How can they tell an ex-Muslim for example to respect Islam - or be called a racist.

Or even the man - who created the video - a Copt - whose civil rights in Egypt - would not be upheld - simply because he is not a Muslim. And because he is not a Muslim - he is required to live as Blacks were in the US before - civil rights laws were passed.

Why doesn't the Left tell Muslim nations to ban the Shari'a laws that keep - non-Muslims as 2nd class citizens.

But no - with the one thing that holds America in place - makes it the focal point of people who love freedom around the world - the Constitution - which ensures freedom of religion - [which no Islamic nation enjoys] he sees fit to suggest there might be something wrong with it - in the face of pressure from people who - would sentence those to death for comments or personal feelings expressed about the Prophet on a Twiter page.

The Left has left the building!!

To be respected - grovelling is the wrong option!

We are free - Muslim nations don't like it - too bad!!!


When faced with Islamic Sharia issues in Europe - many wished they had a Constitution like the US!

That's why they voted out the Left!

The World Doesn’t Love the First Amendment?
I do, and the 2nd., and the rest of your Bill of Rights come to that. In the UK we muddle along in our usual way without a formal written constitution encapsulating our individual rights.

"This is that Americans need to learn that the rest of the world—and not just Muslims—see no sense in the First Amendment."

So, here's a solution: America keeps its First Amendment, the rest of the World keeps its lack of a First Amendment, and non-Americans learn to keep their butt out of America's internal affairs. Simple, no?

To the extent that the world at large doesn't see sense in the First Amendment, then directly to that extent is the world stupid. And Slate is obviously stupid for putting forth this proposition approvingly.

Slate is doubly stupid by suggesting that "Muslim sensibilities" should in any way be compared to Jim Crow discrimination against blacks in America's past (note well that America has the capacity to make up for its wrongs while the Islamic world has shown no such capacity). Muslim sensibilities are the feelings of adults who refuse to grow up while discrimination against black Americans was a true wrong which needed to be corrected. To think that the two should be compared as somehow the same is indicative of the kind of stupidtiy that only well educated elites can generate, like the editors at Slate.

This clown should not be confused with GERALD Posner, author of Case Closed (JFK). He sometimes pops up on TV as a news analyst, too.

Sometimes I labor under the illusion that every person has a factual and rational basis for espousing an opinion. I tend to forget that to a large extent the conventional wisdom is determined not by reason or fact but rather by sheer weight of numbers who support a certain view. If for example countless representatives of a group with 1.5 billion members angrily and fervently propagandize against free speech, the sheer weight of numbers seeking limits on speech controls the mindset of weaker minds in the West. Suddenly those minds, including not a few journalists, find all sorts of "reasons" why the view held by the huge mass of totalitarian cultists is not entirely unjustified -- is perhaps even right! To say so even seems to other weak minds to be brilliantly contrarian and unconventional. Yet if that cult were to be reduced in numbers to one-thousandth of its former size, suddenly 90% of those weak-minded journalists who to some extent sympathized with the cult in its views, would no longer sympathize. The sheer physical weight of numbers being gone, the weak-minded are no longer influenced.

I think we saw precisely this phenomenon with the Soviet Union. Plenty of journalists for decades argued moral equivalency with the U.S. We saw Reagan's "evil empire" speech poo-pooed. But when the Soviet Union died and the sheer quantitative force of its immense (and often clandestine) propaganda and influence operation was reduced to zero, suddenly one found very few journalists who were sympathetic to communism.

Many people's minds are moved not by reason or fact but by sheer quantitative weight of opinion and propaganda (dawaganda nowadays). Counterfeits of rational argument then follow on to justify a position.

It is really painful to hear these idiots against freedom to which they owe everything they have. Is this America?

It is really painful to hear these idiots against freedom to which they owe everything they have. Is this America?

Are these people insane? Basically, we overvalue our freedom?!?!?! Who is this fifth column amongst us?

Eric Posner wrote this manure?

"Rather than tell the rest of the world to respect states’ rights—an ideal as sacred in its day as free speech is now—the national government assured foreigners that it sought to correct a serious but deeply entrenched problem."

States rights was never as sacred as free speech is now. The legal principle in the Civil War was over the extent of states rights. Even earlier Andrew Jackson faced down such ideas.

====================================

"And so combining the liberal view that government should not interfere with political discourse, and the conservative view that government should not interfere with commerce, we end up with the bizarre principle that U.S. foreign policy interests cannot justify any restrictions on speech whatsoever. Instead, only the profit-maximizing interests of a private American corporation can."

It is not a bizarre principle if we have a limited government which cannot order around authors or their corporate distributors. And notice how Posner introduces 'profit-maximizing' as something bad.

Where's Buraq? Posner is a clown!

Yup! I second that!
Poser is a wire-wigged, baggy-trousered, five-star clown!

I left this comment on Slate:

"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam"? Or criticize it? Or resort to Charlie Hebdo level cartoons? Or to awful video trailers whose Muslim funding is just now coming to light? (See Wade Shoebat's revelations.) Sorry, old chap, but the future belongs to me, a slanderer, mocker, blasphemer, and critic of Muslims and Islam and its pedophilic icon, Big Mo. What's the government going to do about it? Ask Huma Abedin to send some ski-masked jihadist thugs to beat me up? Give me the Daniel Pearl treatment? Or perhaps Hillary will request that a joint DHS/TSA SWAT team swoop down on me and take me in for questioning?

And how can you say that Obama's speech contained "a strong defense of the First Amendment"? That was one of the most tepid "defenses" of an American freedom I've ever read. You're a lawyer. Didn’t' you note the quid pro quo he had no business offering the Muslims: you stop slandering Jesus, we'll stop slandering Mohammad? Muslims won't stop slandering other creeds' icons – try and stop them – but how does he propose to stop the slandering, libeling, or mockery of Mohammad, except by criminalizing it at the behest of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the United Nations, and Hillary Clinton?

Beware of what you're asking for here. You just might regret your not being able to say what you wish to say about anything. Criminalizing speech about Islam doubtless will lead to criminalizing speech about anything the state deems improper or seditious.

'The opinion which it is attempted by Authority to suppress may possibly be true. Those who wish to suppress it, of course deny its truth, but they are not infallible.'
John Stuart Mill

The persons who would deny our right to free speech are, insecure, delusional dictatorial barbarians.

Those who respond to free speech with violence rather than reasonsed argument, are Muslims.

Those who would, in the face of Islam's violence, curtail our right to speak freely, are of the multiplying species 'Western Democratic Politicians.' They will protect, with their last breath, our right to speak freely....provided no Muslim objects.

We have definitely got to hold the Dhimmi/ Anti-Dhimmi Awards at jihadwatch this year.

And this 'journalist' should be in the running for American Dhimmi of the Year.

He'd be a shoo-in...except that there's such an awful lot of competition...

And the same goes for the International scene.

So many, many grovelling fools. How can we possibly decide which is worst, who is and has been most damaging?

But I still think - unless Obama is to get it again - that this chap is surely one of the worst.

*issues many vulgar expletives*

To quote the late journalist (for Slate, among others) Christopher Hitchens, "Fuck that."

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