I’ve surprised myself by having two conflicting viewpoints on the issue of the Danish cartoons that have insulted Muslims.
On the one hand, I’m a first amendment fanatic, and clearly don’t think the Islamist response of burning embassies and consulates and threatening to kill Danes is appropriate.
On the other, I think we need to remember that with free speech and free press comes responsibility.
There are clearly limits to free speech. Yelling fire in a crowded theater comes to mind. But in a larger sense, early philosophers of free speech, including Locke and the founding fathers, recognized that some speech is intolerable. Locke, for example, found atheistic free speech intolerable. Clearly, as a society we’ve moved beyond that. But the point remains that some free speech is not appropriate (whether or not it should be against the law is another issue).
A white guy who walks into a bar in Harlem and start praising the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi party and slavery at the top of his lungs is heading for a beating. Most juries would probably acquit the African-Americans who administered the beating. (I’m sure somebody who went to law school can amplify or correct me on this). But my point is that if we think about it we can find occasions where limits to free speech are appropriate.
Were the Danes who published the cartoons being deliberately provocative? Yes, they were, by their own admission. They wanted to raise the debate that is being raised. And it is an interesting debate. Clearly, the Muslim world needs to consider the issue of free speech, even if it involves intolerable speech. What are the appropriate limits for offensive speech for Islam?
But this debate should have been provoked in a different way by different people. Muslims need to push this debate themselves.
Do I think newspapers should not be allowed to publish cartoons like this? No. Do I think newspapers should refrain from publishing offensive cartoons? Yes, for the same reasons they should refrain from publishing nudity and profanity.
We Latter-day Saints have faced these issues from Joseph Smith’s time. He was immediately vilified and slandered from the beginning. He was surrounded by rogues who invented the most appalling falsehoods. And, finally, we had enough. Joseph Smith as the mayor of Nauvoo ordered the destruction of a deliberately provocative and libelous newspaper in that town right before his death. With historial hindsight, such a move seems wrong to us today — don’t we believe in free speech? Yes, we do. There were certainly other means that Joseph could have employed. But there is a long tradition of understanding that free speech brings with it responsibility if society is to be civilized. That is a lesson that bears some consideration.
(Note: this post is no way is intended to sympathize with people who use violence when they are offended. Basic rules of civilization make it clear that people should use other means. The purpose of this post is to explore the issue of whether we can agree that free speech also brings responsibility and that some limits to free speech are appropriate.)