‘Free Speech Is Free Speech Is Free Speech’

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Matt Welch @ Reason:

The U.S. State Department, and even its besieged embassy staff in Cairo, is receiving a barrage of criticism because of statements like this:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others

The criticism is well-deserved. As James Joyner succinctly put it,

In point of fact, making a movie commenting on the sexual proclivities of someone who died some fourteen hundred years ago in no way constitutes “incitement” under any meaningful use of the term.

I would add that my government has no business giving a whirl about “hurt[ing] the religious beliefs of others” (a standard both elastic and asymmetrical, virtually begging for a heckler’s veto) and that there is no “universal right of free speech,” at least in practice (as opposed to the philosophical principle, which I wholeheartedly endorse).

The fact is that the First Amendment, no matter how embattled, protects a range of expression unthinkable even in Western Europe. Because of that unique position, and because the U.S. seems doomed to play an outsized diplomatic and military role in the tumultuous Muslim world, it behooves the State Department to constantly explain the vast differences between state-sanctioned and legally protected speech in the so-called Land of the Free. If the U.S. government really was in the business of “firmly reject[ing]” private free-speech acts that “hurt the religious beliefs of others” there would be no time left over for doing anything else.

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Mark Steyn was sued and won in a Canadian court the ”right” to have free speech in that country.
He wrote this about the suit brought against Ezra Levant for publishing the Danish Mohammed cartoons in Canada:

Halfway through his ordeal, Mr Levant observed that one day the Danish cartoons crisis would be seen as a more critical event than the attacks of September 11th 2001. Not, obviously, in terms of the comparative death tolls, but in what each revealed about the state of western civilization in the 21st century.

After the slaughter of 9/11, the civilized world fought back, hit hard, went on the attack, rolled up the Afghan terrorist camps, toppled the Taliban. In the battle cry of a soon forgotten man called Todd Beamer, “Let’s roll!”

After the Danish cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and apologized, and signaled that we were willing to trade core western values for a quiet life. Let’s roll over! It’s a lot less effort.

And the US Embassy apology makes his point, doesn’t it?
Today Mark adds this:

The mob of “Islamic rage boys” gets mad about all kinds of stuff — cartoons, dogs, teddy bears. You can never make a long enough list to satisfy them. So you might as well tell them you’re not going to start.

We really need to keep this fact in mind.
If it hadn’t been this video, it would have been something else.
It was 9-11, after all.
And they’d been percolating a while.
Obama tried a billion dollar appeasement, but found out he will never have enough.
It never WILL be enough.
They are, if you look at their founder’s history, a people who (in following Mohammad’s ”perfect” pattern of life) plunder and loot.
If you are not OF them, you can be their next target.
That isn’t hard to understand, is it?

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“In point of fact, making a movie commenting on the sexual proclivities of someone who died some fourteen hundred years ago in no way constitutes “incitement” under any meaningful use of the term.”

Real world events suggest otherwise. The people who issued the embassy statement were certainly aware of what could constitute incitement. Mr. Joyner should take note: Dead bodies are meaningful.

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@Greg:

In your view Greg, in the real world was what the democratic socialists and the Catholics of the Munich Post and of Fritz Gerlich’s Der gerade Weg newspapermen did back in 1932 constitute “incitement” under any meaningful use of the term? The newspapermen of the Munich Post and Der gerade Weg were far far far more provocative than this film maker. Did they in your view incite violence? They reported news and criticized Nazi violence and criminality and then the Nazi homicidal fanatics engaged in violence. In your view were the democratic socialists and the Catholics of the Munich Post and of Fritz Gerlich’s Der gerade Weg similarly guilty of innocent blood?

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@Greg:
Greg, you can no more paint yourself into a tiniest enough corner to always please sensitive Muslims as you can live without breathing.
They FIND offense.
They look for PRETEXT to be offended.
Do you just not get that?
They look at Egypt’s wreaked economy and see that the Coptics, who were cut out from all government jobs thrive even yet.
So, they want the Coptic people’s stuff.
They create an offense just to get it.
There was a study done under Mubarak that showed how very little Muslims worked even when they had jobs.
They averaged only 14 minutes of work in an 8 hour day!
Can an economy thrive like that?
No!
So, they needed to find people who had stuff and then figure out a pretext to be angry enough to loot them, burn down their home (hide the evidence of the looting) and scare them away.
The Copts are collectively under dhimmitude in Egypt.
They MUST not offend any Muslim or else their entire community can be destroyed.
And we are seeing that since Mubarak has been replaced by MB.
YOU want to pre-emptively put yourself (and apparently all of us) under Dhimmitude simply for whatever ”peace” you can get for a few days, weeks, months or years.
But you are doomed to fail.
Not because you want to fail or will try to fail, but because the Muslims will FIND or MAKE UP something against you.
If and when they want your stuff, you will be toast.

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@Greg:

Dead bodies are meaningful.

Those dead bodies are the sole responsibility of the murderers. Unless, of course, you can show me where the film-maker held a gun to their heads, or otherwise made them commit the murders.

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The first order of business–please take note, Mr. Romney–is to try to avoid dead bodies in the first place. A carefully worded, apologetic statement is entirely appropriate if it might help to keep your foreign embassy staff alive, and your foreign embassy staff are very often the best judges of that. Criticisms of the mob and their admittedly irrational motivations can wait until later.

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@Greg:
Interesting #6 comment in the light of Obama throwing the apologist in Cairo under his bus.

One staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Cairo senior public affairs officer Larry Schwartz, was responsible for the statement and tweets Tuesday that have become grist for the presidential campaign, and that staffer ignored explicit State Department instructions not to issue the statement, one U.S. official close to the issue told The Cable.

Two additional administration officials confirmed the details of this…..
The White House distanced itself from the statement Tuesday, and Romney criticized it directly in his initial reaction to the attacks in Egypt and Libya shortly thereafter, accusing President Barack Obama of evicing sympathy for the attackers.

On Wednesday, Romney doubled down on that criticism, saying, “I think it’s a terrible course for America to apologize for our values.”

Obama’s 60 Minutes remarks belie the enormous frustration of top officials at the State Department and White House with the actions of the man behind the statement, Cairo senior public affairs officer Larry Schwartz, who wrote the release and oversees the embassy’s Twitter feed, according to a detailed account of the Tuesday’s events.

The official noted that the statement was posted at exactly 12:18 p.m. Cairo time — 6:18 a.m. Washington time — well before the protests began….

Protesters breached the wall hours later.

After the breach, as public criticism of the statement grew, the Cairo Embassy Twitter account continued to send out tweets defending it, some of which were later deleted.
One deleted tweet, originally posted at 12:30 a.m. Cairo time, said, “This morning’s condemnation (issued before protests began) still stands. As does condemnation of unjustified breach of the Embassy.”

Schwartz sent the statement to the State Department in Washington before publishing and the State Department directed him not to post it without changes, but Schwartz posted it anyway.

“The statement was not cleared with anyone in Washington. It was sent as ‘This is what we are putting out,'” the official said. “We replied and said this was not a good statement and that it needed major revisions. The next email we received from Embassy Cairo was ‘We just put this out.'”

A heated discussion ensued among State Department and White House officials over e-mail as the controversy over the statement grew Tuesday evening….

Despite being aware of Washington’s objections, the embassy continued to defend the statement for several hours, fueling the controversy over it, a decision the official again attributed to Schwartz.

“Not only did they push out the statement but they continued to engage on Twitter and retweet it,” the official said. “[Schwartz] would have been the one directing folks to engage on Twitter on this.”

Despite his disregard of Washington’s instructions and his actions throughout the day Tuesday, Schwartz has not yet been disciplined in any way and is still the lead public affairs officer at the embassy.

“He remains at post at the same capacity as he was,” the official said.

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/09/12/inside_the_public_relations_disaster_at_the_cairo_embassy

Michael Rubin, at the Daily Caller, adds this about whether these were planned terror attacks or spontaneous demonstrations:

The idea that the riots were spontaneous shows detachment from the reality of the Middle East. Dozens of heavily armed and murderous Islamists sacking embassies are not flash mobs of teenagers converging on a mall food court. When I lived in pre-war Iraq, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Yemen, my students and colleagues often spoke of how they had been informed by government representatives where to board buses to attend “spontaneous” rallies to be held the following day.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/12/what-really-motivated-the-embassy-attacks/#ixzz26KF3BVLV

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