[Dean's World] Dave Price: Freedom. Cartoons, and Religion

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dave Price:
Freedom. Cartoons, and Religion
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1144998660.shtml


   If youâve been asleep all day, you may have missed the [1]controversy
   over Comedy Centralâs decision to censor an image of Mohammed on South
   Park. Itâs been [2]discussed quite a bit, so I wonât rehash a lot of
   the [3]earlier points made.
   Something Iâm surprised no one has seriously asked: Why do some
   Muslims threaten violence when Islam is criticized or mocked? I donât
   think itâs overly cynical to immediately assume simple piety is not
   the answer to that question. Nor will I accept that Muslims are
   inherently that much more violent.
   In the liberal West, perhaps the most important aspect of the state is
   its monopoly on the use of force, and in modern times that monopoly is
   mostly unchallenged. This is true in large part because the vast
   majority of people feel the state does a reasonable job of
   representing their interests in its applications of force. In Muslim
   countries, this is often not the case, because many governments are
   undemocratic and repressive. There are generally two loci of power in
   such countries: the state, and the one competitor the state cannot
   crush out of hand: the mosque (in some countries, the mosque is
   actually the only place people can gather without violating laws
   against public assembly). Since these statesâ use of force is
   generally selfish and even wanton, that monopoly is often challenged,
   and with the only other locus of power being the mosque, the natural
   result is a subset of violent, rabble-rousing clerics, such as those
   that sparked the original protest with a tour in the Mideast designed
   to incite anger over the original cartoons.
   Thereâs an infamous [4]event in Christian history in which [5]Galileo
   was forced to recant, under the threat of violence from clerics, his
   heliocentric model of the universe. Ultimately, reason won out and the
   heliocentric model was allowed to be discussed and of course is now
   universally accepted. But suppose instead the Church had organized
   riots, smashed all the telescopes, and forbidden the study of
   astronomy specifically and scientific inquiry generally, suppressing
   [6]Tycho Brahe's painstaking and detailed measurements that allowed
   [7]Johannes Kepler to formulate his [8]laws of planetary motion which
   formed the basis of [9]Newtonian physics that the Industrial
   Revolution was built on, creating the unprecedented improvement
   prosperity, technology and living standards we enjoy today, and (not
   incidentally) ultimately spreading Chistianity across the globe. It's
   fairly obvious in retrospect that doing so would have been a tragic
   error of great historical consequence.
   So why did the Church initially resist Galileoâs ideas, despite the
   empirical proof? Because, of course, they saw those ideas as a threat
   to their power.
   Similarly, anything that mocks Islam or contravenes its rules is not
   just a challenge to radical clericsâ authority, but also an
   opportunity to rally the faithful to a religious cause and thus
   increase their power. And thus in this cause theyâre seeking to apply
   force to modify our societyâs behavior, which is properly the sole
   domain of our democratically controlled states, subject to restriction
   by principles like free speech. So Jeff Goldstein is quite right when
   he [10]rebukes Hugh [11]Hewitt:

     And if what it takes to keep Muslims from engaging in jihadâor at
     the very least, holding public wildings over cartoonsâis accepting
     their demands that we donât talk about their faith in a way that
     upsets them, that is a sacrifice Iâm not willing to make. And no
     one who is promoting classical liberalism in its cultural battle
     with the theocratic determinism of the Islamists should be willing
     to concede this pointâeven if they do so hoping that it means
     Comedy Central might not make fun of Jesus anymore.

   Free speech is more than just a pretty ideal. It's a fundamental part
   of why we in the West enjoy the highest standards of living in the
   world and in human history. We'd do well to remember that before we
   begin self-censoring in response to threats of violence stirred up by
   opportunistic thugs.

References

   1. http://instapundit.com/archives/029680.php
   2. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_04_09-2006_04_15.shtml#1144900882
   3. http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004982.htm
   4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair
   5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo
   6. %E2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe%E2
   7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler
   8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%27s_laws_of_planetary_motion
   9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtonian_physics
  10. http://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/entry/20154/
  11. http://hughhewitt.com/archives/2006/04/09-week/index.php#a001893