Freedom of Speech

You're a bastard. You're stupid. You're mother is a cheap slut and you're father likes to touch up small children on the weekends. You represent all that is wrong with the world and personally deserve to die in horrible pain while the swirling ghosts morality taunt you with pithy one-liners and wave burning pictures of all your dreams in your contorted and loathsome face.

Hallelujah! Freedom of speech kicks ass! I can't tell you how morally enriched I feel having exercised my human right to say whatever I damn well choose no matter of its level of accuracy, usefulness or benefit to society. It really isn't possible to find the words. Largely, it must be said, because it's all just complete toss. The above was not an example of free speech. It was an example of threatening, slanderous and self indulgent crap. The trouble is that few people understand the distinction.

We do live in a confused and sorry world sometimes. A world where extremists and subversives have become the champions of free speech while the nominally mainstream have so clumsily abused logic that they find themselves in the role of some sort of Orwellian thought police; protecting the masses from the insane utterances of laughable fools while throwing away that which makes democracy possible.

Take the recent Geert Wilders debacle. He made a film criticizing the Koran and was invited by a small number of Lords to come to England and present the film. Now lets not get bogged down here. The film may well be disagreeable to many but it breaks no laws and Geert Wilders himself is not a criminal. He's an elected member of parliament in the Netherlands not some paramilitary gunman. The reasoning behind barring him from the UK? His presence might provoke violence from Muslims! Where do we begin? Is it the fact that such a stance tends to suggest that our government agrees with him in the assertion that Islam is to violence as a media studies degree is to unemployment? Is it that it patronizes an entire religious group? Is that that our government seems to believe that the best way to avoid unlawful behavior is to pander to the potential law breakers and restrict the freedoms of the law-abiding? Worse than all of this is the fact that once again an individual with extreme views has been able to present himself as the champion of freedom. Banning him not only increased his profile but actually made the UK look small minded rather than the other way around.

Let us be clear. Freedom of speech is not the right to say whatever you please at any time and damn the consequences. Freedom of speech is the right to criticize ideas. Especially ideas associated with established powers. While many may wish to pretend that what goes on in religious circles is somehow separate from the world of politics and public life the truth of the matter is that religions are little different from political movements. So banning someone from criticizing a religion is little different from banning the criticism of a political party. That alone is worrying enough. And while I may, if I wish, vociferously protest against the beliefs of a political party it would not be OK for me to attack personally the individuals within that group. A person can be slandered, an idea cannot. That's the difference between free-speech and harassment. We must allow open debate and we must allow those with objectionable views to express them. What we must not do is confuse freedom of speech with the right to attack, oppress and marginalize. But how can the average man in the street be expected to understand the distinction if those who claim to know how to run the country can't see it themselves?