Sunday, October 21, 2001

Remora

Well, news isn't good on the free speech front. The latest assault on our collective intelligence (we collected it from the clothes-line last night -- you can find it in your sock drawer) is the Labor bill which unctuously defines religious 'hate speech' and bans it, visiting its practitioners with a maximum penalty of seven years in stir. That will show them that God's in his heaven, damn them all.

The Observer's editorialist approaches this issue in a gingerly fashion:


"A couple of months ago Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, was on on television commenting on the riots in Bradford and Oldham. He said that these towns did not have an 'Asian problem' but a 'Muslim problem'. He demonstrated clearly how racists now use religion as a proxy for race in cultivating hatred for those they despise. The attack on the World Trade Centre, and the wave of Islamophobia it has generated, has only increased the vulnerability of many British citizens to this kind of racist attack.
In his speech to the Labour Party conference, David Blunkett announced the government's response.
He promised 'to toughen up our incitement laws to ensure that attention-seekers and extremists cannot abuse our rights of free speech to stir up tensions in our cities...' Laws against incitement to racial hatred are to be complemented by laws against incitement to religious hatred.

It is not clear exactly what is being proposed here. Few civil libertarians have a problem with a law that restricts speech that, given its immediate context, is likely to result directly in violence. John Stuart Mill gives the example of someone distributing leaflets which say 'Corn dealers are starvers of the poor' to an excited mob gathering outside a corn dealer's house. But it is not clear why we need a law that specifically targets religiously oriented speech that has this effect, rather than a general law against incitement."

A more vigorous defense of free speech is being made by comedian Rowan Atkinson, who pointed out, in a letter to the Times, that the Labor proposal could be used to ban satiric portrayals of religion. The government's purring reply was (get the claws back in the sheathes) that OF COURSE, you can trust us to do what is best.

So, for guidance on the religious issue, we at Limited Inc turned, of course, to Milton's Areopagitica. Milton, when he gets wound up, sounds like a giant chewing rocks. I imagine a murkish, Goya like figure. It's daunting, Milton's prose. After reviewing the history of censorship, with particular reference to the part played by various councils of the Whore of Babylon, ie The Church of Rome, he gives us this wonderful passage:

"And thus ye have the Inventors and the originall of Book-licencing ript up and drawn as lineally as any pedigree. We have it not, that can be heard of, from any ancient State, or politie, or Church, nor by any Statute left us by our Ancestors elder or later; nor from the moderne custom of any reformed Citty, or Church abroad; but from the most Antichristian Councel and the most tyrannous Inquisition that ever inquir'd. Till then Books were ever as freely admitted into the World as any other birth; the issue of the brain was no then the issue of the womb: no envious Juno sate cros-leg'd over the nativity of any man's intellectuall off spring; but if it prov'd a Monster, who denies, but that it was justly burnt, or sunk into the Sea. But that a Book in wors condition then a peccant soul, should be to stand before a Jury ere it be borne to the World, and undergo yet in darknesse the judgment of Radamanth and his Collegues, ere it can pass the ferry backward into light, was never heard before, till that mysterious iniquity, provokt and troubl'd at the first entrance of Reformation, sought out new limbo's and new hells wherein they might include our Books also within the number of their damned."

Among the new limbos, of course, is being fired for your views, which happened to Ann Coulter at the National Review. No need to mince words -- Ann Coulter is a bigot. But really, firing her from the National Review as if she'd just revealed her scarlet letter is unworthy of William Buckley's mag. Anyway, here's the start of a perfectly delicious column which, fortunately, we can read due to the lack, so far, of any hate speech legislation protecting liberals.

"LIBERALS ARE up to their old tricks again. Twenty years of treason haven't slowed them down.

Earlier prescient advice from the anti-American crowd has included: dismantling government intelligence agencies "brick by brick"; toppling the Shah of Iran and giving Islamic fundamentalism its first real foothold in the Mideast; turning the U.S. armed forces into a feminist consciousness-raising session; demanding continued dependence on Arab oil in order to preserve mud flats in Alaska; indignantly opposing a missile defense shield; promoting endless due process rights for aliens who are illegal, diseased or criminal; disarming the public; and purging the nation of insidious references to God."

This stuff is too good to be unbottled. It makes me a little giddy to think that I, a mere peon of the left, have secretly connived at such wonderful treasons. But I do wonder how she tracked us down -- I thought we removed those bricks at night? I was assured nobody was around. But you just can't trust the good people of Reston, VA, can ya? They must have figured something was up the next morning, when we had that huge brick sale to pay for the treasonous opposition to the missile defense plan. Treasonous opposition nowadays costs a packet. For one thing, there are all the black capes you have to buy for the meetings. But Coulter was on the spot. Drat!

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