Humorists Vs. Religion by Iain Ellis

Author:Iain Ellis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc.
Published: 2018-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

Should There Be Limits Put on Freedom of Expression?

Nothing is more sacred to Western culture than its cherished right to freedom of expression. Nevertheless, even this freedom is never absolute and is sometimes curtailed in democratic nations. Speaking of “hate speech” restraints within the United States and elsewhere, New York Times columnist David Brooks bemoans how some of our colleges impose rules regarding speech and have even revoked invitations of guest speakers deemed unacceptable by certain student and/or faculty factions.7 Such restrictions only make us hypocrites, argues Brooks, when elsewhere we trumpet our freedom of speech values.

Russ Douthat also regards hate speech restrictions as illiberal.8 While neither encouraging nor promoting the practice of blasphemy, he regards the right to do so as “essential,” particularly when that right is threatened by the would-be violent. Their terror can never be allowed to influence the limits of speech, he argues, however abhorrent the expression. A familiar call—particularly from politicians and religious authorities—since the Jyllands-Posten controversy has been for cartoonists and other satirists to tone down their “blasphemy,” but Douthat asserts that we should be defending this right, not compromising it. Advocates of this hard-line defense, such as the late Christopher Hitchens, posit that self-censorship under threat of violence amounts to appeasement and a resigned acceptance that fear will be a driving determinant of our value system. For all its “sins” of offense, Charlie Hebdo has never been guilty of such capitulation.

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