President’s Obama’s speech at the UN headquarters in defense of freedom of expression was one for the history books. He couldn’t be clearer when he said that he would protect speech the he, personally, disagreed with.
“As president of our country, and commander in chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day,” Mr. Obama said. “And I will defend their right to do so.”
After all, uncontroversial speech does not need protection. Freedom of expression is needed, specifically, to defend speech that some may find unpleasant.
Unsurprisingly, Muslim heads of states were not convinced. They claim that “there should be limits for the freedom of expression, especially if such freedom blasphemes the beliefs of nations and defames their figures.” In doing so they put their own hostility toward fundamental rights of humans on display.
What is bizarre on their part is insistence that “cultural limits on rights like freedom of speech had to be respected”. If the differences are cultural, then why are they demanding that these rules apply to those who do not share that “culture”? This is a rather grotesque smokescreen: not content with setting up theocracies in their own nations, they want the rest of us not to be sheltered from the onerous requirements of their religion, either. It is not about culture; it is about control. For those who keep complaining about “Islamophobia”, here you have it: Islam, even in its most “moderate” from, is culturally incompatible with freedom of expression. I could not have said it better myself.
Even more grotesque are the histrionics of the apologists, crying “imperialism” and “colonialism” anytime someone criticizes the Muslim thugs. What is paradoxical here is that we are not trying to change them (not withstanding the acts of violence), they are trying to change us. If there is an imperialist in the room, it is them, not us.
What is sad here is that even the rest of the “western” nations are not standing by the US, either: the joint statement of European and Islamic nations demanding “respect for all religions and prophets” pretty much sends the message that we are on our own.
Which brings me to the title of this post. I hate to sound nationalistic, because I know that it can be a slippery slope. But I am not ashamed to say that I am proud of Jefferson and Madison, even though I understand that they, too, had their flaws, and everyone has the right to point that out.
