When I wrote last week’s column about the effects (or
non-effects) of the adverse court decision on Aaron Katz and his friends I
stressed that America’s foundational core value of freedom of speech made any
attempt to stifle these folks, however objectionable their utterances,
untenable. Little did I imagine how much the week since that column would test
my and all of our commitment to that value.
In case you’ve spent the last week in a cave, there was a
12-minute video on YouTube, ostensibly a trailer for a 2-hour film called “The
Innocence of Muslims.” (Whether a film exists beyond this “trailer” is one of
many questions.) The clip is amateurish, badly filmed, badly acted, and above
all, an unmitigated piece of anti-Islamic propaganda on a par with “The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion” for credibility. Before the clip was taken
down, it was dubbed in Arabic and viewed in the Muslim world, provoking
protests, riots, and deaths, including the killing of the US Ambassador to
Libya and three others in Benghazi.
The film is the work of one Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an LA service station owner with a checkered
criminal history. Nakoula, who used the pseudonym “Sam Bacile” on the film, is
apparently an Egyptian Coptic Christian. Others were involved, including Terry
Jones, a Florida preacher who
helped promote the video. Jones first drew international attention when, in
July 2010, he announced on social media websites his intention to mark the
anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States by
holding an "International Burn a Quran Day.” He eventually did burn a copy
or the Quran, sparking his own set of riots in the Arab world.
Once again we have a case of protected free speech causing
enormous negative repercussions. Ambassador Chris Stevens was considered by
Libyans to be a real friend and advocate for them and a very positive
representative of the US. The others killed were another State Department
officer and two ex-Navy Seals. It is impossible to find anything but waste and
destruction in the deaths and damage done by the riots, and equally impossible
in my view to lay the responsibility anywhere but with the film’s makers, distributors,
and publicists. I cannot conceive of any motivation these people might have other
than to foment violence by Muslims so that they could then say “see, I told
you!”
And yet, as Americans, we must protect their rights to
speech, however abominable that speech may be. The rest of the world, particularly
the Arab world, has trouble understanding this. Simultaneously with (and
unrelated to) the riots over the film, an Indian cartoonist was charged with
sedition for publishing cartoons pointing out government corruption. As in
India, the world’s largest democracy, so in most of the world - there are
limits on speech and governments do not hesitate to enforce these limits. No
wonder, then, the “Arab Street” looks to the US government to punish the makers
of this nasty piece of work, and our not doing so adds fuel to the notion that
the government and people of the US agree with these vermin.
If you take a principled stand, the world will test your
resolve, and this is quite a test. The problem with freedom is that it requires
responsibility. As Justice Holmes said, “your right to swing your arm ends at
my nose.” Similarly, your right to say what you want ends at incitement to
riot, but barring a direct call to arms, that requires proving intent, which is
hard to do, so we have to err on the side of protecting speech under the First
Amendment rather than restricting it.
When the actor Patrick Duffy’s parents were murdered, he said
that as practicing Buddhist he could not demand the murderer be punished as the
act was self-punishing – the murderer would suffer for thousands of lives for
what he did. I’d like to believe the same for Mssrs. Nakoula, Jones, and their
ilk. Living under the US Constitution is a gift and a privilege, and abuses
such as this give ammunition to those who would take those rights away so that
their voice is all that can be heard. We allow that, we pay with our souls.
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