Free Speech and Violence

On the news last night, I think it was Chris Hayes but am too lazy to actually look it up, there was a comment that I cheered out loud over.  Researchers in Psychology, Sociology, and related fields of study have begun looking into the root causes of terrorism.  Why is it so attractive to some?  Where does it start?  Why does it continue?  Questions such as these have needed to be asked for a whale of a long time, going back to the Irish Republican Army, and the uprising in various countries under colonialism, including the Mau Mau insurrection in South Africa in the middle of the last century, and probably a long time before that.  Terrorism is nothing new. 

Often religion is used to justify the horrific actions that terrorists indulge in.  In Ireland, it was Catholic against Protestant.  In England it was Protestant against Catholic.  Now it is Islam against Christianity and Judaism.  The only thing is, none of these religions in their mainstream teachings espouse the use of violence.  It is a perversion of the religion that takes over the thinking of the adherents.  When the veneer of religion is scraped away, generally there is an underlying secular reason for the terrorism – generally power and/or greed.  After all, Mahatma Ghandi achieved freedom from English colonialism without violence, and our own black civil rights movement achieved more of its goals through the practice of non-violence.

And now we have these obscene terrorist acts in Africa and Europe.  At least 2,000 people were slaughtered by Boko Haram in Africa, and the spate of terrorism in Europe.  At the same time, there is much discussion about freedom of speech, and whether we should, or should not, curtail freedom of expression.  Since I was raised during the time when people were taught to be polite in their speech, not because you might offend someone, but that non-politeness was an indication you were not a “nice” person, this is a really a complex issue for me.  For one thing, when I saw a website that indicated it had the cartoons that Charlie Hebdo had been printing, I had to look and was terribly offended at one of the cartoons, and I’m not even a Muslim.  It was supposedly a depiction of Mohamed’s hairy butt!  That wasn’t even bad satire; it was just disgusting!!

I am a firm believer in our concept of freedom of speech.  I believe that I have every right to write whatever I want to on this blog, and I will certainly defend my right as firmly as I can.  But at the same time, I believe that if I choose to write something that is deeply offensive to someone else, then I must expect some sort of negative response.  It may be the loss of a good friend all the way to something very unpleasant.  In our insistence on our own right to say what we want, I believe that we have lost the fact that words can be as abusive and as hurtful as physically or sexually abusing that person.  There is a big difference between satirizing an idea or policy of a religion, and rudely, crudely and obnoxiously denigrating the very basis for that religion’s existence.

As an example of a really good cartoon satirizing my own church’s teaching on birth control was a Conrad cartoon of U.S. Senator Henry Hyde kneeling before an obviously poor (from her clothing) pregnant woman and patting her stomach, saying, “Ah, the miracle of life!”  The next square had the same mother with the now born toddler, and Henry Hyde saying, “Disgusting little welfare cheat!”  Now that was good satire. 

What we as a culture have forgotten is that actions and words have consequences.  If we are going to not only invade other countries for our own greed (oil), indiscriminately kill their people during the invasion, continue to kill their people with the use of drones after the invasion is supposedly over, and then after all of that , denigrate their religion in the most disgusting manner possible we have to assume there will be consequences.  Perhaps our academics studying the effects of what we have done can come up with some way we can walk back some of the horrific things we have done to the Arab states over time.  To make a great understatement, our Western world has not treated the Muslim states with any degree of respect whatsoever.  We are now reaping the violence and destruction that we have sown.

Probably there are some who will say that I am a Communist, terrorist sympathizer, pot-smoking lefty liberal.  But who would have thought that the author of the Book of Proverbs, written some 3,700 years ago was also a Communist, terrorist sympathizer, pot-smoking lefty liberal attempting to deny American their First Amendment rights of free speech.  Amazing, is it not?  Proverbs 15-1:  A mild answer calms wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” 

In short, actions and words have consequences.  We have the right to say what we want to.  But just because we can, should we?