Category Archives: Free Speech

The Harvard Fiasco

As Stanley Kurtz, at NRO, points out:

So Summers behaved badly. But that just shows how serious the problem of our politically correct campuses is. Students face a daily choice between speaking their mind and harming their own career prospects by alienating the professors who control their grades and recommendations.

The Harvard faculty continues it’s tyranny of the majority. Summers was one of the folks actively working to reverse the politically correct and authoritarian culture of our university campuses. It appears, at least in the short term, that the culture tyrants have won. Intellectual honesty and open discussion of issues will not be tolerated at Harvard. The lesson will not be lost on the students.

Security executive, work for Core Security, veteran, kids, dogs, cat, chickens, mortgage, bills. I like #liberty #InfoSec #scotch, #wine, #cigars, #travel, #baseball

Quote to Ponder

“If newsmen do not tell the truth as they see it because it might make waves, or if their bosses decide something should or should not be broadcast because of Washington or Main Street consequences, we have dishonored ourselves and we have lost the First Amendment by default.”
— Richard Salant (1914-1993) former President of CBS News

Security executive, work for Core Security, veteran, kids, dogs, cat, chickens, mortgage, bills. I like #liberty #InfoSec #scotch, #wine, #cigars, #travel, #baseball

Interesting Perspective

Wulf, of Atlas Blogged, points out something interesting in The Cartoons are Symptom of a Problem, not the Cause. It is an interesting perspective, and one that should be developed further.

Jyllands-Posten’s publication of the cartoons [ed: the cartoons of Mohammed] is repeatedly called offensive. It should instead be seen as defensive. It would be appropriate to debate whether such defensiveness was warranted, but it must first be recognized as a defensive posture. Do so.

This is quite right, actually. There has been a campaign waged by Muslims in Europe and, to a lesser extent, North America to alter laws and cultural norms in order to remake Western culture to more closely resemble the culture these Muslims desire. Murder, terrorism and threats of murder and terrorism have been used to try and bring this about. Governments have been coerced into creating laws that protect religions from so-called hate speech (Great Britain, most notoriously). Editors of papers have been fired or sent on “sabbatical”. Plots of movies have been changed in response to pressure. News papers have refused to publish out of fear of reprisal.

These cartoons are not offensive, in the sense that they offend someone. The reality is, if these cartoons are offensive to you, then don’t read the paper that they are in, or browse the website displaying them. No, these cartoons are part of defending liberalism against totalitarians who use religion to motivate the masses.

Security executive, work for Core Security, veteran, kids, dogs, cat, chickens, mortgage, bills. I like #liberty #InfoSec #scotch, #wine, #cigars, #travel, #baseball

Democracy and Islam Go Together?

Excerpts from a Forbes update on the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons brouhaha. Or, as Reason’s Hit and Run has called it, the “Intoonfada”. So, I pulled out a few excerpts, and my reactions, just for you. :-)

Saudi Arabia’s top cleric called on the world’s Muslims to reject apologies for the “slanderous” caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed and demanded the authors and publishers of the cartoons be tried and punished, Saudi newspapers reported Saturday.

Hmmm, when’s the last time you heard the Pope demand that the author of a cartoon that was against the teachings of the Catholic Church be tried and punished? Yeah, the Pope would love to have censorship that prevented anyone from saying anything he doesn’t like, but he is not living in an autocracy were something gets said only if the government approves. If you think the government doesn’t want this published, because you are used to the West, you need to re-evaluate how things work in Saudi Arabia. If these folks actually supported liberal, western ideas, then the cleric would have never called for such a trial. If they were at least moderate then they would also call for trials and punishment for the Iranian “holocaust contest”.

Arab governments, Muslim clerics and newspaper columnists have been urging calm in past days, fearing that recent weeks of violence have only increased anti-Islamic sentiment in the West.

No, the real truth is that the recent weeks of violence, first in France, and now over these cartoons, has opened people’s eyes to the reality of Middle Eastern and Islamic culture. They are seeing, often for the first time, a culture of oppression and intolerance. This is a culture that not only forbids gays to marry, but makes homosexuality a crime. A culture that stones women to death for infidelity, that allows men to rape their wives with no legal recourse. A culture that represses free speech, that openly calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and the genocide of the Jewish people. The so-called moderates want the same things, they just refrain from violence. They don’t condemn the violence, making them enablers of violence and extremism.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the controversy over the cartoons has created unprecedented tension between the Islamic and Christian world.

The tension always existed, and always will, until one culture or the other triumphs. Why? Because the cultures are diametrically opposed, with completely different values. Western culture could tolerate the existence of Islamic culture, but Islam can never permantly tolerate the existence of a culture that holds values they cannot accept. People like al-Seedes, bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, Assad and the others understand that a free and open culture challenges their power in ways they can’t overcome. Which is why they have censorship and police states. Ultimately, when people are given a choice, they choose capitalism and liberalism.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono reiterated that many Muslims consider the cartoons an insult to their faith, but he called on Muslims to forgive those who have sincerely apologized.

“Reprinting the cartoons in order to make a point about free speech is an act of senseless brinkmanship,” he said in a commentary in the International Herald Tribune.

First, no one should apologize for these cartoons. Second, it’s only brinksmanship for the people enabling or inciting the violence, rather than calming it, which is just about every Islamic leader out there. Most Western governments have cravenly offered to surrender freedom of speech rather than confront religious totalitarianism.

“It is also a disservice to democracy. It sends a conflicting message to the Muslim community: that in a democracy it is permissible to offend Islam. This message damages efforts to prove that democracy and Islam go together.”

That is the message. In a liberal society the sacred cows get exposed, the emperor is told he has no clothes. This, of course, is extremely frightening to men who rule by protecting the sacred cows and pretending the emperor has beautiful, new clothes. They can never accept such a situation, because it will mean their loss of power.

Security executive, work for Core Security, veteran, kids, dogs, cat, chickens, mortgage, bills. I like #liberty #InfoSec #scotch, #wine, #cigars, #travel, #baseball

Don’t be evil? Ok, how about Politcially Biased?

I recieved this email a few hours back:

From: Google AdSense
to: me

Hello Christopher,

Our specialists have found that your account is not in compliance with
AdSense program policies. As a result, we have disabled your account.

We continually review all publishers according to our Terms and
Conditions and program policies, and we reserve the right to disable
publishers or sites that are not in compliance with our policies.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Obviously I was somewhat puzzeled… but only somewhat. After all, others around the blogosphere have had problems with google inexplicably cutting them off, apparently for political reasons, and I’m generally more offensive to the lef tthan they are.

But I kept an open mind. I sent back a one line question:

From: Me
To: Google AdSense support

Sirs,

Can you tell me how my account is not in compliance with your policies?

And I recieved no response.

And I got kinda irritated, and then I got kinda mad; so a few minutes ago, I sent this out:

From: Chris Byrne Mailed-By: gmail.com
To: Google AdSense
Cc: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Date: Feb 8, 2006 12:25 PM
Subject: Re: Google AdSense Account Disabled

Sirs,

Can you tell me how my account is not in compliance with your policies?

I sent that one question to you initially, and recieved no response. Now I am expanding my question.

I have reviewed your ad-sense policies, and I cannot find any point at which I am in violation, unless a subjective reviewer of the site found my content disagreeable politically.

If my account has been suspended because I present a different political view point than the reviewer of my site… well then you might have a small problem.

If you say that I am a hate site, a violent site, or a racist site, I can refute that conclusively; and will do so for anyone who asks. If you say that I have inappropriate content, I can refute that and will do so as well.

I will also point to many sites that present anti-semitic, anti-american, and in general vile and disgusting propaganda; and yet they have ad-sense ads. I can show you sites that depict burning of american flags, and bibles, that have ad-sense ads. I can show you sites that are unapologetically pronographic, and have ad-sense ads.

I can only conclude that this action is motivated by political bias. It is my hope that suspending accounts that are politically opposed to a reviewers viewpoint is the action of a single employee and not general corporate policy.

You are of course a private company, and you may choose to allow your political biases to determine who you do business with; but if you do, be prepared to have all of your conservative and libertarian customers do the same.

If you cannot provide me with a legitimate reason for this account suspension, that is not motivated by a bias against my libertarian politics, my staunch advocacy of free speech regardless of it’s potential for offensiveness, or the right to keep and bear arms, then I will be going to the blogosphere and the media with this.

Finally, if you insist on closing my account, please forward the remaining outstanding balance due me. As I cannot log in to my account I can’t confirm how much it is, but when I checked yesterday it was only about $40.

Thank you,

Christopher J. Byrne IV

I wonder what the response will be.

Crossposted from The Anarchangel

I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.

Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

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