Free Speech For All

The New Republic
has a nice piece by Peter Beinart, who like Diogenes with his lamp, went searching for liberals who care about free speech:

Last week, I went searching the liberal Web for discussions of Idomeneo. The Deutsche Oper, a Berlin opera house, had recently canceled the Mozart classic because it feared Muslims would react violently to a scene featuring Mohammed's severed head. Germans declared that free speech was under siege. The New York Times covered every wrinkle. Right-wing websites buzzed. And, on the big liberal blogs, virtual silence.

If pressed, most liberal bloggers would probably have condemned the opera house's decision. But they didn't feel pressed. Blogging thrives on outrage (see, for instance, my colleague Martin Peretz's outraged blogging on the affair at tnr.com/blog/spine), and the Idomeneo closure just didn't get liberal blood flowing. And why is that? Perhaps because it didn't have anything to do with George W. Bush.

Consider the liberal blogosphere's reaction to Joseph Ratzinger's (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI's) September 12 speech, in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor calling Islam "evil and inhuman"--prompting Muslim zealots to kill a nun in Somalia and two Iraqi Christians. Some liberals did unequivocally condemn the violence. The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum, for instance, noted that "Benedict's remarks may have been needlessly insulting, but the vicious and theatrical displays of violence from all over the Muslim world have nonetheless been completely disgraceful." But Drum was not exactly typical. Look at the reaction on the ?berblog Daily Kos. Markos Moulitsas himself didn't mention the controversy, but I found six "diaries" on the subject, written by contributors to his site, which garnered a sizeable response. One blamed the pope, one blamed the Muslim response, and one blamed both Islam and Christianity for being expansionist and violent. And the other three? They all blamed Bush. "Just in time for this year's elections," noted one writer. "Republicans need the Catholic vote, and, thus, we see [the pope's statement]." Another Kossack called Ratzinger's statement "a calculated, intentional strategy designed to help George Bush and the Republicans in the 2006 elections." A third writer criticized Ratzinger for apologizing, because "[t]he Pope's apology played into the Bush culture of fear."

Yes, the Pope and GWB [and don't forget the Likud] are in cahoots to keep the fever-swamp left in their padded cells for another two years. But my recent posts about the beginning of a left-wing assault on partisanship through McCain-Feingold [unpaid political opinions in radio speech supporting conservative causes now ruled by a Seattle judge as monetizable as campaign donations] and of course, "hate speech," easily convertible into speech against causes one supports, are not addressed by Beinart in his otherwise measured assessment of how both left and right must collaborate to ensure our basic First Amendment rights and religious freedoms are not abridged by the ACLU and other fanatic Soros-funded extremists.

The whole article should be read, but Beinart closes with a call to return to centrist values where censorship and free speech are concerned:

Liberals are less prone to a "clash of civilizations" mentality that undermines the very notion of free speech as a universal value. And that is why they must make the cause of European free speech their own. The best analogy is the "political correctness" fights that roiled college campuses in the late '80s and early '90s. When professors and students were punished for statements that violated racial and gender orthodoxy, it was conservatives like Dinesh D'Souza who most aggressively came to their defense. But many conservatives were tainted by their defense of the McCarthyite assault on campus free speech in the 1950s. In 1991, the new republic published a review of D'Souza's book by the renowned Southern historian Eugene Genovese. "As one who saw his professors fired during the McCarthy era, and who had to fight, as a pro-Communist Marxist, for his own right to teach," wrote Genovese, "I fear that our conservative colleagues are today facing a new McCarthyism." Yet the conservatives, he argued, couldn't defeat it alone. The cause of free speech "will go down, unless it is supported by a substantial portion of the left and center. ... It is time to close ranks."

We have reached that point again. During the PC wars, many liberals were genuinely conflicted about whether free speech outweighed racial and gender sensitivity on campus. Today, some liberals still excuse censorship in sensitivity's name. The bigger danger, however, is not sensitivity; it is indifference. Having adapted themselves so fully to a hyper-partisan environment, many liberals seem unable to conceive of a struggle in which the Republican right is not an enemy but an ally. But there are such struggles, and, without today's activist liberals, they will be harder to win. Free speech is under threat, and Idomeneo should be the last straw. It is time, once again, to close ranks.

The froth-flecked mouths of the hysterics calling for Bush's impeachment or worse must be allowed to howl at the moon---and talk radio and conservative venues elsewhere to thrive among the righteous right.

It's the American way.