While it may be ironic to imbue Charlie Hebdo with too much nobility or piety — attitudes that would seem to be the opposite of what the publication stands for — I actually think it's important to revere the irreverent. We've certainly been doing that with the Marx Brothers for 80 years, for instance. It's a strength, not a weakness, for a society to be able to not take itself too seriously.My question: If there's a "price of living in a world with humor and satire," what do you say to those who see the price as too high? That is a price that varies from person to person, depending on how much they hold sacred, how strongly they feel the offense, and whether they believe that God calls upon them to take action. For some of us, the price is dirt cheap, nothing at all. For others, it's everything — it's their eternal soul.
Now, I don't find Charlie Hebdo particularly funny (what little I've seen of it), and maybe they haven't always exercised the best judgment about how to walk the fine line humorists often need to walk between being outrageously funny and causing pointless outrage. But there's no way to make sure that all comedians always show the most sensitive judgment; by their very nature, they're sometimes going to slip up and land on the wrong side of the line. This will occasionally cause offense. But that's just the price of living in a world with humor and satire — which serve a vital role in puncturing pretense, deflating pomposity, giving us permission to laugh at authority figures.
Humorists are like the child in "The Emperor's New Clothes," who points out what everyone else is thinking but no one else has the nerve to say: the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. And if anything in the world is ripe for this kind of treatment, it's religion!
In case it's not obvious, I don't think that murder should be seen as a way to save your soul, but what do you say to people who believe they are not murderers, but soldiers in a just war? As John puts it: "the enemy has been revealed by its decision to carry out summary mass executions, and to arrogate worldwide jurisdiction." Yes, this is why we need to see that we are looking at a military enemy. They are invaders. But if these terrorists instead held the power of government in France — or wherever they conduct these killings — then they would have jurisdiction, and they might, through law, criminalize blasphemy and punish it with the death penalty. You may think that's despicable, but it's part of our tradition too:
("'An Act against Atheism and Blasphemy' as enacted in 1697 in 'His Majesty's PROVINCE of the MASSACHUSETTS-BAY in NEW-ENGLAND' (1759 printing).)
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The punishments include pillory, a red hot iron on the tongue and "sitting on the gallows with a rope around the neck." Did this actually mean a hanging or was it just a public humiliation meant to terrorize? Does anybody know?
What disturbs me about using these murders to as backdrop to a discussion about whether or not Charlie Hebdo was a legitimate or positive or sophisticated or whatever publication is that it suggests the two are connected. That somehow the murders are less vile if Charlie Hebdo was without redeeming value.
Adam Gopnik is closer to ISIS than he is to me and we shouldn't let him off so easily, focusing on whether or not he's right. We should focus on how his thinking, his arguments undermine civil society.
If your religion commands you to kill because your god is insulted, then it's time to find a new religion, because no god worth worshipping could be so easily harmed. Unless of course that god's command to kill is instead a test of your humanity--in which case, by killing you've failed the test.
Also consider that someone somewhere blaspheming your god, if that does indeed harm your own soul, means that your soul is eternally damned anyway because you cannot be certain blasphemy isn't existing somewhere without your knowledge. This makes your life unbearable and your soul tainted, meaning your god set you up for automatic and unavoidable failure. Again, time to seek a new god if that's what he had in store for you.
"but what do you say to people who believe they are not murderers, but soldiers in a just war? "
You don't need to say anything to them at all. If they act on those beliefs you kill them, before they murder you and destroy the free society you inherited and which your posterity deserves to inherit after you're dead.
Human rights are inherent and inalienable. Unfortunately people are also inherently corrupt. When given the power to oppress their fellowmen, they'll use it. If they run society that doesn't make the oppression any less wrong, it just makes it harder to stop.
"My question: If there's a "price of living in a world with humor and satire," what do you say to those who see the price as too high?"
My answer:" Find a smaller glass house to move into."
Or:
"Funny, that's what your mother said while she was sucking on my infidel dick."
Depends on the audience.
I am Laslo.
That's blafphemy, to speak flatly, from Dutch blaf.
I think its inaccurate to characterize severe punishment of blasphemy as "part of our tradition."
Tradition implies this is something that has been done in our culture for a long time. In fact its something that hasn't been done for a long time. Its part of our history, yes, but we went out of our way to ban punishment of blasphemy with the Bill of Rights. Tolerance of blasphemy is our tradition.
There's nothing like defeat to settle an argument.
What Brian C said.
What Brian C said.
David, the same question occurred to me. I'm leaning toward "public humiliation"; if they meant "hanging," why not just say it?
Slightly OT: Why the modern horror of the pillory? It's another humiliation device, of course, but not intrinsically so. Chesterton points out somewhere that if the populace thought someone was unjustly pilloried, he might as easily be pelted with flowers as with rotten eggs.
Blasphemy is like flagburning; to be abhorred, right up to the point where someone proposes to pass a law or ordinance making it a criminal offense.
Then it becomes a 1st Amendment matter.
"The punishments include pillory, a red hot iron on the tongue and "sitting on the gallows with a rope around the neck." Did this actually mean a hanging or was it just a public humiliation meant to terrorize? Does anybody know?"
Good question, but it's not a red-hot iron on the tongue, it's boring THROUGH the tongue with a red-hot iron.
If the West is going to be damned for something it did 300+ years ago, then we might as well go back to doing it. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight, correct?
"The last person hanged for blasphemy in Great Britain was Thomas Aikenhead, aged 20, in Scotland in 1697.
Which proves the point that the "decedent" West has evolved and moved forward on a path of true Enlightenment, while a significant portion of Islam remains mired in the Middle Ages.
And it is not just Islamic fanatics as the recent beheading in Saudi Arabia demostrates.
Massachusetts still has de facto prohibitions against blasphemy; only the definitions have changed. One is now judged guilty of blasphemy in Massachusetts by failure to worship at the altar of modern Democratic pieties. Just as the Puritans left old England for purposes of religious freedom, many are leaving Massachusetts for the modern version of the same thing. They didn't lose 3 House districts in 35 years for nothing. I grew up there. I know. I left. Good riddance.
If it were tradition, then the Alien and Sedition Acts might still be law. And Houston's lesbian mayor might would have successfully subpoenaed the sermons of some evangelical ministers who didn't support her equal rights ordinance.
Thankfully, we have a strong tradition long buttressed by the First Amendment.
It's not a good idea to insult any religion. You probably are a hole if you do so. But, when you talk about destruction don't you know thst you can count me out.
Unless it means destruction of the radicals who are out chopping heads, and then I'm in. the only lesson they,lol respond to is one of violence. And they have to know thst their extremism is so costly to them thst it's better to be tolerant.
Which means a lot of them need to die.
The French have hate speech as a crime, and they enforce it. Many Americans would criminalize some forms of speech -- hate speech, flag burning, etc.
I'm trying to pull apart the separate problems, and I especially want people to see the difference between the legitimate government and an outside force that is acting as if it is the government.
Another separate problem is the severity of the penalty for a particular crime. The death penalty is very harsh, but most of us don't oppose it across the board. Torture is something we all reject, but we might have different definitions of what amounts to torture.
Also, I want to challenge you with the idea that our enemy's values are not all that different from ours when it comes to crime and punishment. The enemy is just on a different time line, and if we compare it to what we were 300 or 400 years ago, it's not so alien.
Whatever arguments you have about what law and religion should be that you think are so obvious people should just be crushed for not agreeing with you -- picture yourself speaking to the people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. You would make more respectful arguments, and you would have a lot more doubt about how you could ever convince them that you are right.
We understand that our enemy is on a different timeline. That's why people make fun of people who defend 9/11 by saying, "well, what about the Crusades".
We also understand that there are people who want to banish certain forms of speech. You yourself probably can't even articulate Redskin. You choose not to publish certain images. There lots of people who agree with you AND they want their government do something about it. Oh, we most definitely know that some people think they know what is best for others.
If you have children (I don't) and care about their future, it's not a strength to be frivolous.
Why is blasphemy bad?
You can't hurt God. I think blasphemy is offensive to God, but because it hurts the blasphemer, not because it hurts God. Blasphemy may injure a religious community by mocking its beliefs, but if I am not a member of that community why should I care?
I believe Mohammad (if such a person really existed) was a false prophet. My religion teaches me that this is so. If I attempt to convert an Islamic person to Christianity, am I blaspheming in a way that some people -- Western, non-Muslims -- would like to make illegal?
"It's part of our tradition too."
Moral equivocation?
AA:
Whatever arguments you have about what law and religion should be that you think are so obvious people should just be crushed for not agreeing with you
The problem with them is not that they are "not agreeing" with us. The problem is that their solution to the disagreement is to reach out everywhere and kill infidels (us). We can't wait for them to evolve for another couple hundred years.
"our enemy's values are not all that different from ours when it comes to crime and punishment. The enemy is just on a different time line, and if we compare it to what we were 300 or 400 years ago, it's not so alien."
Our values are completely different. Look at the time & resources our society puts into our criminal justice system just due the presumption of innocence. Our protection of free speech vs. an Imam authorizing any believers to murder an offender.
I would argue 300 or 400 years has made boring holes in tongues with red hot irons completely alien to modern Americans.
"that you think are so obvious people should just be crushed for not agreeing with you "
Who in America thinks that way that is not considered a nut case by almost everybody?
The most profound value of irreverence is that it challenges orthodoxy. The ability and willingness to challenge orthodoxy is essential for human progress. If I may mock your beliefs, I may certainly challenge their veracity. If I must treat them with reverence, without regard to truth, then progress will be slow. This is true of religious orthodoxy or any other kind. I noted with interest the assertion of a Green that climate deniers should be beheaded. There you go.
"If there's a "price of living in a world with humor and satire," what do you say to those who see the price as too high?"
1. Stay away.
2. If you're here and don't like it, get out.
3. If you stay and act on your "belief" by threatening us, we will defend ourselves.
4. If you attack us, we will hit back twice as hard.
5. But: humor and satire are part of living freely. Conscious freedom is better than submission. Try it.
Terry wrote:
I believe Mohammad (if such a person really existed) was a false prophet. My religion teaches me that this is so. If I attempt to convert an Islamic person to Christianity, am I blaspheming in a way that some people -- Western, non-Muslims -- would like to make illegal?
He also was a terrible person. My western non theocratic ethics tell me so. If you could find the most horrid person in history and measure him against Mohammad, Mohammad would have a good chance of being as bad. Truly nothing redeeming about him.
There is also precedent for dealing with critics of Islam in Mohammads actions. "Who will rid me of Marwan's daughter"
We shouldn't be surprised then when modern extremists kill critics of Islam.
Ann Coulter would be a better example than The Onion.
OSo Negro wrote:
The most profound value of irreverence is that it challenges orthodoxy. The ability and willingness to challenge orthodoxy is essential for human progress
And this is why it's so hard to change Islam. Because the very word means to submit completely to Islam. How can you challenge orthodoxy if you have to submit totally?
"My question: If there's a "price of living in a world with humor and satire," what do you say to those who see the price as too high?"
If you choose to immigrate and want to live under Sharia law, why not move to a country that already has it? Why move somewhere and demand that everyone bow to your religious standards and viewpoints?
"it's not a red-hot iron on the tongue, it's boring THROUGH the tongue with a red-hot iron."
Sort of like those girls I see with tongue piercings ?
Got it.
Yes, it's a fascinating thing, isn't it, that a pre-First Amendment religious colony, famous for its intolerance of other faiths, would outlaw blasphemy.
I swear, I have no idea what the point is of all this self-examination and reflection.
Many Americans today indeed would regulate speech far more extensively than the First Amendment allows. That's the whole point of the First Amendment. I am sure hate speech would be criminalized in many if not most jurisdictions.
What does this tell me, besides that the First Amendment is a very valuable thing? Does this tell me anything about Muslims? Look at the French. Their version of the First Amendment is relatively toothless, which is why hate speech and Holocaust denial are illegal there, but the French are not hysterical or violent about offensive or inflammatory speech. They may throw you in jail or fine you, but they do not murder you.
But if these terrorists instead held the power of government in France — or wherever they conduct these killings — then they would have jurisdiction, and they might, through law, criminalize blasphemy and punish it with the death penalty.
For the Jews and other minorities, Hitler and the Brown Shirts were terrorists.
For those who disagreed with Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, those three were the terrorists.
Those 'enemies' 'blasphemed' against those 3 ‘gods’ by not being of the correct religion, ethnicity, or of the correct political persuasion.
No curfing!
You may think that's despicable, but it's part of our tradition too:
And it still is, unfortunately:
Razib Khan sez: "First, it’s really fucking offensive to me that social-justice-warrior types decide to tell me what’s offensive and/or racist every fucking day every fucking way."
But I was looking for his article "Taboos Against Blasphemy Are Normal"
..."Even within the West most nations have limits on freedom of expression around particular topics of great emotional sensitivity (e.g., Holocaust denial in Germany). The fact that religion is no longer in that class is a reflection of the marginalization of religion in the life of the modern West."
Free speech as a value is not universal and it comes and goes. More importantly, people rarely fight, as in go to war, for free speech.
If cited as a cause for war it usually means "free speech for us", as something that may be threatened by "them".
The real argument with Islam is not about any one of their values or practices specifically, but of power, whether their tribes have it over our tribes. Islam vs " the West" is really the same thing as Sunni vs Shia or Tutsi vs Hutu. This is part of the same conflict that included the battle of Lepanto, in spite of the fact that the actual cultural practices and civic values of the combatants in those days were much more similar.
"If you choose to immigrate and want to live under Sharia law, why not move to a country that already has it? Why move somewhere and demand that everyone bow to your religious standards and viewpoints?"
Because Muslim countries are hellholes. If you are one of the 5,000 Saudi princes it's OK but they spend a lot of time on the French Riviera.
Compare Pakistan and India. Both began almost in the same situation. The differences, especially since India got rid of most of the Socialists, are striking.
Many of my neighbors are Mormon. I find some of their beliefs quaint or curious, but I would never dream of insulting them.
If Mormons start calling for blasphemy laws or special treatment of Mormonism, then I will take sides against them. But Mormons do not do that - they live in peace with their neighbors because they live and let live.
In this respect, they are very different from Muslims who loudly (and sometimes physically) object to those who "blaspheme" Islam.
Blasphemy laws are an indication of an insecure group of believers who have difficulty living with non-believers.
Ann Althouse said...
"Torture is something we all reject..."
Who told you that?
Also, I want to challenge you with the idea that our enemy's values are not all that different from ours when it comes to crime and punishment. The enemy is just on a different time line, and if we compare it to what we were 300 or 400 years ago, it's not so alien.
It is here that the lack of international travel may impede your thinking. As I stroll the dusty streets of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and observe their practices and customs, I am definitely not thinking, "wow...just like the Massachusetts Bay Colony."
By the same logic, my forebears in Tennessee and Kentucky might have said, "these Indians are just like us, only 1,000 or 2,000 years behind." They sensibly said no such thing and thoughtfully extinguished their barbaric hegemony over a fine continent and drove those who failed to assimilate onto reservations where they rot to this day.
I don't think that murder should be seen as a way to save your soul, but what do you say to people who believe they are not murderers, but soldiers in a just war?
"Blindfold? Cigarette?"
Brando said...
...Unless of course that god's command to kill is instead a test of your humanity--in which case, by killing you've failed the test.
Abraham could not be reached for comment...
My question: If there's a "price of living in a world with humor and satire," what do you say to those who see the price as too high? ... For some of us, the price is dirt cheap, nothing at all. For others, it's everything — it's their eternal soul.
You say: If your soul can only be saved by the murder of a human being, IT SHALL BE YOURS. And then, if the person makes a move to save his or her soul, you kill the person ASAP.
This is so obvious that I cannot even believe you would ask the question. Note that this does NOT violate that individual's freedom of conscience and that in fact under the person's belief system, the person's soul is saved. The person so treated has achieved his or her goal and if those not wishing salvation are good enough shots, every other person gets to survive as well.
No civilization can adopt any other standard save the Israeli one. If there come to be a whole lot of persons wishing to have their souls saved by death, it is entirely moral and right for the civilization to isolate, eject or seclude such persons due to the larger civilization's objection to being forced to save souls via death of the persons possessing such souls.
You can also adopt the Israeli standard which says "If we have to save your soul through your death in order to protect others' lives, we will, but if we can protect others' lives without murdering you, we will respectfully decline to save your soul."
Note that under the Israeli standard, the soul-salvation person does not get what he or she wants. This is very offensive, apparently.
Any society that adopts the standard that the person most passionate and unrestrained in their goals must win is committing suicide.
The reason for the widespread attacks on Muslims is that a group of them have adopted a suicidal belief system. The end is certain - the rest of the world (much of which is Muslim) is merely attempting to limit the carnage.
@Ann,
the blasphemy law you quote was enacted in Colonial times. (Indeed, it looks like the law was enacted within a year or two of the infamous witch-trials in Salem.)
Were the blasphemy laws maintained after the transition from Colony to State? (I'm aware of several times when the brand-new State repealed Colonial laws about slavery. How many other Colonial laws were removed during the transition to State-hood?)
When were blasphemy laws last enforced in the Colonies?
Were the laws ever enforced by a State?
I think it would be instructive to identify when in American history the blasphemy laws were repealed.
The enemy is just on a different time line, and if we compare it to what we were 300 or 400 years ago, it's not so alien.
Absolutely. Those Islamic fundamentalists just don't realize that God has moved on from all that nasty stuff he said in the Bible and Koran. Nowadays He hangs out in Unitarian churches and supports feminism and gay marriage.
Between about 1500 and 1700 the Christian world was very nasty towards people who committed religious crimes. Worse than before fifteen hundred. This was the era of the reformation, of course. In jolly old Elizabethan England, being Catholic was treason and punished by drawing and quartering. English sailors shipwrecked in Catholic lands were tried as heretics and burnt. This was the era of mass-hysteria towards imaginary witches.
Maybe we don't want Islam to experience a Reformation.
Radical Muslims who live in the west practice cultural imperialism. They themselves are the basphemers. Freedom of expression is one of our sacred cows, and they're trying to open up a chain of slaughterhouses and BBQ pits here.......I can sympathize with someone's wish to live in accordance with his religion, but the general strategy for achieving this is to retreat from the world and not move to Paris.......The Charlie cartoonists and the radical Muslims are united in their contempt for western bourgeoise civilization. I hope they get over this petty squabble and make up soon.
Michael K said...
"If you choose to immigrate and want to live under Sharia law, why not move to a country that already has it? Why move somewhere and demand that everyone bow to your religious standards and viewpoints?"
Because Muslim countries are hellholes.
Then don't come demanding that the same policies that created such hellholes back home be enacted in your new location. We have enough of that problem here with liberal fugitives from blue states moving to red states (like Texas) and wanting to enact the same failed economic and political policies that they're fleeing.
I think the overall point should be the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom is also part of our tradition. So is the Enlightenment.
Can other non-Western cultures say the same?
The comparison to Massachusetts colonial blasphemy laws is good if we're talking about trying to convince another government what to do or not do.
But terrorists are private actors (even if subsidized by some governments for political reasons).
How to stop ideologically driven private-actor violence? Law enforcement could be one way. Trying to indoctrinate the next generations against this thinking by paying off the government's where the terrorists grew up with to moderate the education of the kids in their schools and mosques could be another.
These are government generated solutions. What should private actors do to combat this? Could try to change their hearts and minds like Gandhi or MLK, especially by allying with moderate Muslims.
Or could engage in private violence against the perpetrators and would be perpetrators to deter their action. Perhaps blow up or shoot up their madrassas and mosques or their shops. Kill the family members of those who enable the financing of these groups. Take the assymettry of terrorism to the terrorists. I don't expect the French to ever get this far.
AA: Torture is something we all reject, but we might have different definitions of what amounts to torture.
Sure. The main definition is: if our society does it regularly, it's not torture.
As a Gedankenexperiment, which is more worser:
- waterboarded for a couple of hours,
- branded or flogged,
- locked in a cage for years, surrounded by crazy people.
Given a forced choice, I'd choose them in that order.
"Also, I want to challenge you with the idea that our enemy's values are not all that different from ours when it comes to crime and punishment. The enemy is just on a different time line, and if we compare it to what we were 300 or 400 years ago, it's not so alien."
Well, first of all, for the enemy, this is not just slower evolution toward enlightened values -- Wahhabism is a *recent* phenomenon. Sayyid Qutb was inspired in part by his personal experience and disgust with western values:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb#Two_Years_in_America
And second, I assume most of us would find the culture of 17th century Puritans extremely alien, and the same goes for many other dark periods in western history. But at least those peoples had the excuse of having known no better -- they did not have direct experience with open, tolerant, modern societies and then purposely reject them.
"First of all, what's this fascination with virgins?"
"Given a forced choice, I'd choose them in that order."
Howzabout blown up with your friends and family?
Obama thinks that is way, way better than a couple of hours being waterboarded. His American value system tells him so!
Aikenhead was indicted in December 1696. The indictment read:
That ... the prisoner had repeatedly maintained, in conversation, that theology was a rhapsody of ill-invented nonsense, patched up partly of the moral doctrines of philosophers, and partly of poetical fictions and extravagant chimeras: That he ridiculed the holy scriptures, calling the Old Testament Ezra's fables, in profane allusion to Esop's Fables; That he railed on Christ, saying, he had learned magick in Egypt, which enabled him to perform those pranks which were called miracles: That he called the New Testament the history of the imposter Christ; That he said Moses was the better artist and the better politician; and he preferred Muhammad to Christ: That the Holy Scriptures were stuffed with such madness, nonsense, and contradictions, that he admired the stupidity of the world in being so long deluded by them: That he rejected the mystery of the Trinity as unworthy of refutation; and scoffed at the incarnation of Christ.
Ann Althouse said...Whatever arguments you have about what law and religion should be that you think are so obvious people should just be crushed for not agreeing with you -- picture yourself speaking to the people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. You would make more respectful arguments, and you would have a lot more doubt about how you could ever convince them that you are right.
Sweet baby Jesus, Prof, do you apply this standard to any other arguments or is this just useful to your very particular POV in this one instance? Remember the brouhaha over a word written on a rock (and/or a place name) on a ranch Gov Perry's family rented? A word and name that were in common use less than 50 years ago (not the several centuries you seem to believe constitute our relevant history)? Did you say to people attacking Perry as a racist that they should take a look at their arguments, contextualize the facts given the history and cultural mores of the past, or were you ok with concluding that people who disagreed with the modern line on race and racism should simply crush their perceived opponents? Do you think any school out there actually teaches a nuanced view of, say, the South's POV prior to the Civil War, taking into account the standard you articulate? Or do you think instead the firm and instant conclusion is "the South was (is!) racist, the South was (is!)wrong, and we people of the day are so morally superior to those bad people that even giving consideration to their POV is sinful and dangerous?"
Just asking that the other side make an argument is enough to get you fired on all sorts of topics (gender differences, pay gaps, human biodiversity/racial differences, and so on), so if that's your legitimate standard you've got a lot of work to do with your academic peers (and even more with the culture at large).
Yes, because a law enacted in a colony that predates the existence of this nation by nearly a century is exactly like practices being carried in Islamic communities around the world today.
To be fair, Islam got off to a late start compared to Christianity. Maybe we should give them another 750 years to amend the behaviors they haven't changed in the last 1250...
The French have hate speech as a crime, and they enforce it.
So does Canada and Great Britain. Oddly, they don't censor the people who might cut their throats on a public street. Censors gotta cense, bay-bee...
Pre-Revolutionary Massachusetts is not "my" tradition, Bwana.
That's Old Britain; no more "my" tradition than that of the pre-Reformation Catholic mandate.
(Jurisdiction?
The Nazis had jurisdiction in Germany and - by the ancient right of conquest - Poland.
"But, it's a law!" changes nothing there.
The power of the State has moral limits - when it exceeds them, it has no legitimacy, nor need anyone accord it any, simply because it is the State.
This view is, of course, unpopular both in the legal academy, which brooks little limit on the powers of Law, and with the State, which prefers to be considered of unlimited jurisdiction.
By my tradition is of tightly constrained government with deliberately limited powers and jurisdiction.)
Bloodletting got a bad rap too.
My question: If there's a "price of living in a world with humor and satire," what do you say to those who see the price as too high? ...
Well you could just say, "Lighten up, Francis," but you'd have to deal with the consequences, since this might also translate as "set yourself on fire, frenchman"...: يمرحوا،فرانسيس
Never trust Google translate TOO much...
It's easier to blaspheme in the faculty lounge than on the public streets these days. If you doubt that, Ann, I'll send you a nice shiny Tea Party badge to wear around campus...
I have never once blafphemed a Holy Ghoft. Something for the bucket list, I guess.
They're not invaders. They are neither an alien force nor illegal aliens. They were invited to displace and replace a native population. If they had remained in their homelands, they could expect to control the political, economic, religious, and cultural standards. In their adopted homeland, they are a competing demographic, and the French will have to address these unassimilated foreigners and their own native traitors.
The French should probably stop contracepting and aborting their children, as well as reject "diversification" or marginalization of their native society. The numbers do not favor them retaining control of their homeland.
Jaltcoh wrote -
"Now, I don't find Charlie Hebdo particularly funny (what little I've seen of it), and maybe they haven't always exercised the best judgment about how to walk the fine line humorists often need to walk between being outrageously funny and causing pointless outrage. But there's no way to make sure that all comedians always show the most sensitive judgment; by their very nature, they're sometimes going to slip up and land on the wrong side of the line. This will occasionally cause offense. But that's just the price of living in a world with humor and satire — which serve a vital role in puncturing pretense, deflating pomposity, giving us permission to laugh at authority figures."
Wow, that's a lot of qualification and tiptoeing around the subject when a simple "...humor and satire...serve a vital role in puncturing pretense, deflating pomposity, giving us permission to laugh at authority figures." would do.
And yet Jaltcoh can be admirably brief when stating "...if anything in the world is ripe for this kind of treatment, it's religion!"
Ann Althouse said...Whatever arguments you have about what law and religion should be that you think are so obvious people should just be crushed for not agreeing with you -- picture yourself speaking to the people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. You would make more respectful arguments, and you would have a lot more doubt about how you could ever convince them that you are right.
Contrast that with calling people who disagree with you regarding how responsibility for reproductive decisions should be shared (or what the consequences of one party violating a clear understanding of the others' wishes should be) "splooge stooges."
Contrast your call to think in a way that would make one provide more respectful arguments with saying of men who don't wish to form families (or sustain relationships of the type you and I think are best) essentially "they're not the kind of people our society should care about, screw them and their petty complaints about systemic unfairness."
Contrast that attitude with one that dismisses libertarian arguments about the proper scope of State power vis a vis racial discrimination by concluding the people advancing those arguments lack empathy for others to a degree that makes speaking with them nearly impossible
To a markedly lesser degree contrast that to telling opponents of legalization and normalization of homosexual marriage essentially "your opinions and concerns do not matter, the culture has moved on and your arguments do not need to be addressed, stop being bitter and shut up."
In theory you might have a good framework, there, Professor, but I note it's not really one you've employed in certain egregious examples in the past (where using it might have softened your tone, at least).
My question: If there's a "price of living in a world with humor and satire," what do you say to those who see the price as too high?
I know what *I* say. What do *you* say?
That is a price that varies from person to person, depending on how much they hold sacred, how strongly they feel the offense, and whether they believe that God calls upon them to take action. For some of us, the price is dirt cheap, nothing at all. For others, it's everything — it's their eternal soul.
Gee, Althouse, you're just now noticing this?
Well, I guess that explains why you imagine that you're "challenging" people with information well-known to any minimally historically literate person.
Wahhabism is a *recent* phenomenon. Sayyid Qutb was inspired in part by his personal experience and disgust with western values…
Sayyid Qutb is recent, but Wahhabism not really. The state that was to become “Saudi Arabia” was founded in the mid-1700's (1744 to be precise), and that era is exactly when Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, the founder of “Wahhabism,” lived (1703-1792) and did his work. As Wikipedia puts it: “His [Wahhab's] pact with Muhammad bin Saud [in 1744] helped to establish the first Saudi state and began a dynastic alliance and power-sharing arrangement between their families which continues to the present day in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
You may think that's despicable, but it's part of our tradition too:
"History" and "tradition" are not synonyms.
“The punishments include pillory, a red hot iron on the tongue and ‘sitting on the gallows with a rope around the neck.’ Did this actually mean a hanging or was it just a public humiliation meant to terrorize? Does anybody know?”
Good question….
Alexis de Tocqueville in his famous Democracy in America from the 1830's following his visit to America addresses this question.
‘Democracy more perfect than any of which antiquity had dared to dream sprang full-grown and fully armed from the midst of the old feudal society.
‘The English government watched untroubled the departure of so many emigrants, glad to see the seeds of discord and of fresh revolutions dispersed afar. Indeed it did everything to encourage it and seemed to have no anxiety about the fate of those who sought refuge from its harsh laws on American soil. It seemed to consider New England as a land given over to the fantasy of dreamers, where innovators should be allowed to try out experiments in freedom.
‘The English colonies — and that was one of the main reasons for their prosperity — have always enjoyed more internal freedom and political independence than those of other nations; nowhere was this principle of liberty applied more completely than in the states of New England.
‘It was at that time generally recognized that the lands of the New World belonged to that nation who first discovered them.
‘In that way almost the whole of the North American coast became an English possession toward the end of the sixteenth century. The means used by the British government to people these new domains were of various sorts; in some cases the king chose a governor to rule some part of the New World, administering the land in his name and under his direct orders [Footnote: This was the case in the state of New York]; that was the colonial system adopted in the rest of Europe. In others he granted ownership of some portion of the land to an individual or to a company. [Footnote: Maryland, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey were in this category.] In those cases all civil and political powers were concentrated in the hands of one man or a few individuals, who, subject to the supervision and regulation of the Crown, sold the land and ruled the inhabitants. Under the third system a number of immigrants were given the right to form a political society under the patronage of the motherland and allowed to govern themselves in any way not contrary to her laws. This mode of colonization, so favorable to liberty, was put into practice only in New England.
‘In 1628 a charter of that sort was granted by Charles I to the emigrants who were going to found the colony of Massachusetts.’
Tocqueville continued:
‘But generally charters were only granted to the New England colonies long after their existence had become an established fact. Plymouth, Providence, New Haven, and the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island were founded without the help and, in a sense, without the knowledge of the motherland. The new settlers, without denying the supremacy of the homeland, did not derive from thence the source of their powers, and it was only thirty or forty years afterward, under Charles II, that a royal charter legalized their existence. [Footnote: In shaping their criminal and civil laws and their procedures and courts of justice, the inhabitants of Massachusetts diverged from English usages; in 1650 the king's name no longer headed judicial orders.]
‘For this reason it is often difficult, when studying the earliest historical and legislative records of New England, to detect the link connecting the immigrants with the land of their forefathers. One continually finds them exercising rights of sovereignty; they appointed magistrates, made peace and war, promulgated police regulations, and enacted laws as if they were dependent on God alone.
‘Nothing is more peculiar or more instructive than the legislation of this time; there, if anywhere, is the key to the social enigma presented to the world by the United States now.
‘Among these records one may choose as particularly characteristic the code of laws enacted by the little state of Connecticut in 1650.
‘The Connecticut lawgivers turned their attention first to the criminal code and, in composing it, conceived the strange idea of borrowing their provisions from the text of Holy Writ: “If any man after legal conviction shall have or worship any other God but the Lord God, he shall be put to death.”
‘There follow ten or twelve provisions of the same sort taken word for word from Deuteronomy, Exodus, or Leviticus.
‘Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape are punished by death; a son who outrages his parents is subject to the same penalty. [Footnote: The laws of Massachusetts also imposed the death penalty for adultery, and Hutchinson (Vol. I, p. 441) says that several people were actually executed for that crime; in this context he quotes a strange story of something which happened in 1663. A married woman had a love affair with a young man; her husband died and she married him; several years passed; at length the public came to suspect the intimacy which had earlier existed between the spouses, and criminal proceedings were brought against them; they were thrown into prison, and both were very near being condemned to death.]
‘Thus the legislation of a rough, half-civilized people was transported into the midst of an educated society with gentle mores; as a result the death penalty has never been more frequently prescribed by the laws or more seldom carried out. [emphasis added]
‘The framers of these penal codes were especially concerned with the maintenance of good behavior and sound mores in society, so they constantly invaded the sphere of conscience, and there was hardly a sin not subject to the magistrate's censure. The reader will have noticed the severity of the penalties for adultery and rape. Simple intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise harshly repressed. The judge had discretion to impose a fine or a whipping or to order the offenders to marry. [Footnote: Code of 1650, p. 48. It would seem that sometimes the judges would impose more than one of these penalties, as is seen in a judicial sentence of 1643 {…} which directs that Margaret Bedford, convicted of loose conduct, be whipped and afterward compelled to marry her accomplice, Nicholas Jemmings.] If the records of the old courts of New Haven are to be trusted, prosecutions of this sort were not uncommon; under the date May 1, 1660, we find a sentence imposing a fine and reprimand on a girl accused of uttering some indiscreet words and letting herself be kissed.’
Tocqueville continued:
‘The code of 1650 is full of preventive regulations. Idleness and drunkenness are severely punished. Innkeepers may give each customer only a certain quantity of wine; simply lying, if it could do harm, is subject to a fine or a whipping. In other places the lawgivers, completely forgetting the great principle of religious liberty which they themselves claimed in Europe, enforced attendance at divine service by threat of fines and went so far as to impose severe penalties, and often the death penalty, on Christians who chose to worship God with a ritual other than their own. [Footnote: Under the penal law of Massachusetts a Catholic priest who sets foot in the state after he has been driven out therefrom is subject to the death penalty.]
‘Finally, sometimes the passion for regulation which possessed them led them to interfere in matters completely unworthy of such attention. Hence there is a clause in the same code forbidding the use of tobacco. We must not forget that these ridiculous and tyrannical laws were not imposed from outside — they were voted by the free agreement of all the interested parties themselves — and that their mores were even more austere and puritanical than their laws. In 1649 an association was solemnly formed in Boston to check the worldly luxury of long hair. {…}
‘Such deviations undoubtedly bring shame on the spirit of man; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which, unable to hold firmly to what is true and just, is generally reduced to choosing between two excesses.’
But Tocqueville goes on to say:
‘Alongside this criminal code so strongly marked by narrow sectarian spirit and all the religious passions, stimulated by persecution and still seething in the depths of men's souls, was a body of political laws, closely bound up with the penal law, which, though drafted two hundred years ago, still seems very far in advance of the spirit of freedom of our own age.
‘All the general principles on which modern constitutions rest, principles which most Europeans in the seventeenth century scarcely understood and whose dominance in Great Britain was then far from complete, are recognized and given authority by the laws of New England; the participation of the people in public affairs, the free voting of taxes, the responsibility of government officials, individual freedom, and trial by jury — all these things were established without question and with practical effect.
‘These pregnant principles were there applied and developed in a way that no European nation has yet dared to attempt.
‘In Connecticut the electoral body consisted, from the beginning, of all the citizens, and that is readily understood. [Footnote: Constitution of 1638 {…}.] In that nascent community there prevailed an almost perfect equality of wealth and even greater intellectual equality. [Footnote: In 1641 the general assembly of Rhode Island declared unanimously that the government of the state was a democracy and that power resided in the body of free men, who alone had the right to make the laws and provide for their enforcement. Code of 1650 {…}.]
‘At that time in Connecticut all executive officials were elected, including the governor of the state.
‘Citizens over sixteen years of age were obliged to bear arms; they formed a national militia which appointed its officers and was bound to be ready to march at any time to the country's defense.
‘In the laws of Connecticut and of all the other states of New England we see the birth and growth of that local independence which is still the mainspring and lifeblood of American freedom.
‘In most European nations political existence started in the higher ranks of society and has been gradually, but always incompletely, communicated to the various members of the body social.
‘Contrariwise, in America one may say that the local community was organized before the county, the county before the state, and the state before the Union.
In New England, local communities had taken complete and definite shape as early as 1650. Interests, passions, duties, and rights took shape around each individual locality and were firmly attached thereto. Inside the locality there was a real, active political life which was completely democratic and republican. The colonies still recognized the mother country's supremacy; legally the state was a monarchy, but each locality was already a lively republic.
‘The towns appointed their own magistrates of all sorts, assessed themselves, and imposed their own taxes. The New England towns adopted no representative institutions. As at Athens, matters of common concern were dealt with in the marketplace and in the general assembly of the citizens.’
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 12th Edition, 1848, edited by J. P. Mayer, translated by George Lawrence, Anchor Books, Doubleday and Co., Inc., New York, 1969; pp. 39-44.
"Were the laws ever enforced by a State?"
The Supreme Court case that rejects a state prosecution for blasphemy is in the 1950s.
"You may think that's despicable, but it's part of our tradition too:"
Whose "our"? My ancestors didn't come through Massachussetts. They went to North Carolina in the 1640s.
"In theory, colonial North Carolina was a bastion of the official Anglican church rather than a haven of religious liberty.
In practice, dissenting sects like the Quakers flourished openly in North Carolina while the mainstream Anglican church was much less popular. The majority of people in colonial North Carolina were not official members of any church."
Blaspheme that.
It's been said (I can't remember by whom) that the problem with Islam is that it hasn't had a reformation, as Christianity had.
However, as the references to colonial New England demonstrate, post-Reformation Christianity still had some pretty barbaric elements.
Still, I've known some very civilized American Muslims (native-born and immigrants), who are no more like the murderers of 9/11, or ISIS, or Paris, than I am like the Anglicans who burned Catholics at the stake (or vice versa).
To say "The enemy is just on a different time line, and if we compare it to what we were 300 or 400 years ago, it's not so alien", as our beloved hostess says, is either (a) incredibly stupid, or (b) intended to generate discussion. I vote for (b).
No, I'm not the robot you're looking for.
The Godfather said...
It's been said (I can't remember by whom) that the problem with Islam is that it hasn't had a reformation, as Christianity had.
However, as the references to colonial New England demonstrate, post-Reformation Christianity still had some pretty barbaric elements.
Still, I've known some very civilized American Muslims (native-born and immigrants), who are no more like the murderers of 9/11, or ISIS, or Paris, than I am like the Anglicans who burned Catholics at the stake (or vice versa).
To say "The enemy is just on a different time line, and if we compare it to what we were 300 or 400 years ago, it's not so alien", as our beloved hostess says, is either (a) incredibly stupid, or (b) intended to generate discussion. I vote for (b).
No, I'm not the robot you're looking for.
It's 2015 now. I'm pretty sure no one has been beheaded in a state sactioned way in the United States sincew , oh, lets say the 1960s.
Moiderate muslims are largely irrelevent since the violent ones are in control of the narrative.
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