It's not freedom unless you don't like it. Stated differently, it's not freedom if you do like it.
Our nation was founded on the bedrock of liberty. For sure, almost immediately the states went astray. It was an inevitability, and indeed perhaps a systemic quality, to keep things just good enough that they didn't become bad. The perfect is the enemy of the good, as the saying goes. But where we stand today is a far less good Good than the Good we deserve.
The ideals of freedom and liberty that were almost lyrically encoded into our consciousness by Jefferson are routinely violated. Their spirit is used to justify encroachments, made perfectly legal by our constitution, on the true concepts for which they stand.
Ideally, as Jefferson said, "The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits." He was unfortunately prophetic when he stated that "the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain."
And that is precisely what has happened here in America. It has been happening for all of human history abroad, as well -- although most of the rest of the world has never had the chance to regress the way we have.
A "cartoon war" has erupted -- the newest battle in our Huntingtonian clash of civilizations -- and its roots are in the same human disease embodied by Jefferson's view of natural progress. Many otherwise decent people are up in arms because a private Danish newspaper has offended their religious taboos. Embassies are in flames, and innocent Muslims are dying tragically in riots as a result.
This is the disease of the nanny state, of totalitarianism, of "I know what's best for you better than you do." Many Muslims in this world feel it is irreverent and an act of dangerously idolatry to depict their Prophet, especially in an offensive way. That is without a doubt their prerogative as individuals. They go wrong, however, in dialing their proverbial 911 to get their governments to enforce this view on everyone -- even those in other cultures and entirely different parts of the world! -- by the power of the sword.
This is the same "I know best" ideology that modern American political parties embrace: The Republicans know what's best for what's in your pants, the Democrats know what's best for what's in your pockets. True progress and the real march of freedom have been halted by the desire for a nanny state that protects not only necessities but luxuries.
The mullahs in Iran have decided an appropriate response to these cartoons is a cartoon contest of their own -- about the Holocaust, to test the West's love for freedom of speech in the face of disgusting, offensive material. I admit at first I was taken aback by this; it seems far too savvy for a group so concerned with pillaging and raping its own brethren. But then I realized that anyone who is capable of pulling a burka over the eyes of 68 million people must have a streak of Kennedy- or Daley-esque politicking in them.
Fortunately, Fleming Rose, the Danish editor who ran the page featuring the cartoons that started it all, has responded in kind: "My newspaper is trying to establish a contact with the Iranian newspaper, and we would run the cartoons the same day as they publish them."
It is satisfying to see that Rose is not falling prey to the trap set by the Persian tyrants and also that he understands freedom. Standing up for what you believe in is not freedom; it's self-interest. Anyone can be self-interested. There is likely to be a controversy over Rose's decision to even try to publish cartoons that will surely mock Jews and the Holocaust, but publishing only cartoons not offensive to oneself is not freedom.
I have been criticized before for supporting freedom of speech -- several have asked me if I think the Holocaust was a good thing or whether we should debate the benefits of rape. This criticism is reminiscent of another pearl of wisdom, this time from George Bernard Shaw: "Liberty means responsibility. That's why most men dread it."
I am Polish. I will not suffer accusations of not recognizing the horrors of Nazism. Supporting freedom is not equivalent to supporting everything which is said and done under the auspices of freedom. Those who stifle true freedom in the name of ending "hate speech" or insensitivity don't stand for freedom at all -- they stand for hearing what they like to hear. For living in a house of mirrors, as a friend recently put it.
It's not freedom unless you don't like it.
