Category Archives: Free Speech

Fierce, Fabulous Fallaci

Classical Liberalism, Criminal Injustice, Critique, Free Speech, The Zeitgeist

Here’s an interview with Oriana Fallaci in The New Yorker that doesn’t do her justice. Fallaci is unique in the annals of journalism. No superlative can properly describe the kind of irreverent grilling she subjected her interviewees to. The clubby, tête-à -têtes journalists conduct with their overlords are a disgrace—they’ll never come close to Fallaci’s skin-them-alive inquisitions.
Omitted from this interview is how Fallaci began her exchange with Qaddafi. It approximates the following paraphrase: “So your manifesto is so small and insignificant it fits in my powder puff. Why should anyone take you seriously”?”
When I attended journalism school, my teachers held her up as the iconic role model to emulate (of course, this would be unheard of in the left-liberal, groupthink dominated journalism schools of today). Thus one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received was Reginald Firehammer’s. In “The Passion of Principles,” his review of my book for the Randian Free Radical, he likened my passion to Fallaci’s. The passion, perhaps, but never the courage, the life-force, or the capacity for adventure.
The New Yorker’s Margaret Talbot depicts Fallaci as pathologically anti-authoritarian. Is there any other way to be? Talbot, moreover, likes Fallaci’s classically liberal feminism, but flagrantly frames her crusade against Islam as a function of waning faculties. Yes, Fallaci is out of place in youth-worshipping America, where the lukewarm nonchalance of a Wonkette and her “Whatever” Generation is considered the ideal intellectual and existential temperament.
It would, however, be a grave mistake not to heed Fallaci’s warnings. This is an immensely cultured woman, steeped in the past. She understands history and the forces that shape it. More material, she has lived it.

Zoning Free Speech

Bush, Free Speech, Private Property

During a Memorial-Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, the president expressed his “awe of the men and women who sacrifice for the freedom of the United States of America.” Earlier in the day, he had put his “awe” into action by signing

[T]he Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act, passed by Congress largely in response to the activities of a Kansas church group that has staged protests at military funerals around the country, claiming the deaths symbolized God’s anger at U.S. tolerance of homosexuals.
The new law bars protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a national cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery. This restriction applies an hour before until an hour after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.

Bush honors so-called freedom fighters by limiting the freedom for which they allegedly fought? The Act, of course, is an extension of the suppression of peaceful assembly via “free speech zones,” perfected under Bush, and documented here by James Bovard.

The only acceptable limits on speech are 1) those proscribed by private property—you have no right to deliver a disquisition in my living room, unless I allow it. 2) When speech poses a “Clear and Present Danger,” for which the required threshold is extremely high, as it should be. (I’d say that limiting speech is so abhorrent that, to give but one example, the preferred course of action against imams who publicly preach and incite violence against Americans on American soil is deportation, not censorship.)

Liberty Fund Conference

Argument, Britain, Classical Liberalism, Free Speech, Ilana Mercer, Liberty, Political Economy, Political Philosophy

I was fortunate to be asked to attend a Liberty Fund colloquium entitled “History, Citizenship and Patriotism in Liberal Democracy.” Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. The Foundation develops, supervises, and finances its own educational activities to foster thought and encourage discourse on enduring issues pertaining to liberty.”

In the idyllic and breathtaking setting of the Ockenden Manor in Cuckfield, West Sussex, England, I got to exchange ideas with some of the finest scholars in Britain (and the U.S., considering the dynamic presence of Liberty Fund’s representative). Oxbridge at its best. The intimate format—only fifteen people partook—was not only conducive to the exploration of ideas, but to the formations of, I hope, enduring friendships. The lovely English countryside and Elizabethan Manor house (to say nothing of the gourmet food with which we were plied) provided the perfect backdrop to what was a most exhilarating event.

Danes and Deniers

Anti-Semitism, Free Speech, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Journalism, Judaism & Jews, Media

Holocaust denier David Irving, whom I’ve defended here, has become the cause celebre for the terminally self-righteous. Some in the West simply refuse to defend the Danes in a meaningful and morally unambiguous manner. So instead, they bang on about the admittedly shabby treatment of Irving. In their eyes, the Danes and their controversial drawings cannot be disentangled from the Irving issue.

At the risk of repeating myself, the need to repeal laws prohibiting hate speech and Holocaust denial cannot be overemphasized; nobody wants to see Irving jailed for being a jerk.

So what of those who say hounding this Holocaust denier makes the West “guilty of the crimes with which we charge the Muslims”? Well, the idea that aggression exists on a continuum is asinine—pure left-liberalism. According to this slippery-slope illogic, the European laws banning Holocaust denial—and they are indefensible—are as distasteful as beheading—or scheming to behead—”heretics.”

Now that’s a howler!