I am engaged in a conversation concerning the issue of free speech, based on the recent events in Afghanistan in which a mob killed 20 or more UN workers. The basis for the riot was a Qu'ran burning orchestrated by Terry Jones in Florida, that was condemned by President Karzai of Afghanistan, and then whipped up by some mullahs who helped direct their ire at a symbol of western influence. A long convoluted chain of events to be sure.
The issue is what role is there for free speech. Can it be constrained? Plenty of commentators I converse with argue, that though reprehensible, this is free speech, and the onus is on those in other countries like Afghanistan to just "suck it and deal with it." After all, people poke fun at religions in this country all the time, and we don't riot. That is true, we don't usually riot over things like that.
So, does that absolve Mr. Jones?
I don't think so. The intuition I have is based on a simple question. Do you believe that there are limits to the practice of free speech? Many of the commentators I speak with are coy on this topic. If the answer is "No" then it makes perfect sense to argue that the responsibility for the dealing with the fallout of free speech should fall on those who hear it. They are responsible for how they deal with provocative nature of what they hear, not the person who utters it. If they go bananas, it is on them, not the originator of the speech. Many will go further and call this unfettered use of speech a universal human right, applicable to all.
However, if you believe that there are limits to free speech because you believe that speech can provoke reasonable people beyond their limits to act in ways that are hurtful and destructive to themselves, others, or society in general, then this is a murkier picture. Our country enshrined the concept of the freedom of speech in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers meant this to apply universally, though more narrowly focused than what many think today. "The Free Speech Clause of the Constitution was drafted to protect such political dissenters from a similar fate (i.e., punishments that included whipping, branding, fines, imprisonment, banishment, and death) in the newly founded United States." In this regard, subsequent SCOTUS also allowed that there could be exceptions to its use. "The Constitution is not a suicide pact" said Justice Goldberg. One way to apply this idea is to say that there are limits in what one can say. SCOTUS has delineated a pretty clear set of guidelines, that may have evolved, but the underlying basis for which has not changed: that there are limits to the exercise of free speech, and those limits revolve around what a "reasonable" person might expect to happen as a consequence of the exercise of that speech. Thus, SCOTUS carves out exceptions to free speech. "[T]he U.S. Supreme Court has afforded dissident political speech unparalleled constitutional protection. However, all speech is not equal under the First Amendment. The high court has identified five areas of expression that the government may legitimately restrict under certain circumstances. These areas are speech that incites illegal activity and subversive speech, fighting words, obscenity and pornography, commercial speech, and symbolic expression."
If one can be punished for one’s speech, it isn’t free. One is paying a cost to exercise it. One may alternatively believe that speech is free if no one can stop me from doing it, if I choose to do it, no matter what. I pay the price later. In this case, calling Stalin an A---hole in Red Square in 1937 is an exercise in free speech. Except that you permanently disappear. That doesn't sit well with me as an intuition for supporting the notion of "free speech." I think that speech in that setting is not free.
To the point. Commentators, both liberal and conservative have defended this incident as a sanctioned expression of free speech in this instance. I think they are wrong, if not legally, then definitely morally.
With regards to political speech there is extraordinarily wide latitude, in this country. Even so, freedom of speech is circumscribed, in this country. Bottom line--freedom of speech is not universally applied. Consider another country, Afghanistan that has no cultural heritage of freedom of speech in this context. It is a culture in which the religious and the political are inextricably intertwined. It is a country, where blasphemy is not just a religious issue (outside the purview of the State, but also a legal and social issue: "Blasphemy laws in both Pakistan and Afghanistan carry a maximum sentence of death..." There is no doubt that these violate the norms of what we consider freedom of expression. I wouldn't want to live there, thank you very much. However, they are the law of the land, and norms by which people in these countries live their lives. Thus, when Mr. Jones burns his Qu'ran, subjecting it to fire (God's chosen instrument of destruction), it is unsurprising, that when this information is publicly broadcast by Karzai (no friend of the US), that things might get a little "hot."
If this was all there was, then Mr. Jones' symbolic act would be of less interest to me, because what Afghans do in their country in reaction to what a pastor does here has little or no impact on us or me. However, that is not the case. We have been at war in Afghanistan for close on ten years. We have over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan at the moment. There are western NGO's, UN, and other relief agencies active in Afghanistan. We are in their country.
Commentators feel that it is reasonable to expect that these people our troops live amongst, ought to realize that our view of free speech is sacrosanct. On what basis this should be so, is not at all clear to me, and no one seems in a hurry to explain this, given the historical conditioning of Afghanistan. Why should these people be more like us, in this regard? Even if we can accept that they would be better off with this right, they certainly do not have it now. The basic argument in support of Mr. Jones' right to do as he did is that the locals ought to control themselves--after all "reasonable people do not act like this," presupposes social, cultural, and historical conditions that do not currently exist in Afghanistan.
Though one liberal commentator expresses his discomfort with generals and politicians asking Mr. Jones from refraining from his actions, I do not. The last thing our troops need is for us to give more ammunition to those who oppose us to fight harder or recruit more easily, or for the populace to distrust us more, as agents of disrespect for their religion, which is woven into their lives in a manner which is completely alien to many of us here in the West. I would have more sympathy for those who support Mr. Jones if they would also acknowledge that his action has caused harm to our forces in Afghanistan, and made our mission harder. An interesting thought experiment in this regard is to consider what people would have said and felt, had Mr. Jones' action been linked to the death of 20 US personnel? It is unlikely to happen, I grant, because our troops are well defended. That is why, I suspect, 20 UN workers got the brunt, instead. The people who support Mr. Jones' exercise of his First Amendment Rights are our troops and other NGOs in Afghanistan. They shouldn't have been asked to do that. For doing this, Mr. Jones bears some of the moral responsibility, at the very least.
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