The Los Angeles Times offered to give Sarah Chayes some ink. She’s a woman who has spent so much time living in a culture of corruption and tyranny that she’s now doing the dirty work for tyrants in major American newspapers. In order to make her life easier overseas, she promotes curbs on the First Amendment here at home. Here, she watches the Taliban blow off a woman’s head with an AK-47, the always-reliable Kalashnikov, and wonders: “Which American can we hold responsible for this travesty?”
Thomas Jefferson once said the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. He was right. However, what he probably never expected was that free speech would be under attack from dhimmitude clowns like Sarah Chayes, individuals who would willingly shackle and gag themselves before bowing to Islamic slave masters, if it provided them with a little temporary security. They would rather appease tyrants than fight for God-given natural rights. But then again, these things are to be expected, since even the Obama administration has repeatedly stood behind the assertion that the current round of Mideast violence is about “a film.”
Read on, as The Los Angeles Times allows itself to become an intellectual saboteur of free speech:
In one of the most famous 1st Amendment cases in U.S. history, Schenck vs. United States, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. established that the right to free speech in the United States is not unlimited. “The most stringent protection,” he wrote on behalf of a unanimous court, “would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”
Holmes’ test — that words are not protected if their nature and circumstances create a “clear and present danger” of harm — has since been tightened. But even under the more restrictive current standard, “Innocence of Muslims,” the film whose video trailer indirectly led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens among others, is not, arguably, free speech protected under the U.S. Constitution and the values it enshrines.
Who defines what “falsely shouting fire in a theater” is? To Ms. Chayes, it is the imams and clerics, dictators and despots — who stone women, execute gay people, advocate on behalf of “honor killings,” and seek to spread the “behead those who insult Islam” mentality like a virus.
The film “Innocence of Muslims” did not lead to the death of Christopher Stevens in any way. Period. If I want to make a “stick figure Mohammad” flip book tonight and post it online, whereas the “prophet” pole vaults into the arms of his many wives, I have every right to do so. If a Pakistani cleric issues a fatwa on me because I dared to depict Mohammad (again, as a stick figure), and people die because of it, then fault lies with the murderous sub-humans who committed the crime, and the insecure, troubled culture that produced them. Fatwas and death threats aimed at innocent people practicing their right to free speech are symptoms of a disease — a culture that is incompatible with freedom and liberty and the pillars of Western Civilization.
The Los Angeles Times refuses to acknowledge reality, and so they find themselves betraying the keystone to our Constitution.
Much 1st Amendment jurisprudence concerns speech explicitly advocating violence, such as calls to resist arrest, or videos explaining bomb-making techniques. But words don’t have to urge people to commit violence in order to be subject to limits … “If the result is violence, and that violence was intended, then it meets the standard,” [says Anthony Lewis].
While it’s not surprising that The Los Angeles Times thinks it should be the judge, jury and executioner for mind crimes, it’s even more frightening that they would abdicate the setting of the limits of free speech to religious fanatics, whose litmus test for committing violence is whatever they deem it to be at any given moment.
Ms. Chayes ultimately speaks for herself, but her misdiagnosis of what ails the Middle East is shared by many on the left. The current violence in the region, for example, has exposed the Obama administration’s fecklessness in the face of true evil. Its inability to accurately describe the challenges we face overseas is downright scary. However, what is even worse is that the one industry that should be fighting to safeguard our First Amendment rights now lends credence to saboteurs seeking to curtail them.
Beware this; fight this with all your heart and soul…
Rabbi Akiva was burned at the stake by the Romans with a copy of the Talmud wrapped around his body.
His crime? Not that he had taken part as spiritual adviser to the revolutionary freedom fighter bar Kochba; Not that he had himself killed Roman soldiers!
Akiva’s “crime” was that he had continued to teach the Talmud when the Roman authority had banned it, hence the Talmud wrapped around him to prolong the agony of the flames…
After arrest, and before immolation Akiva recounted this homily…
A fox is walking on a riverbank when he sees a school of fish careering wildly around in the water. “Why are you all rushing around crazily?” the fox asks.
“There is a big fish chasing us, and we are in danger for our lives!”
“I am bigger and stronger than that big fish; come out here on land and I will protect you!”
“You are supposed to be a clever animal, so you must believe that we are foolish. But it is you who are foolish! if we cannot live in peace here,in our natural element, what makes you think we can live in peace outside our natural element?”
“So,” concluded Akiva, “the Talmud is our natural element; we cannot live without it.”
The First Amendment is the breathable air of the American Republic; it is your element!
Sadly, too many Americans take their First Amendment rights for granted, never having lived under conditions where it was denied them. It’s worth fighting — and dying — for.
Ever since the embassy killings on 9-11, the mainstream media has been advocating for a “relaxation” of the First Amendment so they can protect people from so-called “hate speech,” just like Europe, Canada and Australia. It’s a joke, because there is no “right to not be offended.” People need to learn to live with criticism. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism.
Sara Chayes is dangerously misguided. Not surprising given her experiences in Afghanistan. I follow you.
The LA Times is misguided too. I dunno. It *was* an op-ed. You might have missed the next op-ed below Chayes’ article: Can ‘Innocence of Muslims’ trailer really be that potent? It agrees with your assertion that the movie isn’t the reason. Hmm, so I’m not quite sure the LA Times is intellectually sabotaging the 1st Amendment. Those crazy intellectuals… they’ll never be on our side.
“The current violence in the Mideast has exposed the Obama administration’s fecklessness in the face of true evil. Its inability to accurately describe the challenges we face overseas is downright scary.” What?!?!?!?! Is Chayes part of the Obama administration? She *was* an advisor to the Joint Chiefs. How is Obama’s administration feckless in the face of true evil? How you make this link between Chayes and Obama’s foreign policy is tenuous at best, disingenuous at worst.
If we’re going to have an honest talk about losing rights, let’s read down a few amendments and take a look at how the 4th Amendment pretty much doesn’t exist anymore. And both administrations and congresses are guilty as hell as at shredding the Constitution and the SCOTUS don’t seem to do anything about it.
Sorry if that was a clumsy transition. I’ll link to any number of Obama stories that I’ve written in the past few weeks that highlight its foreign policy fecklessness. Although, apparently they’re walking back the “just a film” excuse that they’ve pushed for about a week now. I’m sure their initial reaction will go down the memory hole, but oh well.
That’s a common, knee-jerk reaction. But in the end you have to endure speech of all types.
Plus, I think the link between inciting violence and the film is false. The film is a mockery of Islam, not a call for violence. The response, however, predictable should not be cause for abandoning the tenets of freedom of expression.