Posted on 01/15/2015 5:39:24 AM PST by Kaslin
Western civilization's creed is free thought and expression, the lubricant of everything from democracy to human rights.
Even a simpleton in the West accepts that protecting free expression is not the easy task of ensuring the right to read Homer's "Iliad" or do the New York Times crossword puzzle. It entails instead the unpleasant duty of allowing offensive expression.
Westerners fight against pornography, blasphemy or hate speech in the arena of ideas by writing and speaking out against such foul expression. They are free to sue, picket, boycott, and pressure sponsors of unwelcome speech. But Westerners cannot return to the Middle Ages to murder those whose ideas they don't like.
"Parody" and "satire" are, respectively, Greek and Latin words. In antiquity the non-Western tradition simply did not produce authors quite like the vicious Aristophanes, Petronius and Juvenal, who unapologetically trashed the society around them. If the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo loses the millennia-old right to ridicule Islam from within a democracy, then there is no longer a West, at least as we know it.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
VDH ping ...
BUMP
Some where,I’m sure,in scripture it states the Gospel it’s self is offensive.
Interesting.
Bam! Pow! Wham! Classic VDH.
Obama is not confused about free speech.
He has said time and again that he sides with the Muslims, who by the way do not believe in free speech.
He said it in front of the UN and he wrote it in his autobiography.
The ethical standards of the Western newsmedia are in the sewer.
Not only do these people lack courage, but they have no interest whatsoever in truth for its own sake or in truthfully informing the public. They serve the Praetorian Guard in the U.S.A. as protectors of the Democrat Party and its politicians, and their sole purpose is to broadcast this Party's propaganda and to use it to influence public opinion to its advantage.
I recall a quote directed at Larry Flynt: “You didn’t stand up for the First Amendment; the First Amendment stood up for YOU!”
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