Offenders of the Western Faith

Townhall.com ^ | January 15, 2015 | Victor Davis Hanson

[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.

[Servant of the Cross]

VDH ping ...

[kitkat]

BUMP

[Big Red Badger]

Some where,I’m sure,in scripture it states the Gospel it’s self is offensive.

Interesting.

[Servant of the Cross]

"We expect the president of the United States to be the foremost defender of the Western faith of free expression. Unfortunately, Barack Obama — who has a habit of weighing in on everything from his own resemblance to Trayvon Martin to the likely Final Four — has been utterly confused about free speech."

Bam! Pow! Wham! Classic VDH.

[joshua c]

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.

[Savage Beast]

"The Western media loudly proclaims its courage in taking on everyone from the Tea Party to gun owners, but it goes silent when the offended have a bad habit of lopping off heads rather than just arguing back."

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.

[walford]

I recall a quote directed at Larry Flynt: “You didn’t stand up for the First Amendment; the First Amendment stood up for YOU!”