Offense Is No Defense (Mark Steyn On Multicultural Sensitivity's Threat To Freedom Alert)

Orange County Register ^ | 12/01/2007 | Mark Steyn

[goldstategop]

But the point is that the right not to be offended is now the most sacred right in the world. The right to freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement, all are as nothing compared with the universal right to freedom from offense. It's surely only a matter of time before "sensitivity training" is matched by equally rigorous "inoffensiveness training" courses.

East is east, and west is west, and in both we take offense at anything: Santas saying "Ho ho ho," teddy bears called Mohammed. And yet the difference is very telling: The now-annual Santa lawsuits in the "war on Christmas" and the determination to abolish even such anodyne expressions of faith as the Pledge of Allegiance are assaults on the very possibility of a common culture. By contrast, the teddy bear rubbish is a crude demonstration of cultural muscle intended to cow and intimidate. When east meets west, when offended Muslims find themselves operating in Western nations, they discover that both techniques are useful: Some march in the streets, Khartoum-style, calling for the pope to be beheaded, others use the mechanisms of the West's litigious, perpetual grievance culture to harass opponents into silence.

Perhaps somewhere in Sydney there's a woman who's genuinely offended by hearing Santa say "ho ho ho" just as those New Hampshire atheists claim to be genuinely offended by the Pledge of Allegiance. But their complaints are frivolous and decadent, and more determined groups are using the patterns they've established to shut down debate on things we should be talking about. The ability to give and take offense is what separates free societies from Sudan.

[Albion Wilde]

"The ability to give and take offense is what separates free societies from Sudan."

[Billthedrill]

But the point is that the right not to be offended is now the most sacred right in the world. The right to freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement, all are as nothing compared with the universal right to freedom from offense.

The magic phrase in all of this is "freedom from." "Freedom of" means that the individual possessing that freedom may exercise it. "Freedom from" means that the individual possessing that freedom may dictate the behavior of others in accordance with it. It is, obviously, two very different things in a deliberately similar package.

"Freedom from fear" once led perfectly serious feminists to insist that a woman's freedom from fear meant that should she enter an elevator any males inside were obliged to leave it immediately lest she be afraid of - what, physical violence? Rape? Well, just afraid.

One can see how difficult this doctrine can become in practice. Freedom from offense means not only that one may dictate others' actions in accordance with whatever may offend one at the moment but that but that the ultimate repository of political power is arbitrary and relative only to the point of view of the potentially offended. This always turns out to be an oppressed class of some sort, and indeed, "hate speech" laws are designed specifically with respect to such oppressed classes.

That's bad news for anyone not entitled to claim membership in such a class, and it's intended to be. Such things as freedom from offense and hate speech laws are extensions of that malignant sociological construct that is class warfare, always and exclusively. They are "social justice" that is neither social nor just and they've no place in a free society.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Last week, Gillian Gibbons, a British schoolteacher working in Khartoum, one of the crumbiest basket-case dumps on the planet – whoops, I mean one of the most lively and vibrant strands in the rich tapestry of our multicultural world –

That is hilarious! The whole article's worth reading just for that one line!

I'd disagree with Mark on one thing: not everyone has the right not to be offended. Only the Left's pet "oppressed peoples" (ie, the Hegelian "thesis" of history) has this right. The "oppressors" (ie, the antithesis) not only can, but must be offended constantly.

The Left's hatred of the "west" is truly bizarre considering that Marxism/Leftism is perhaps the world's most "western" ideology. In fact, one could say that the Third World factions the western Left supports aren't "left" at all but more like WWII-era Japanese rightwingers. Hence the "blood and soil" racialism of Third World nationalist groups, the celebration of the superstitions of the "noble savages" (while Biblical religion is critiqued by science), and the United States apologizing for overthrowing a monarch in Hawaii.