Posted on 09/03/2022 2:30:44 PM PDT by nickcarraway
But the liberty at stake is moral and spiritual, not just intellectual.
In the days since a brutal attack on Salman Rushdie, the world has seen an outpouring of solidarity. The phrase “We are all Salman Rushdie” appeared on Twitter profiles and in countless articles, acknowledging that threats to one person’s freedom of expression are a threat to all.
In the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik anticipated efforts “to somehow equalize or level the acts of Rushdie and his tormentors and would-be executioners.” That approach is despicable, he wrote, “because the right to be insulting about other people’s religions…is a fundamental right, part of the inheritance of the human spirit. Without that right of open discourse, intellectual life devolves into mere cruelty and power seeking.”
In The Atlantic, Graeme Wood eviscerated “those who muddle the distinction between offense and violence, and between a disagreement over ideas and a disagreement over whether your head should remain attached to your body.” He continued, “Now that Rushdie’s head has been partially detached, and on American soil, I hope these distinctions will need no further elaboration.”
These articles, like countless others, anticipated mealy-mouthed responses condemning the attacks while suggesting the novelist maybe had it coming. But instead of that debate, the attack has renewed extant culture wars related to moral boundaries and who draws them.
School boards across the country are a particularly combustible battleground. Phrases like “cultural genocide,” “erasure,” “heteronormativity,” and “CRT” are hurled like grenades at board members responsible for adjudicating objections to curricula and library shelves.
Is Huckleberry Finn a racist apologia? Is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings anti-white? Should schools allow Ibram X. Kendi in their libraries? Or Harper Lee? Or Dr. Seuss? Or Ann Coulter? Or Toni Morrison?
(Excerpt) Read more at christianitytoday.com ...
See the tolerance when you criticize global warming.
The anti-free-speech guys are winning everywhere.
I won't say that can't change, but that's where we are now.
Not in the US. Donald Trump was the canary in our coal mine.
No he isn’t.
Rushdie is revered by the libtards because his works go against his religious upbringing.
No one seems to care about those who are being cancelled and silenced when they support their religion.
This appears to be another episode of selective amnesia.
It's an important point. But back on the 1980's only a few British lefty intellectuals stood up for him, while most were all for appeasing the Mullahs.
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