{"id":16550,"date":"2015-05-05T12:15:15","date_gmt":"2015-05-05T19:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=16550"},"modified":"2015-05-05T12:26:37","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T19:26:37","slug":"drawing-muhammad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=16550","title":{"rendered":"Drawing Muhammad"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"drawI did a stupid thing yesterday (so what else is new?) and commented on a Facebook thread about Pamela Geller’s\u00a0Muhammad-drawing event in Garland, Texas<\/a>. The thread was started by a fellow progressive who (I thought at first) feels as I do, that freedom of speech must be protected in this country even when we deplore\u00a0how it’s being used.<\/p>\n

The way I phrased it was that we have to defend free speech even when racist assholes exercise it. He took offense at my characterization of Geller’s fans as racist.\u00a0Over the course of our debate he started calling them\u00a0“free-speech activists,” and even went so far as to declare that\u00a0the intent of the event was the promotion of\u00a0free\u00a0speech. He insisted that their opposition to Islam is motivated purely by theological differences, and that religion has nothing to do with race.<\/p>\n

Sorry, I said, we may know religion has nothing to do with race, but racist assholes don’t know that. We say “Muslim,” they say\u00a0“sand n____r.”<\/p>\n

Yes, racist\u00a0speech (to a point) is protected in this country, and we have to make sure it stays that way\u00a0lest someone take away\u00a0our<\/em> right to speak freely.\u00a0But no one at Geller’s event gave a rat’s ass about\u00a0free speech. What they wanted to do was provoke\u00a0Muslims into\u00a0a confrontation (which they did), then use the incident to start a religious and race war (which remains to be seen). Their ultimate intent is to drive\u00a0Muslim-Americans out of this country … the very opposite of free speech.<\/p>\n

Geller’s army of intolerant bigots is no different than the American Nazis who marched in the predominantly Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois in 1977<\/a>. The ACLU went to court to defend\u00a0the Nazi’s right to march, and many lifelong members left the ACLU as a result. But if the ACLU is not willing to\u00a0defend freedom of speech, then what is it for?<\/p>\n

What happened in 1977 is happening again today, not so much with the ACLU (which hasn’t yet, as far as I know, weighed in on Muhammad-drawing contests), but with progressives beginning to call\u00a0for trigger warnings and hate speech laws.<\/p>\n

It’s an awful job but someone has to do it. I’ll continue to pay my ACLU dues and defend\u00a0Pamela Geller’s right to draw pictures of Muhammad\u00a0…\u00a0holding\u00a0my nose the whole time.<\/p>\n

I think even my free speech activist friend, however, would agree that openly agitating for race war and\u00a0the persecution of religious minorities crosses the line into prohibited speech<\/a>. Over the years the Supreme Court has established\u00a0limits to our First Amendment rights, and some of those limits are pretty specific: incitement, false statements of fact,\u00a0threats, and a slightly more vague category called “fighting words and offensive speech.” You can think of these\u00a0as “yelling ‘FIRE!’ in a crowded theater” exceptions.<\/p>\n

Drawing pictures of Muhammad is, most of us agree, on\u00a0this side of the line between free speech and prohibited speech. But Geller’s intent, to outlaw the practice of Islam in this country and incite Christian-Americans to\u00a0persecute and drive out Muslim-Americans, is clearly on the other side.<\/p>\n

Is\u00a0Pamela Geller engaging in hate speech\u00a0with her Muhammad-drawing events? \u00a0Considering her long\u00a0history of rabble-rousing against Muslim-Americans<\/a>, mostly characterized by preposterous lies, fighting words, and open incitement to intolerance and persecution, it’s hard to say otherwise. But hate speech is protected. Even if you think she’s crossed the line to prohibited speech, how long has it been since the courts prosecuted anyone for that?<\/p>\n

Even if\u00a0someone starts shooting Muslims dead on the streets and claiming\u00a0Pam Geller told him to do it,\u00a0I doubt she’ll be held accountable, Supreme Court restrictions on free speech be damned.\u00a0I hate to be cynical, but consider Bill O’Reilly, who used his TV show to openly encourage\u00a0pro-lifers to murder\u00a0abortion providers<\/a>, and got clean away with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I did a stupid thing yesterday (so what else is new?) and commented on a Facebook thread about Pamela Geller’s\u00a0Muhammad-drawing event in Garland, Texas. The thread was started by a fellow progressive who (I thought at first) feels as I do, that freedom of speech must be protected in this country even when we deplore\u00a0how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,10,189,22],"tags":[1851,69,1852],"class_list":["post-16550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-extremism","category-terrorism","tag-pamela-geller","tag-racism","tag-religious-intolerance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16550"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16562,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16550\/revisions\/16562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}