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God Hates Speech

Feb 19, 2009
By Ken.
Politics & Current Events

Over at Shakespeare’s Sister, Melissa McEwan indulges in a gloat over the news that the utterly loathsome Phelps clan has been denied entry to the United Kingdom, thus thwarting their plans to stage a bigoted protest against a pro-tolerance play called The Laramie Project.

Now, if McEwan wanted to engage in a serious discussion about whether nations may — or should — bar ideological “undesirables” from entry, I would be up for it. The United States has done so on many occasions, and the question presented — the contest between national and territorial sovereignty and freedom of expression — is open to colorable debate.

But McEwan is not satisfied to address this through the reasonably narrow prism of immigration control. She uses the exclusion of the Phelps clan to support a vastly broader proposition:

Rock.

That’s what a free speech policy that recognizes the fundamental difference between speech and incitement to hatred looks like.

What nonsense. A policy that distinguishes between actual incitement of imminent violence and other speech is, potentially, principled. A policy that bans “promotion of hatred” or “incitement of discrimination” is unprincipled and infinitely malleable. Britain’s vaguely stated policy of preventing “extremism in all its forms” and excluding those who “spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities” can be used largely at the whim of the state, as amply demonstrated by their recent exclusion of Dutch MP Geert Wilders over his overheated (but definitely not imminent-violence-inciting) rhetoric about Islam. Such a broad and unprincipled policy could very easily be used to exclude most of the writing staff at Shakespeare’s Sister, given their penchant for ill-tempered rhetoric and given the right (or wrong) government.

It’s tempting to say that people like McEwan are too dumb or addled by ideology to grasp this. But McEwan is not dumb, and that’s not right. I think that people like McEwan simply don’t care. Such people take too much pleasure in the temporary triumph of their ideals and beliefs over those of others, and don’t want to sully the feeling with thought about the implications of how they got there. They are free speech’s moral cowards.

Last 5 posts by Ken

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5 Comments

  1. Patrick  •  Feb 19, 2009 @10:18 am

    In Ms. McEwan’s defense, she has a complicated history with questions of the consequences of speech (not in the First Amendment sense, but generally), and what she calls incitation to hatred by religious bigots.

    http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2007/02/announcement.html

    No doubt the campaign William Donohue, a thug of the first order, ran against her colors her views in ways we can’t understand. It does surprise me that someone who had been put through Donohue’s meat grinder would support turning similar weapons on others, but I can’t say how such an experience would affect me, were I in her shoes.

  2. Mike  •  Feb 19, 2009 @11:44 am

    Ken, I am a new and only a part-time follower of your blog, but I want to thank you for a very well-written sentence in your last paragraph: “Such people take too much pleasure in the temporary triumph of their ideals and beliefs over those of others, and don’t want to sully the feeling with thought about the implications of how they got there.” If you substitute the word Such with Some, you have a sentence applicable to many of the (nearsighted) opinions and actions of current political “leadership.”

  3. oh, please  •  Feb 19, 2009 @1:21 pm

    Atta boy, don’t be honest, be preachy!

    Nevermind what her point is – point fingers and declare yourself king of Truth and Wisdom.

    Adorably clueless, Kenny. Adorably.

  4. Patrick  •  Feb 19, 2009 @1:36 pm

    She can speak for herself quite eloquently, when she so desires, oh please, so I’ll ask you: What do you believe her point to be?

    I’ve read her comments at Shakesville, and they boil down to: I support free speech, but what Phelps says is not speech, because it incites hatred and violence (leaving aside that Phelps has never committed a violent act, indeed, he invites it upon himself in a twisted parody of King and other civil disobedience advocates), or that the freedom of speech does not include the freedom to say hateful things about identified classes of people.

    Well, it does de jure in the United States, and we think that to be wise law. You obviously don’t, but I’d love to see you explain why, and why such laws (where they exist) shouldn’t be turned on the likes of McEwan who, my distaste for Donohue aside, has said some pretty foul stuff herself through the years.

    The benefit of a broad outlook on free speech is that it can’t be turned against either a Phelps or a McEwan, depending on the outlook of those who would use such weapons.

  5. Pagan Temple  •  Feb 19, 2009 @9:16 pm

    The problem with Britain, and in fact all of Europe, is that they really don’t have a longstanding tradition of free speech, at least not to the extent that we do. They also don’t have a very impressive record of minority rights when you get right down to it. From their perspective, such controls are possibly seen as the most efficient way of preventing democratic society from degenerating into mob rule.

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