Legal Commentary

Beldar responds to Captain Ed on EDMD

By Beldar

In a series of comments at Patterico's Pontifications, I've failed to dampen my friend Patterico's enthusiasm for "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day." Today, however, I came across a tightly-argued paragraph from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air that also attempts to justify EDMD ? but I'm still unpersuaded to participate. Rather, I still believe that participating is a bad idea on grounds of simple taste, even though I would defend the rights of the participants to do so. Here are Ed's arguments, and my reactions in detail:

On the other hand ? and this is where my sympathies lie ? a free society has to have the ability to offend as part and parcel of the freedom of expression.

I agree with this. And we do indeed have rights to such free expression, including the expression of deliberately tasteless and offensive material. We have that legal right today, and we will have it a week from today, regardless of who does or doesn't participate in EDMD.

To acquiesce to the pressure that cowed Comedy Central is to surrender that freedom ...

No, it's not. Free speech is an inalienable right. Free speech rights don't depend for their existence on being exercised continuously to their full limits. I am not surrendering my free speech rights when I choose not to dress in a Nazi uniform or a KKK hood or when I chose not to parade with members of those hateful organizations.

... and to make terrorism a successful strategy, and not just for radical Islam.

This is a better argument, not because it's true, but because not-very-logical terrorists might think it's true. I think it's what the logicians call a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument, in which the "fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection." One terrorist could just as easily say to his mate, "Hey, the American dogs once again refrained last week from nuking Tehran! Good thing I made that threat on my blog last week that I would really make them pay if they so much as dropped one bomb anywhere in Iran, huh?" That America didn't nuke Iran last week wasn't because of any threat the terrorists made about what they'd do if we had. And if a terrorist claims that it was his threat which stopped America from nuking Iran, a dim-witted fellow might indeed fall for that preposterous claim, and it might persuade him to join the terrorists. That's unfortunate ? but not so much so that we should turn around and nuke Tehran just to show that we can and to show that his threats didn't deter us.

A nation of laws provides its citizens freedom from vendettas, and where vendettas succeed, freedom is diminished or lost altogether.

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. What exactly is the mechanism by which Ed thinks this should happen? I agree that a nation of laws should provide its citizens protection from violence, and sometimes from overt threats of violence. But verbal vendettas ? including a lot of condemnation, vague predictions of bad consequences, protest, feather-ruffling, hoo-hah, and associated kerfuffle ? that at least stop short of criminal terroristic threat statutes may well be constitutionally protected; see above.

That is why it is always un-American to seek political change through violence and terrorism, because it cuts against the fabric of what makes us Americans.

I agree that it's un-American to seek political change through violence and terrorism, but I don't think that is a justification for deliberately engaging in tasteless behavior that's intended to offend the Muslims you want to offend but is also likely to offend all Muslims.

In order to stand against the vendetta mentality, we need to make a statement that we will not be cowed into silence and surrender, whether that?s defined as dhimmitude, omerta, or whatever.

Fine. Make a strong statement ? indeed, Ed, I think you just have! It didn't go pointlessly out of its way to offend people you didn't intend to offend. You've completely persuaded me that you're not cowed into either silence or surrender. And your ability to do so wasn't at all hampered by the absence of a cartoon of Mohammed; nor will your argument be improved if you add one.

Full post as published by BeldarBlog on May 20, 2010 (boomark / email).