Free speech for the dumb?
Laura Schlessinger recently found herself embroiled in controversy after using racial epithets several times on her talk radio show. This incident has led Dr. Schlessinger to abandon her program, proclaiming “”I want my First Amendment rights back, which I can’t have on radio without the threat of attack on my advertisers and stations.”
Over at NPR, Linda Holmes argues that being economically pressured for her speech is not a violation of her First Amendment rights. As Holmes draws the distinction, the Constitution guarantees that speech will be “free from government interference,” not “free from consequences.”
The article brings up not only questions of free speech, but also questions about the respect owed to other ideals cherished in a liberal democracy.
-Han
Photo by Flickr user Ian Hayhurst used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Mosque-ing the the real problem
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Mainstream media lets us down. Again.
Last night’s Daily Show had its usual fun with the political controversy engulfing plans to build a mosque and Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero. We’re going wall-to-wall on this topic here at TPP this week, both because it’s an important debate and because it touches so many basic moral and philosophical questions.
Of many pokes at the mainstream media during this clip, one worth noting in particular is Stewart’s scathing attack on news outlets that seem more concerned with the political fallout of what politicians say about the cultural center than whether building the thing is right or wrong. A New York Times headline from today underscores this media focus: “G.O.P. Seizes on Mosque Issue Ahead of Elections.”
Are there any issues where it is simply wrong to play politics? Read more
Fight fire with fire
Net neutrality and competing claims of free speech
According to The Hill, a coalition of thirty-five tea party groups has sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, asking the agency not to impose net neutrality rules on the Internet. Roughly speaking, net neutrality prevents Internet service providers from favoring some content over others by speeding up or slowing down traffic to certain sites, or charging users a fee to access web content.
Tea Party opposition to net neutrality stems from a fear of growth in government power. According to the article, they think this power infringes upon free speech:
The free-speech argument holds that, by interfering with how phone and cable companies deliver Internet traffic, the government would be thwarting the free-speech rights of providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast.
What is most striking about this debate is that the pro-net neutrality side also claims to be protecting free speech. Senator Al Franken, for example, says:
Well, our free speech rights are under assault — not from the government but from corporations seeking to control the flow of information in America. […]“Net neutrality” sounds arcane, but it’s fundamental to free speech. The Internet today is an open marketplace. If you have a product, you can sell it. If you have an opinion, you can blog about it. If you have an idea, you can share it with the world.
I’m going to have to side with Senator Franken and company here. I think the type of speech the Tea Partiers claim to be protecting is less worthy of protection than the type Franken is trying to protect. Read more
Sensitivity and principle
Last Friday, President Obama weighed in publicly on the mosque at ground zero. In doing so, he has joined Mayor Bloomberg as one of few major political figures who have openly voiced support for the project on the basis of freedom of religion.
However, polls indicate that Americans as well as New Yorkers overwhelmingly oppose the mosque’s construction to the tune of 68 percent. The poll reaffirms a truism that the writers of the Bill of Rights were grimly aware of: freedom often runs afoul of democracy. As one opponent of the mosque argues: ‘…[Obama]‘s lost sight of the germane issue, which is not about freedom of religion,” she said. “It’s about a gross lack of sensitivity to the 9/11 families and to the people who were lost.”’
Except the germane issue is exactly the balance between sensitivity and principle, and whether, as Jonathan asked yesterday, something can be “legally harmless but unpleasant enough for us to rightly or morally require legal intervention at the cost of others’ legal rights?” Namely, do people have a right not to be offended? Do they also have a right for their faith, beliefs, or values not to be challenged?
Greg Gutfeld of Fox News clearly believes not. In one of the most creative responses to the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, Gutfeld argues for both supporting the mosque’s construction and opening a gay bar next door. Now that might take equal opportunity offending to an extreme. But in a society in which we value both the principles of religious freedom and the “marketplace of ideas,” should we want it any other way?
-Charles
Image from Flickr user Johnnie Utah used under a Creative Commons Attribution license
Ground Zero mosque
Morality vs. legality?
The debate over the Muslim mosque and community center near Ground Zero has resulted in a number of different, passionate reactions. Once the media took up the subject, politicians and leaders from all over the US weighed in rather quickly.
On Friday, even President Obama shared his view in favor of the mosque, stating “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are.”
Not surprisingly, critics of the mosque pounced. And their response was strong enough to push the President and his staff to “recalibrate” his comments from Friday evening more than once. Although his remarks were initially received as a deliberate endorsement of the mosque construction, President Obama apparently meant only to speak in favor of the project’s legality—not in favor of “the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque [near Ground Zero].”
Regardless of how you interpret the President’s statements this weekend, his clarification here suggests a crucial distinction underlying this Ground Zero mosque debate: even in a society that emphasizes personal liberty and freedom of religion, there may be a difference between what is legally permissible and what is morally permissible. Read more
God only knows
A church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to host an “International Burn the Quran Day” on the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Their reasons for the book burning are pretty straightforward:
We believe that Islam is of the devil, that it’s causing billions of people to go to hell, it is a deceptive religion, it is a violent religion and that is proven many, many times,” Pastor Terry Jones told CNN’s Rick Sanchez earlier this week […]“Eternal fire is the only destination the Quran can lead people to, so we want to put the Quran in it’s [sic] place — the fire!
I suspect most Americans would immediately find such sentiments revolting because of the value of freedom of religion promised by the Constitution. Yet, this is not so much a question of freedom of religion as much as a question of respect for other religions – and this respect is of course not guaranteed by law.
Still, I can think of two arguments for why we owe this respect to religions other than our own. The first is a type of epistemic modesty – knowledge of the inherent fallibility of your beliefs. Because you might be wrong and others might be correct, you should respect what others believe.
However, men such as Pastor Jones obviously do not believe in this fallibility, so here a consequentialist argument may do better. Since religions are often held as deep, passionate, metaphysical convictions that are unlikely to be changed through argumentation, the diversity of religions is simply a fact of life for the foreseeable future. So even if Jones is correct and Islam is “of the devil,” Muslims are never going to be convinced. Still, since intolerance and lack of respect for religions often leads to violence, strife, or at least unhappiness, adhering to a general rule of respect for all religions would have the best consequences for all.
I believe either of these two arguments would show that a Quran burning event is unethical.
-Han
Photo by Flickr user SarahWynee used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
Changing ‘biblical views’ on homosexuality?
The ethics of counseling and freedom of religion
Last week CNN reported on a Georgia graduate student who is suing her university for forcing her to undergo remedial classes or face expulsion from its counseling program.
Jennifer Keeton claims the university violated her right to free speech and practice of religion by forcing her to undergo this extra program of classes, which was largely targeted at improving her tolerance of LGBTQ individuals. Keeton objected to completing this remediation program because she claimed that it would have forced her to alter her religious beliefs. Are Keeton’s objections to the remedial program valid?
Going through a remedial program designed to increase her exposure to individuals who might not share her religious beliefs is not in itself a way of forcing her to change those beliefs. Such a program might bring her to question those beliefs, but equally, Keeton could emerge from this sensitivity training with her religious convictions intact. This is a weak objection to completing the program.
Can you send me a telegram?
My Blackberry is blocked
Most global BlackBerry users are comfortably addicted to their wireless devices, which are email and Internet capable. But for those in the United Arab Emirates, BlackBerrys are about to become obsolete. Not because some better device has come along, but because the government has decided to block online data usage through the devices, which are difficult to monitor.
Civil liberties are a different story in the UAE, but many are concerned that discouraging the use of BlackBerrys could have a negative impact on business. Many commercial BlackBerry users in the UAE seek out the device precisely because it offers a modicum of privacy from government’s prying eyes. A previous attempt to monitor UAE BlackBerry loyalists amusingly failed:
Last year, Etisalat, the U.A.E.’s main state phone company, gave users an upgrade that turned out to allow Etisalat access to all the users’ messages. The upgrade also decreased battery life and made the phone get painfully hot, so people soon stopped taking the upgrade.
While privacy has a different standing in UAE, should global data users worry about sending emails to UAE residents whose smartphones could be monitored? And does the increasingly international flow of information thanks to the Internet impact how its use should be protected? Read more
Pay attention to Wikileaks?
Sam recently wrote about the ethical complexities that arise from the unsanctioned and rather unruly behavior of Wikileaks, a site that has gotten a lot of attention recently for its mass release of documents relating to the war effort in Afghanistan.
He cautioned that Wikileaks, as a non-traditional rogue outfit, should not expect the same standards of treatment in the U.S. that would be accorded to journalistic efforts that go through all the proper channels.
An article in the Wall Street Journal raises similar concerns about the legitimacy of Wikileaks. It portrays Wikileaks founder Julian Assange as “frustrated” that a large percentage of Wikileaks disclosures have been largely ignored by the public, and the latest leak (and accompanying media attention) as an attempt to reignite popular interest.
Setting aside questions about the sensitivity of Wikileaks content and its lack of traditional journalistic methodology, it’s perhaps more troubling to think of this latest leak as a publicity stunt. While the leak itself has generated tons of news, its contents have doubtlessly remained largely unexplored by the individuals Wikileaks purports to serve. Its revelations (the war isn’t going as well as we thought?) are far too banal to justify a media craze about their release.
Wikileaks’ intention in leaking this information is just as important as the information itself. If they did it largely to draw attention to themselves, their actions are both unprincipled and dishonest. Before they continue to blow the whistle on the U.S. government, Wikileaks should take a look at its own practices.
Wikileaks would have a far easier time convincing the public of its fidelity to the principles of open democracy if it acted less carelessly with its information.
-Ethan
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user jenny8lee.
Islamic mosque, Islamist mosque, or extremist mosque?
How appropriate is animus toward the new Ground Zero mosque?
A few months ago, news emerged of plans for a mosque and Muslim community center two blocks from Ground Zero. In the ensuing and continuing saga, Sarah Palin is but one of the latest to weigh in, tweeting “Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand. Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in the interest of healing.”
John Esposito at CNN framed the moral question well: “Why should Muslims who are building a center be any more suspect than Jews who build a synagogue or center or Christians who build a church or conference center?”
What underlies the Palin position is the conflation of Islam, Islamism, and radicalism.
It seems rather improbable that the new mosque in practice will become a magnet for extremists. But the opposition to the mosque is concerned as much with the fear of terror as with the symbolism of a building that represents what is perceived as an alien and hostile culture. Read more
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