Free speech is dying in the Western world. While most people still enjoy considerable freedom of expression, this right, once a near-absolute, has become less defined and less dependable for those espousing controversial social, political or religious views. The decline of free speech has come not from any single blow but rather from thousands of paper cuts of well-intentioned exceptions designed to maintain social harmony.Read the rest here.
In the face of the violence that frequently results from anti-religious expression, some world leaders seem to be losing their patience with free speech. After a video called “Innocence of Muslims” appeared on YouTube and sparked violent protests in several Muslim nations last month, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that “when some people use this freedom of expression to provoke or humiliate some others’ values and beliefs, then this cannot be protected.”
It appears that the one thing modern society can no longer tolerate is intolerance. As Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard put it in her recent speech before the United Nations, “Our tolerance must never extend to tolerating religious hatred.”
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1 comment:
Al Qaida and others stormed the US embassies to commemorate their highly successful 9/11 attack, not because of some F-list "movie" put together by an Egyptian conman in California and posted somewhere on the internet back in July.
Having said that, the premise of the article is correct. If the West wants to invade the world and invite the world, then free speech (and a lot of other things) will have to go. Multi-culturalism requires an enormous national security apparatus.
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