Here’s Obama’s speech at Tucson:
The wild applause of the crowd seems slightly odd at times, though that is the case with a lot of political speeches. A full throated approval in the auditorium sounds tinny and inappropriate. Or perhaps it is the presence of younger people in the audience, more comfortable with vocal expression than with the simple clapping of hands.
But the speech is fantastic – an affirmation of free speech and democracy.
Liberty, Whatever the Cost [Updated]
“There is not enough poxes for your houses” says Jay Rosen to the pundits discussing #Tucson. Well, here’s an astonishing quote from a non-pundit which goes places no politician dares to tread:
This shouldn’t happen in this country, or anywhere else, but in a free society, we’re going to be subject to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative.
That was spoken by John Green, the father of Christina Green, 9-year-old girl killed at the shootings on Saturday. His statement eloquently explains the tough trade-off between liberty and security. He acknowledges the limits of Government, and that ackowledges that horrible things will happen in a free society, and explicitly says that this is a preferable state of affairs. It is a difficult case to make at the best of times (I have tried on a few occasions, regarding cannabis, ID cards, and other civil liberties). For Mr Green to say it at the depth of his grief is truly courageous.
Compare this to Nick Clegg and David Cameron, who seem to want to have it both ways. If you want to argue for more civil liberties, I think you must acknowledge that the mythological state of absolute security does not exist, that there can be negative consequences to liberty… and that we should all be comfortable with that.
Update
When I read this quote I instinctively assumed it was referring to the idea of liberty in general, and did not think too much about the particular tyoe of liberty that Green was advocating. However, a colleague points out that he can only be referring to gun-control (or lack thereof in the American system). And as many others have been arguing these past few days, liberty and the unfettered ‘right to bear arms’ do not necessarily go hand in hand. Indeed, surely the whole point of consituting a state is to get away from all that! So it is worth adding a line here to emphasise that I do not share Mr Green’s views on gun control, and am relieved that we do not have that sort of ‘liberty’ here in the UK. There’s no point in whitewashing my original post though – I think it best to leave my excesses and embarrasments for all to read.
Having said that, I think my central point remains. Mr Green acknowledges that his ideology has negative aspects, and he embraces them anyway.
#Tucson
The shootings in Tuscon present a difficult conundrum. On the one hand, we cannot seriously suggest that Sarah Palin and the other Tea Party demagogues literally sponsored or otherwise provoked the spree. But on the other, the inflammatory rhetoric of recent American politics has made many people (including myself) very uneasy, and this massacre feels like something expected, inevitable. Jonathan Raban’s column in the Independent today seems to strike the right balance, rightly pointing out that it is the entire discourse and culture that is at fault:
The gunsights were intended as an eye-catching metaphor in the metaphor-stuffed rhetoric of the Tea Party movement, which loves to harp on a fanciful parallel between today’s opposition to healthcare reform, the stimulus package and the bank bailouts, the case for providing amnesty to illegal immigrants, and all the rest, with the great patriotic war of the American Revolution in the 1770s. It’s the sort of historical comparison designed to appeal deeply to people who are ignorant of history, and it generates a stream of metaphors for heroic resistance, involving muskets, funny trousers and tricorn hats.
…
There is a chance, if rather a slim one, that the Tucson massacre will make both politicians and commentators draw back and reconsider their terms. Politics is not warfare. The Democratic party is not a colonialist tyranny. Obama is not George III. To live in a slew of overheated metaphors, in language vastly disproportionate to the occasion, is to invite and license the kind of atrocity that happened the day before yesterday.
Some on America’s extreme right have already begun to hit-back those who have criticised Sarah Palin for the gun-sight imagery she used on a campaigning website during last year’s mid-term elections. But I don’t think this criticism of Palin is cynical. Rather, it is an inelegant erruption of a thousand ‘told you sos’, from all those who have been concerned by the Tea Party’s divisive rhetoric. Explaining why statements like “a second ammendment solution” (Nevada senate candidate Sharon Angle) are dangerous and undemocratic usually takes a fair few paragraphs of historical and political blogging to get right. In the face of an hysterical, pseudo-patriotic libertarian fervour, the more compassionate and reasoned of our American cousins have struggled to articulate a counterpoint. The Arizona shootings are sick and twisted, but they have also made a complex set of ideas seem very simple indeed. A single word, ‘#Tuscon’ will now suffice to refudiate and dampen the more sinister and threatening political rhetoric. A single face will come to symbolise how far the pendulum can swing. This is in itself reductive, however.
Qu’ran burning and America's moral plummet
Just as I was mulling the idea of writing a blog-post on Liberal Conspriacy about the stupid Koran-burning event planned at a church in Florida, Dave Osler gazumps me with a lucid take. As a campaigner for PEN, the idea of book-burning presents a particular conundrum: The aborrence of the act, versus the right to free expression. I think Dave’s final paragraph nails the argument:
But Dove World Outreach Centre do not exercise state power. For much the same reasons as al Muhajiroon should not be banned from demonstrating at the funeral processions of squaddies and the English Defence League should not be banned from the streets of British cities, the lesser evil is to tolerate its cretinous intolerance.
Earlier, Dave dismisses Heinrich Heine’s quote (“wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings”) as being a soundbite. I would not be so glib. Reading the hysterical comments over the so-called ‘Ground-Zero Mosque’ from prominent and elected US politicians, I fear some particularly nasty events may unfold later this year.
The rise of fascism and other dictatorships is often cited as an excuse to regulate free speech. “If only we could have stopped Hitler giving speeches” goes the argument, “we would have prevented Nazism.” That is one way of looking at it, but such an approach is unsophisticated and leads to a fascism of its own. The proper response, when rabble-rousing turns to vitriol turns to hate-speech turns to incitement… is counter-speech. If demagogues threaten division and hatred, then others in power need to refute them as forcefully as possible. Democracy’s core values, as embodied in our concept of human rights, are always under attack. It is when ‘cretinous intolerance’ is are inadequately defended that the moral fall begins.
Regarding the Cordoba Initiative controversy, those who should be standing up to the bigotry are often staying silent, or worse, pandering to the mob. For example, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, in a close re-election battle with a Palin-style politican in Arizona, chose to pander. President Obama’s response, while initially strong, was blunted by clarifications and spin. Only Michael Bloomberg, major of New York, has taken a stand on principle. The different responses of these three men to this moral challenge is clearly indicative of their very different electorates, The dark side of democracy threatens the light.
Quoted on Libel Tourism
Eagle-eyed commuters will have spotted a quote from yrstruly in the Metro this morning, on the all important topic of Libel Tourism. Barack Obama has just signed into law some measures that will protect Americans from British libel judgements. The protection will kick-in if the libel judgement is at odds with the First Ammendment.
Yesterday, campaigners said Mr Obama’s move was a clear indication that our libel laws were way behind the times in protecting freedom of expression. Robert Sharp, of charity English PEN, said: ‘It’s a national disgrace and just shows how skewed and unbalanced our laws are.’
Read the whole article. My longer rant about libel tourism may be found on Comment is Free.