April 13, 2006

The Right and the Duty to Insult

Don’t make me go back and find where I’m getting this from, because I think it was a lot of places, but it may have been nowhere. It’s possible I am setting fire to a straw man completely of my own imagination here. But maybe this is worth saying anyway:

During the cartoon jihad, and now again with the South Park/Cowardly Central chickenout, there’s been a lot of discussion of the need to exercise our rights. One of the justifications for printing the offensive material is that if we don’t exercise these particular free speech rights, we’ll lose them.

Let me speak freely here: that’s crap. I’ll grant, of course, that South Park or the Danish Cartoonists have the right to print and say what they like about whatever or whoever they like, even if it is offensive, without retaliation from private or public actors. But the tenor of the discussion as I am hearing it implies not only a right, but an obligation to insult things, in order to preserve the right to do so.

I have two problems with that. The first is that it confuses rights with customs. Customs don’t necessarily give rise to rights. In fact, customs and traditions can infringe on rights (see, e.g. religion v. free speech, or slavery v. self-ownership). We don’t enumerate our rights and make them a law because everyone agrees on them or because it’s a widespread custom. We codify and delineate rights because they are potentially controversial, awkward, or inconvenient. The fundamental ones, like those in the Bill of Rights, don’t go away just because customs change. The right to bear arms, although often regulated (and often illegally), endures even in places where guns aren’t popular. And even when rights are violated regularly, it doesn’t mean they no longer exist. (One exception to this is international law, which depends heavily on the practice of nations. Another is trademark law, which must be enforced and challenged against adverse use for the right to be recognized.)

But in everything else, rights and customs are independent of each other. Therefore it’s not necessary to preserve a right to insult by establishing a custom of insulting people. It might make it more widely accepted (which I’m not sure we want), but the right to insult Scientology or Islam or Presbyterianism won’t vanish just because it isn’t done for a few years. Like an unused muscle, it may be a little sore when you exercise it again, but it is always a right.

On the other hand, insulting things just for the sake of insulting them is pernicious. It’s uncivil. It’s not a good small-r republican virtue. It’s my obligation to exercise my rights responsibly, sensibly, and respectfully, and I don’t see any reason to insult or ridicule other people’s deeply held beliefs for no other reason than that they are deeply held.

(Yes, there’s a “but� coming up. Don’t worry.)

That right’s written down, so I don’t have to worry about exercising it when I don’t need to use it. I don’t carry a gun around out of some fear that if I don’t, the right to do so will vanish. I’m free to own or carry a gun or not as I feel it’s prudent (and legal) to do so. If I don’t vote in this election, I don’t lose the right to vote. If I don’t go to church, I don’t fear that I will lose my freedom of religion. Same with the freedom to ridicule.

If you really believe that your free speech rights will vanish if you don’t regularly offend others, then how often do you deliberately offend your own mother? You should call up your mom right now, and say, “Mom, you skanky old hose-bag, f— you!� Then explain you just did it in order to preserve your right to offend. Repeat with everyone you know, just to remind them that you have the right to do so.

Which is my second problem with this concept of the mysterious, vanishing right to be offensive: what an ugly, paranoid, tedious world that would be if we really believed our rights were so fragile and tenuous that they vanished without constant use.

No, I think the right to insult, ridicule, and parody is like any other right: it ought to be used responsibly. There’s a reason you have a right to say unpopular things, just like there’s a reason you have a right to own a gun. Both are occasionally necessary for defense of yourself and of the Republic. But you have an obligation to use them wisely. In the case of offensive speech, it ought to be reserved for the things which really deserve your contempt.

I’m using the word ought because this obligation is governed not by force but by conscience. It’s up to you to use this right in good faith, and judiciously. If everything is equally laughable to you, it shows you have no judgment. Insulting others just because you can get away with it is pretty contemptible in itself, as is ridicule against the weak and the well-meaning. I believe someone who is worth taking seriously is very careful about what he laughs at.

Which brings us back to South Park. One of the most dangerous ideas in the world right now is Islamic exceptionalism. The pernicious notion that Islam is a force above and beyond all human law–and above all human rights–drives terrorism, empowers fascist movements, and immiserates a huge swath of the world. What insufferable airs. What an indefensible pretense. What a ridiculous pose.

What a laugh. Its consequences are tragedy and atrocity, but radical Islam’s source is a farce.

The same is true, to a much lesser degree, with Scientology, which hasn’t killed anyone but still regards itself with all the touchy, priggish self-importance of a bunch of new-age Ayatollahs. What a bunch of censorious ninnies. Get over yourselves.

If ever there were creeds that needed taking down a notch, these are the ones. Good for South Park for laughing at them. I don’t like South Park because they are indiscriminate with their scorn and insult things for the sake of being insulting, but they sure got this one right. And jeers to Comedy Central for shutting them down. Not only does Comedy Central scorn the things that don’t deserve it, but unlike South Park, they turn away from insulting the things that really do deserve it. As a civic institution, they’re a complete failure, and they’ve misused this important freedom we are fighting to defend.

Cowards.

(cross-posted at Patterico's Pontifications.)