Part 2 looks at how freedom of expression can be destructive if used without restraint.
Hitchens, a British journalist and commentator, was born Christian, but from his days at Oxford disavowed religion. As a writer and public speaker, Hitchens gained notoriety by irreverently penning articles about otherwise popular public figures, including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, and Henry Kissinger. He moved to America, where he spent his most high-profile years.
Ironically, in defending free speech in the wake of the Salman Rushdie affair, Hitchens claims that faith, rather than fanaticism, is the problem; his misdiagnosis flows from the very fundamentalism he fumes at. Free speech absolutists like him render freedom a religion unto itself, celebrate choice above everything else, and fault anyone who threatens its expression.
Rather grandly, Rushdie once declared that, without the “freedom to offend,” freedom of expression dies. That he was nearly killed by someone who had allegedly taken offense is a reminder that this freedom remains endangered.
All great art and science has offended someone at some point. But in championing the freedom to offend in such a utopian vein, Hitchens is as wrong to insist that “nothing is sacred” as Rushdie is to imply it.
There are several other belief systems besides religion: legal, judicial, legislative, police, bureaucratic, journalistic, academic, and electoral. The freedom to offend is balanced by other factors in these systems.
Free Speech Absolutism
That the civilized world hesitates to chastise communism doesn’t make it acceptable. This post-truth hypocrisy normalizes depravity and pulverizes free thought before it becomes word or action, in ways that would bewilder even the most bigoted religious figures. What you are innocent of on Thursday, you’ll be guilty of on Friday—homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, misogyny, sexism, racism, misgendering, or hate speech.Do Words Matter?
Rushdie once mused that language was the knife he used to counter bigotry. But it’s no longer just besieged writers who’re weaponizing language as politics. Nearly everyone is.Rights belong in a hierarchy. It’s why nations demand respect toward their flag, anthem, legal-judicial-legislative codes, and war heroes. Nations place the right to privacy over some other, but not all, rights. It’s reductive to argue that these rights are symbolic anyway, and that no one should take offense because no one’s being harmed. Not that everyone is entitled to become a touch-me-not or exaggerate beyond reason the notion of harm, but there are degrees of harm and some of them are unacceptable.
Barron’s call to righteous offense is akin to the call of patriotism.
Yes, some things are sacred.
Honoring the letter of the First Amendment isn’t license to desecrate its spirit. Its point is to protect, not pervert, democracy. Absolutism glosses over this complexity. Fallible humans create fallible institutions; protecting them requires tending, not triumphalism. For all its democratic credentials, America isn’t free from the threat of communism just because its statesmen historically opposed it or because communism originated elsewhere.
Life’s Compromises
So, what can writers and artists do?For all its seemingly limitless possibilities, bounties, and joys, life is one big compromise, with sickness, loss, separation, aging, and death. Literature and art are no different. As in life, creators of literature and art must compromise. It’s more in the when, where, why, how, and how much that they find the elbow room to recreate. It’s all they can do. Even the greatest don’t create. They reorganize. They rearrange using tools, materials, processes, grammar, and formulae organized by someone else.
These tools are evident in musical notes, grammar, a camera, a chisel, and paint. All writers and artists are taught, trained, and retrained to use these tools and recreate, reorganize. They don’t create out of nothing. Their finite, imperfect nature binds their creative freedom too, compelling dependence and interdependence. If creative work delights in its freedom to offend, it must respect the freedom to be offended. Humans are unique, or there’d be no writers, or artists, or inventors. But if they go on to pervert or puff up that individualistic impulse, the ensuing individualism corrodes their humanity.
Yes, society must do all it can to stay out of an artist’s or writer’s way, resisting the temptation to heed every dog whistle. Yes, writers and artists must continue to dream, to dare, conjure new, even impossible worlds, fearlessly. Fear chokes creativity. But it’s also up to the writer and artist to be sensitive, if not, beholden to the moral and social boundaries in which he thrives, even if he must keep broadening and, occasionally, breaking artistic and aesthetic boundaries.
If nothing’s sacred, then isn’t (almost) everything at risk of being rendered profane? In the hands of an angered or alienated writer or artist, the line between sacred and profane can be all too callously blurred, and even obliterated.
Khomeini, too, used mere words, signing his fanatical fatwa. Freedom to express oneself is not a religion, but a privilege that must be kept in balance with all other rights that society holds sacred.
