That's What Free Speech Means

Found this reading the latest issue of "Mission Frontiers," a great missions digest for those interested in the latest on fulfilling the Great Commission.

In the midst of an otherwise informative edition, there is an article, a "condensed treatment" of this book, designed to get the reader to purchase the book. It didn't work. It made me mad. Take special notice of the discussion of free speech in the second to last paragraph.

"Far more people than just Islamists, however, wish to modernize their countries without at the same time Westernizing them. Samuel Huntington has argued at length that that is the task in which much or most of the non‑West is now engaged. The extreme difficulty of such an enterprise lies in the fact that the West is the historic source of modernization and its principal present agent. Modernizing without Westernizing is a near impossible task of extrication.
The Internet (to take only the most obvious example) knows no boundaries. To accept the technology is to accept the presence of pornography, advertising, commercial values and freedom of speech.
In response, the Taliban in Afghanistan (admittedly one of the most extreme cases) did not shy away from banning virtually all aspects of modernity in their determination to sweep their collective house clean of Western contamination."

The second to last paragraph is what irritated me most. You simply can't have technology without freedom of speech. VCRs enabled people to copy movies. Cassettes enabled people to duplicate CDs and Vinyl Records (for you young-uns, this is a vinyl record). The Internet (Thanks Uncle Al!) is Free Speech on 1000 cups of coffee, and it shows no sign that it will lend itself to self-, government- or political control. Free Speech is here to stay.

And we should never apologize for it. Commercial values developed in an enviroment of free speech, and that is why our economy is running strong. People are free to buy and sell. That's good. Advertising spreads the glories of Coca-Cola and Levi's 501 Button-Fly Jeans from sea to shining sea and to the uttermost parts of the earth, and they have every right to try and sell what they make in a free market.

Pornography is unfortunate. God hates it. It objectifies and abuses women, children and men, turns its users into drooling lust-bots, and infects every nook and cranny of the internet, ruining the web surfing experience in a far worse way than finding a clump of gray hair in your blueberry cobbler at a church potluck. But... this is part of the price of free speech.

And free speech is what protects us from the thought police of 1984. What it doesn't prevent is the kind of debauchery and self-indulgence we see in the rags at the checkout counter at the supermarket, or the sensory overload of Brave New World.

It is our freedom that makes our society great, and while we may have major moral problems, it does not justify the kind of treatment that the Jihaddist world is sending our way, any more than the horror of abortion justifies the murder of abortion 'practicioners' or the application of C4 to 'clinics.'

How do we end abortion? With words. How do we share the message of Christ with others? With words, and never with guns or swords (Yeah... people did that... they were wrong.)

This should be the litmus test. Does the outrage express itself in violence, or with words spoken freely with the intent of convincing? Is the outrage tempered with a willingness to hear the other side of the story? Does the rage and hate use fear to intimidate and suppress discussion? or does it respect the rights of others?

Free Speech. Are we committed to this historic principle of the founding of our culture, or not?

In case the rest of the civilized world hasn't noticed, the european world, the United States and those areas of the world where freedom of speech and liberty of conscience have thrived are the ones who produce the technology and the innovation. You can't have one without the other. It's the truth, like it or not. I say love it enough to fight for it.

Live Free or Die,
PastaKeith