by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n The American Left used to champion free expression. We were lectured \u2014 correctly \u2014 that the price of being repulsed by occasional crude talk and art was worth paying. Only that way could Americans ensure our daily right to criticize those with greater power and influence whom we found wrong and objectionable.<\/p>\n When 1950s comedian Lenny Bruce titillated his audiences with the f-word and crude sex talk, liberals came to his defense. They reminded us that vulgar speech is not a crime: The First Amendment was not just designed to protect uplifting expression, but also rarer blasphemous and indecent speech.<\/p>\n For liberals, the burning of a flag on campus and the full-frontal nudity of\u00a0Penthouse<\/em>\u00a0magazine were also First Amendment issues.<\/p>\n When artist Andres Serrano photographed a crucifix in a jar with his own urine (\u201cPiss Christ\u201d), the avant-garde Left not only protected Serrano\u2019s constitutional right to offend millions, but also saw no problem in the US government\u2019s subsidizing the talentless Serrano\u2019s sophomoric obnoxiousness.<\/p>\n But the worldview of the Left is self-contradictory. One of its pet doctrines is multiculturalism \u2014 or the idea that non-Western cultures cannot be judged critically by our own inherently biased Western standards.<\/p>\n Female circumcision or honor killings in the Muslim world don\u2019t merit our attention in the way that a woman\u2019s right to free abortion pills from her Catholic employer does in the West. When it comes to the Middle East, we neither criticize strongly enough the region\u2019s sexism, homophobia, or racism, nor do we defend without qualification our own notions of free expression as inherently superior to the habitual censorship abroad.<\/p>\n Fear plays a role, too. Championing the right of Andres Serrano to show his degrading pictures of Christ wins liberal laurels. Protecting novelist Salman Rushdie\u2019s caricatures of Islam might earn death.<\/p>\n The Obama administration went to great lengths to blast an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian for posting on the Internet a juvenile movie trailer ridiculing Islam which offended Muslims. After riots across the Middle East and the murder of the US ambassador in Libya, American officials did not wish to concede that radical Islam hates the United States \u2014 and hates it even when Barack Obama is president. The administration did not want to admit that its own lax security standards, not a film trailer, led to the horrific murders in Libya; neither did it want to admit in an election year that its Middle East reset policy is in shambles.<\/p>\n No obnoxious American in the last half-century \u2014 not Larry Flynt, not Daniel Ellsberg \u2014 has warranted so much condemnation for his antics from the president of the United States, the secretary of state, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as one crackpot preacher in Florida and an inept Coptic film producer have received.<\/p>\n Outraged Arab Americans in Dearborn, Mich., demonstrated in favor of anti-blasphemy laws last week. They demanded an end to any expression that they find religiously offensive \u2014 and thereby proved to be embarrassingly clueless as to why many in their communities left their own homelands to come to America in the first place.<\/p>\n The new Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, recently lectured the US on its decadence and wants a global ban on the caricaturing of Islam. He, too, forgot that he once fled to the United States to be educated and employed and to freely say things that would have gotten him killed in his native Egypt.<\/p>\n Another Egyptian immigrant, frequent CNN and MSNBC guest pundit Mona Eltahawy, recently spray-painted over a public anti-jihadist poster that she disliked. In her world, defacing public property is okay if by her own standards she judges it offensive. Eltahawy, like the Dearborn protesters, is oblivious to the fact that her self-appointed censorship would soon turn her adopted country into just the sort of intolerant society from which she, too, fled.<\/p>\n It is past time for US officials to insist that our traditions and laws apply equally across the board, regardless of where we come from, or what we look like, or the anger and danger we incur from abroad.<\/p>\n Schools could do better by cutting back on their multicultural classes and reintroducing study of the US Constitution. After all, immigrants are required to pass a basic test on the Constitution as part of winning citizenship.<\/p>\n \u201cSpeaking truth to power\u201d is not Sandra Fluke grandstanding to ovations at the Democratic convention on behalf of government-supplied free contraception. It is instead our elected officials reminding rampaging Middle Eastern terrorists and bigots that they will not alter our Constitution \u2014 and had better not try.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The American Left used to champion free expression. We were lectured \u2014 correctly \u2014 that the price of being repulsed by occasional crude talk and art was worth paying. Only that way could Americans ensure our daily right to criticize those with greater power and influence whom we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11],"tags":[190,12,191,66,165,214,1043,30,58],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-6F","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":68,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-war-between-the-amendments\/","url_meta":{"origin":413,"position":0},"title":"The War Between the Amendments","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The horrific Newtown, Conn., mass shooting has unleashed a frenzy to pass new gun-control legislation. But the war over restricting firearms is not just between liberals and conservatives; it also pits the first two amendments to the US Constitution against each other. Apparently,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4067,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/free-men-have-free-tongues\/","url_meta":{"origin":413,"position":1},"title":"Free Men Have Free Tongues","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com Every time a crazy person perpetrates irrational mayhem, we immediately start demanding explanations that gratify our ideological assumptions. For liberals, something in the environment drives people to such acts. Bad childrearing, poverty, bullying at school, violent movies or video games, or bigotry and prejudice are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8405,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-first-and-a-half-amendment\/","url_meta":{"origin":413,"position":2},"title":"The First \u2014 and a Half \u2014 Amendment","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 12, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Free speech and artistic and intellectual expression have been controversial Western traditions since the rise of the classical-Greek city-state. When our Founding Fathers introduced guarantees of such freedoms to our new nation, they were never intended to protect thinkers whom we all admire\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religion"","block_context":{"text":"Religion","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/religion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via NRO","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/pic_giant_051215_SM_Free-Speech-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5350,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/no-country-for-old-liberals\/","url_meta":{"origin":413,"position":3},"title":"No Country for Old Liberals","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers According to liberals, they are tolerant, open-minded, sensitive to complexity and nuance, and wary of simplistic explanations. So why is a column by the liberal Michael Hirsh, in the liberal newsweekly\u00a0Newsweek, so intolerant, close-minded, simplistic and bigoted? Hirsh\u2019s piece sounds the alarm over the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":519,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/time-for-liberals-and-progressives-to-get-new-labels\/","url_meta":{"origin":413,"position":4},"title":"Time for ‘Liberals’ and ‘Progressives’ to Get New Labels","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine We need to find a new label for the ideology espoused by leftist Democrats. \u201cLiberal\u201d doesn\u2019t accurately describe the party of blinkered intolerance, fanatical certainty, and an eagerness to destroy freedom in order to achieve some dubious utopia. \u201cProgressive\u201d is more historically accurate for ideas\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2228,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-lefts-selective-outrage\/","url_meta":{"origin":413,"position":5},"title":"The Left’s Selective Outrage","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine You know liberals are edging toward a full Jonestown-style meltdown when someone as smart as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman starts losing it. Last week Friedman worked himself up into a paranoiac frenzy over the tone of some of the criticism Obama and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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