Free Speech Is Free Speech Is Free Speech

James Joyner writes the post that I had planned on writing at length. Thanks. That made my job a whole lot easier. Citing Christopher Hitchens, James wonders why democracies have not come to Denmark's side in the cartoon jihad. He concludes:

Sadly, the nightmare is in danger of becoming a de facto reality. The impulse to not offend Muslims is decent and understandable. In the context of Muslims murdering innocents over free speech, however, it is also dangerous.

Why is it that most bloggers instinctively got to the correct answer on both the David Irving sentencing for Holocaust denial in Austria and the ongoing rioting due to the publication of cartoons? Is it because bloggers have some innate sense of what free speech is?

For those that don't know. David Irving is a reprehensible revisionist 'historian' who repeatedly claims that the Holocaust never occurred, or that if there were concentration camps that the bulk of those who died, did so from disease, not systematic murder in gas chambers or mass killings. He was sentenced yesterday to three years for violating Austrian laws prohibiting such speech.

He is free to say these things in the US, but Austria (along with several other nations, including Israel) have laws on Holocaust denial. While there is some merit to outlawing Holocaust denial - in order to remind the world that these horrible atrocities were indeed done by the Nazi regime to systematically kill every Jew in their dominion - the limitations on free speech are too great for my tastes.

One should better know where these creeps are and provide countering free speech than to drive them underground. Driving them underground or outlawing the speech only emboldens others - like the Islamists to try and impose their own version of thought control on democracies. Consideration of anti-blasphemy laws are one possible outcome when taking thought crimes to an extreme.

Now consider the fact that while some bloggers are interested in what's going on with China's crackdown on bloggers and dissenters, this is simply another aspect of free speech, the free expression of individuals and entities/groups seeking to limit access to information on their say so.

The December incident sparked outrage among bloggers around the world, and in Washington, members of Congress vowed to scrutinize how U.S. firms are helping the Chinese government censor the Internet. But the reaction inside China's growing community of Internet users was strikingly mixed.

Many rallied to support Zhao, but some objected to his "Western" views and said he deserved to be silenced. Others, especially those with a financial stake in the industry, said they worried Zhao's writing could lead officials to impose tighter controls on blogging. And a few said they were pleased that Microsoft had been forced to comply with the same censorship rules that its Chinese rivals obey.

The story of Zhao's blog -- and the ambivalence it met in cyberspace -- demonstrates that those trying to use the Internet to foster political change in China must contend not only with the censors but also with the apathy, fear and mistrust of their fellow citizens. The case also highlights the competing ethical and commercial pressures on companies seeking to profit from the Internet in China, including U.S. firms such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Google.

Considering that the big media outlets were asleep on the issue, is it any wonder that there was ambivalence in cyberspace? Yet, I suspect that if you run searches for Chinese censorship, there would be a spike in hits once the Google story broke.

UPDATE:
I see I'm not alone in slamming the idea of thought crimes or putting the government in charge of determining the difference between opinion and truth. Given all the problems the media has with the cartoon jihad, multiply the possible problems and double them to be sure. The following folks are also blogging this: Rusty at the Jawa Report, Wretchard at Belmont Club, Ken McCracken at Say Anything, The Moderate Voice, The Sundries Shack, LaShawn Barber, Tigerhawk, and Glenn Greenwald (before he goes off the rails on a tangent).

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