Three Cheers for Democracy

E.M Forster (portrait by Dora Carrington)

E.M. Forster was famous for his novel A Passage to India which dealt with the clash of cultures as a metaphor for the internal machinery—human language—that inevitably separates all individuals from each other. Noam Comsky might talk about a universal grammar, but both syntax and semantics conspire to create the modern form of a Tower of Babel, a tower of “paradigm shifts,” to quote Thomas Kuhn’s famous locution. A Passage to India should be required reading in a world where even a liberal minded organization like PEN can find itself divided by the conflict between free expression and a sensitivity to cultural differences, as manifested in the recent conflict over the Charlie Hebdo award (“Charlie Hebdo Award at PEN Gala Sparks More Debate,” NYT, 5/4/15). Forster also wrote a book called Two Cheers for Democracy, a series of essays in which he defended liberalism. Here again Forster’s mild mannered, ambivalent and often tortured thinking deserves to come to the fore. The classic liberal finds his or her views more threatened then ever in our current climate. He or she buckles at a multi-culturalism that threatens free speech while at the same time feeling protective of constitutional rights of those extremists who would stifle all expression. Will liberal ideals which champion privacy, constitutional rights and due process be able to survive in a world where government agencies increasingly need to take action? Will liberal ideals survive in a world where search warrants and Miranda rights go down the drain, as our fear of terrorism mounts? And can you make exceptions and suspend certain rights, under particular conditions? Oliver Wendell Holmes seemed to think so in the famous Schenck decision in which anti-draft sentiments at war time were equated with “falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing panic." However, in a subsequent dissent, Abrams v. United States, he seemed to reaffirm the rights of expression in the same theater of war. The classic liberal is a latter day Hamlet, inhibited from action by too many thoughts and preconditions. And yet we sometimes forget that without all the questioning, without all the concern for due process and human rights—that constitute the liberal mandate—we would have nothing left to defend against the onslaught both of terrorism and its equally totalitarian backlash. You don’t want to hear about wishy washy liberal ideals when your blood is boiling and you’re ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater, opting for revenge at all costs. But isn’t this exactly what the terrorists want? After they’re finished pillaging the historical memory of antiquity, they’ll get us to commit hara-kiri by doing away with everything we stand for.

When Crying “Fire!” Becomes a Slur

photo: lPankonin

This past week witnessed two historical decisions ("'Equal Dignity,’" NYT, 6/27/15,  “Supreme Court Allows Nationwide Heath Care Subsidies,” NYT, 6/25/15) which reaffirmed not only the impartiality of the Supreme Court (with a Conservative Justice upholding the Affordable Care Act), but its imperturbability as an institution in comparison to an increasingly rambunctious and unstable congress. However, the next big decisions facing the Supreme Court are very likely to revolve around the limits of free speech. The famous Oliver Wendell Holmes decision in Schenck v. United States brilliantly prescribed limits to First Amendment Rights. But free expression is one of the most complex matters in jurisprudence and it regularly receives challenges from all sides of the ideological spectrum. This problem is particularly acute in the case of religious expression. Is wearing the Hijab, the veil worn by some Muslim women a right, when hiding one’s face makes identification documents like driver’s licenses and passports almost meaningless? Members of Canada’s conservative government recently courted controversy when they began to question this form of expression (“Harper says majority of 'moderate Muslims' support view on hijab ban,” The Globe and Mail, 3/15/15) Do militantly anti-Muslim groups have the right to promote offensive attacks on Muhammad like the cartoon contest recently held in Texas, under the guise of defending the right of free speech against those who would stifle it (“Pamela Geller, Organizer of Muhammad Cartoon Contest, Trumpets Results,” NYT,  5/4/15).The latter might have given Oliver Wendell Holmes pause, as would have the case of the Nazis marching through the Jewish section of Skokie, Illinois (a case that never made it to the Supreme Court). At the recent PEN conference in New York, otherwise liberally inclined writers signed petitions against honoring surviving Charlie Hebdo staff members, an astonishing turn of events considering PEN’s storied history of defending writers and free expression around the world (“PEN Group Blacklists Charlie Hebdo,” The Screaming Pope, 4/29/15) Those who believe that questioning the First Amendment opens up a Pandora’s Box might ask how exactly “fire!” was cried, how crowded the theater and where the exits were. Salman Rushdie, who had a fatwah issued against him for The Satanic Verses, was incredulous and irate at the waffling some of his PEN colleagues, but the fire has now become the threat of violence and destruction. Liberal western values themselves are like crying “fire?” for fundamentalists of many stripes. In Israel the ultra Orthodox have attempted to inflict their values on a population that doesn’t always cotton to their values. In an age of increasing terrorism, there will be a tendency to constrict both the exercise of beliefs as well as the right to express opposition and outrage at those self-same beliefs. The Supreme Court will have its work cut for it.

PEN Group Blacklists Charlie Hebdo

An attack on free expression has come from one of the most unlikely places. A recent Times headline read “Six PEN Members Decline Gala After Award for Charlie Hebdo," (NYT, 4/26/15). Salman Rushdie, who was the object of a fatwa for The Satanic Verses: A Novel, was not part of the protest. Peter Carey, the novelist was one of the group which included Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Taiye Selasi and Michael Ondaatje. The Times quoted Peter Carey thusly, “A hideous crime was committed, but was it a freedom-of-speech issue for PEN America to be self-righteous about? All this is complicated by PEN’s seeming blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French nation, which does not recognize its moral obligation to a large and disempowered segment of their population.” Isn’t this a little like allowing the schoolyard bully to terrorize his classmates by saying that he has a troubled home life?” One of the few good things about the French is the high esteem in which the hold free expression. There's probably no other country on earth where all shades of the political spectrum adhere to a similar veneration for free speech. Yes the French can be arrogant, impossible and even as racially insensitive as liberal American members of organizations of PEN who camouflage their prejudices by signing self-congratulatory petitions against the oppression of  have-nots while lacking countervailing sensitivity to the protecting the rights of the haves--like themselves. But how can they not stand tall for Charlie Hebdo which is after all an equal opportunity employer lambasting both Islam and its most virulent critics. Indeed on January 7, the day of the massacre, Michel Houellebecq, who famously termed Islam “the stupidest religion," was pilloried on the cover of the magazine.

Writers Invite Increased Surveillance of Their Work

“Surveillance Leaves Writers Wary,” read the headline (NYT, 11/11/13) It’s an innocent enough statement and one that almost precludes further examination. This is precisely the kind of article that begs the equivalent of prolepsis in conversation. One can easily anticipate the follow up which would have to do with sincere sounding authors worrying about whether the NSA is intruding into their poems, their essays, their short stories and their novels. And sure enough the article had to do with an on line survey of 528 PEN members. The Times piece went on to state “The findings show that writers consider freedom of expression under threat in the United States with 73 per cent of respondents saying they have ‘never been as worried about privacy rights and freedom of the press as they are today.’” The problem is that when a writer is given too much privacy he runs the danger of having his works fade into oblivion. What the survey doesn’t deal with is all the writers who aren’t in PEN and who might take NSA surveillance as the less of the evils. Sure it’s bad having the government snooping down your neck, but what’s worse for the writer who hasn’t been able to publish enough to get accepted into PEN, is getting no attention at all. This also ties into the famed public relations koan that “no publicity is bad publicity.” But let’s play out a worst possible scenario. Let’s say you’re a writer and you’re doing a latter day Our Man in Havana—the famed Carol Reed movie based upon the Graham Greene novel, where a would be spy uses drawings of vacuum cleaners as the model for enemy encampments. And let’s say the NSA calls you in for an interview. Well, by George you’ve got it made in the shade. It’s a PR bonanza. Not only are you a victim whose freedoms being jeopardized, but your narrative obviously has enough plausibility to give Homeland Security pause. Before you know it you’re on CNN with publishers banging on your door. No for the average writer the headline should more aptly read, “Writers Invite Increased Surveillance of Their Work.”