Roger's Rules: Free Speech in an Age of Jihad

On Thursday, Andrew C. McCarthy and I hosted a conference on “Free Speech in An Age of Jihad: Libel Tourism, “Hate Speech,” and Political Freedom” at the Princeton Club in New York.
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Sponsored jointly by The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and The New Criterion, the day-long conference brought together more than a dozen prominent commentators—and an audience of about 200—to discuss the ways in which “soft jihad” is undermining freedom of expression in the West.
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We described the problem thus in the program for the conference:

Over the last several years, proponents of Islamic jihad have increasingly turned to the courts and government agencies in their effort to suppress criticism of radical Islam. The result has been a proliferation of libel suits and so-called “hate speech” actions that aim to curtail free speech and further the cause of radical Islam. Although generally initiated in countries less hospitable to free expression than the United States, these actions have had a profound “spill over” effect on American authors, journalists, and publishers. The aim of this conference is to provide an anatomy of these efforts to suppress free speech, to examine the way such actions aid and abet the spread of radical Islam, and to consider some possible responses, legal as well as journalistic, to the threats they pose.

Many people who have commented on the event have characterized it as a conference about “libel tourism.” It is a natural abbreviation—and one, moreover, that I abetted not only with the above description but also with “Terrorizing Publishing,” my op-ed that The New York Sun published on April 10, the day of the conference. But libel tourism, while certainly an important part of our discussion, describes only a part of the problem. In the first place, the practice of “venue shopping” in an effort to muzzle authors is only one tactic employed by Islamicists whose goal is not only to suppress criticism of radical Islam but also to propagate its spread and, indeed, its hegemony. Libel tourism is but one weapon in the multifarious armory of militant Islam.

There is, however, another, more interior, aspect of the problem of “free speech in the age of jihad” that has not yet received the attention it deserves. The unhappy truth is that the threat to civilization in the West comes not only from our enemies but also from within. This was a theme I touched upon in my introductory remarks at the conference and the Mark Steyn developed with his characteristic blend of humor and admonitory insight in his luncheon talk, “The Dimming of Liberty: Legal Jihad and the Criminalization of Resistance.”
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Mark’s talk ranged widely, but its central message, he noted, was summed up by the historian Arnold Toynbee: Most civilizations, Toynbee wrote, die from suicide not murder. We in the West preen ourselves on our high standard of living, our freedoms, our pleasures. But what beliefs, what backbone, underwrite those material triumphs? Radical Islam is a fanatical, often a murderous, faith. The welfare-state liberalism of the West is less a faith than a perpetual grievance.

In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek, hearkening back to Tocqueville’s analysis of “democratic despotism,” noted that “the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the in the character of a people.” The nature of that change was partly an enervation, partly an effeminization. One of the most penetrating meditations on the nature of that alteration Hayek discerned is James Burnham’s book Suicide of the West. Written in 1964, that book, like its author, is largely and unfairly forgotten today. Burnham’s was a first-rate political intelligence, and Suicide of the West is one of his most accomplished pieces of polemic. “The primary issue before Western civilization today, and before its member nations, is survival.”

Suicide of the West is very much a product of the Cold War. Many of the examples are dated. But Brunham’s message is more pertinenet than ever. In the subtitle to his book, Burnham promises “the definitive analysis of the pathology of liberalism.” At the center of that pathology is an awful failure of understanding which is also a failure of nerve, a failure of “the will to survive.” Liberalism, Burnham concludes, is “an ideology of suicide.” He admits that such a description may sound hyperbolic. “‘Suicide,’ it is objected, is too emotive a term, too negative and ‘bad.’” But it is part of the pathology that Burnham describes that such objections are “most often made most hotly by Westerners—think of those promulgating the gospel of multiculturalism in our universities—who hate their own civilization, readily excuse or even praise blows struck against it, and themselves lend a willing hand, frequently enough, to pulling it down.”

When it came to facing down the mortal threat of Communism, Burnham noted that “just possibly we shall not have to die in large numbers to stop them: but we shall certainly have to be willing to die.” The issue, Burnham saw, is that modern liberalism has equipped us with an ethic too abstract and too empty to inspire real commitment. Modern liberalism, he wrote,

does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice, and death. There is no tragic dimension in its picture of the good life. Men become willing to endure, sacrifice, and die for God, for family, king, honor, country, from a sense of absolute duty or an exalted vision of the meaning of history… . And it is precisely these ideas and institutions that liberalism has criticized, attacked, and in part overthrown as superstitious, archaic, reactionary, and irrational. In their place liberalism proposes a set of pale and bloodless abstractions—pale and bloodless for the very reason that they have no roots in the past, in deep feeling and in suffering. Except for mercenaries, saints, and neurotics, no one is willing to sacrifice and die for progressive education, medicare, humanity in the abstract, the United Nations, and a ten percent rise in Social Security payments.

The Islamofascists have a fanatical belief that theirs is a holy mission, that incinerating infidels is their bounden duty. For them suicide is a gateway to paradise. For us suicide is just that: suicide. The question is whether we believe anything with sufficient vigor to jettison the torpor of our barren self-satisfaction. There are signs that the answer is Yes, but you won’t see them on CNN or read about them in The New York Times. One part of the purpose of “Free Speech in an Age of Jihad” was to describe the threat that radical Islam, in its more bureaucratic and legalistic avatars, poses to the West. Equally important was the effort to remind us that the threat to West civilization lies as much with our response—or rather, our lack of response. Western democratic society, I noted in my introdcutory remakrs, is rooted in a particular vision of what Aristotle called “the good for man.” The question is: Do we, as a society, still have confidence in the animating values of the vision? Do we possess the requisite will to defend them? Or was the French philosopher Jean François Revel right when he said that “Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it”? The jury is still out on those questions. How we answer them will determine the fate not just of Western journalism but Western civilization itself.

Comments (20)

Fausta :

That was an excellent conference, Roger, and it was a pleasure to meet you and an honor to be in such excellent company.

Apr 12, 2008 02:24 PM

Harvey Weiss :

I no longer have the Burnham book to which you referred. Someone borrowed it years ago and never returned it. As I recall, he observed that an ideology, such as liberalism, to which so many people adhere must have some teleological function in human history. When Western civilization finally succumbs to the barbarians, he suggested that liberals will provide what they hope to be the definitive comment on this calamity by proclaiming 'we deserved it'. Thus, I might add, they will provide the intellectual embalming fluid for our civilization.

Apr 12, 2008 03:59 PM

Colonel Robert Neville :

Dear Roj:

Great stuff as usual. Sadly I couldn't make it as I live in Melbourne and was watching television. Steyn as usual is wonderful, yet while I mention him all the time, few folks percentage wise know of him, but then few folks know much about bugger all, so it seems.

I've had many people puzzled and ask me when WWll ended. I always say around lunch-time.

Man, I love Steyn, but does he ever write or bring around a nice fruit cake? Nope!

You, Steyn, P.J O'Rourke, Spencer and Horowitz should do a rock n' roll tour of Autralia! It'd be wonderful. Maybe Jonah Goldberg too...er, and Podhoretz and etc, etc.

Until then, I shall keep buying all your books while avoiding the MSM, except for the laughs.

All the best from a sleepy Colonel Neville.

Apr 13, 2008 05:29 AM

Retired E9 :

I can't read it. All the ads on the right side are over the text.

Maybe it's just me

Apr 13, 2008 07:46 AM

Alo Kievalar :

In his famous poem -Waiting for the Barbarians-*, the Greek poet Cavafy ridicules the aristocracy for their timid behavior in face of an anticipated barbarian onslaught onto their territories.

Although the assault never comes off – there weren’t any barbarians at the gate after all – Cavafy’s masterly portrayal of cowardice reminds me of the West’s response to the advent of virulent Jihadism and its stated goal of world domination.

However, this analogy can be taken only so far, because at least in our day, the barbarians are most definitely at the gate. In fact, the front-guard scouts are already inside and they didn’t need a Trojan horse to accomplish this infiltration.

Britain’s (and recently Harvard’s) embarrassing capitulation to Islamic demands made under the aegis of “diversity” is only the tip of the Islamist iceberg.

It is unfortunate that books such as “Suicide of the West” are largely forgotten.

Even more obscure is another book I’ve recently come across that might make useful reading: Lothrop Stoddard’s “The New World of Islam” published in 1921 (!) which gives a devastating portrayal of an Islam you seldom hear about these days.

Unfortunately, Stoddard was an admitted eugenicist which doesn’t do much for his credentials these days. (Among his other writings we find, for example, "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy" and "The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man", of which no more need be said.)

We don’t have to rely on fringe thinking, however, to admit to and do something about the Jihadist menace. It really is upon us. Do we need another 9/11 to heed the clarion call?

We really must take to heart Cavafy’s lines when he says:

“Why do the senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.”

They’re already doing it, in my opinion.
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* The best translation I’ve seen for this poem can be found online at:

...http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/cavafy.html...

Apr 13, 2008 07:58 AM

Al Fin :

It sounds like it was a great conference.

The problem is not so much the flaccidity of the west, as the conjunction of the west's flaccidity with Islam's murderous ascent to the world stage.

Waking up intellectuals, leftist university professors and graduates, and journalists in the west will be impossible on a large scale. Instead, it would be better to find ways of changing violent jihadists into more peaceful Hare Krishnas, Moonies, or polygamists cults such as the one's that Texas and Utah law enforcement seems bent on raiding.

Failing that conversion, perhaps we could convince the cocktail party set that controls western media, education, and politics that Islamists are actually Christians dressed up in explosive belts? That would be a serious matter-militant Christians. That would have to be dealt with.

Apr 13, 2008 07:59 AM

Daniel :

I know this is going off on a tangent, but I was struck by the following lines, "Burnham promises “the definitive analysis of the pathology of liberalism.” At the center of that pathology is an awful failure of understanding which is also a failure of nerve, a failure of “the will to survive.”

Yesterday, as I stood in line waiting to enter the massive Seattle Public Library's Spring Book sale, several people were asking for signatures on a petition to get a "Death with Dignity" law on the November ballot. I, of course, refused to sign (several times since I was asked over and over again). However, all the Liberals around me were more than willing to sign, saying how much this is needed in Washington State.

I guess when you have nothing to stand for, then suicide, or, as Liberals would call it, "Death with Dignity" looks like a very reasonable option. The "failure of the will to survive" translates into embracing "Death with Dignity", aka, Physician directed suicide laws. Could anyone imagine the generation that defeated Nazism and Communism actively promoting physician directed suicide?

Apr 13, 2008 10:31 AM

Hale Adams :

Roger,

I like to think that Western Civilization, or at least the United States and its English-speaking allies, is slowly waking up to the threat.

A lot of our problems in the face of the Islamofascist threat are at bottom due to what I have seen described as "political Taylorism". Political Taylorism is the adaptation of Frederick Taylor's ideas of industrial production to human societies. The Progressives looked at the miracles that Taylor's methods had wrought in the realm of industry-- ever more product of ever-higher quality at the same or lower prices as before, with ever-less inputs of labor and material-- and the Progressives thought that Taylor's methods should be applied to human societies. Their goal was undoubtedly well-intentioned-- a more humane society, one without material want or fear of oppression. But applying Taylorist principles to human societies inevitably reduces human beings to the status of dead matter, mere raw material for the carrying out of The Plan.

That's bad enough-- it explains the barbaric behavior of far too many people, organizations, and governments of the far Left. (The sentence, "In order to make mayonnaise, you have to break a few eggs" should make any Leftist with a conscience wince. Alas, there are too few such creatures in the world.) Worse still for us in this post-Communist age, the political-Taylorist view of human-beings-as-raw-material still animates too many people of a "progressive" mindset. To be fair to these modern-day Progressives, they don't (or at least, *most* of them don't) want to send people into the gulags. But raw material isn't supposed to have a mind of its own, and the Progressives certainly don't encourage free thinking, even if they don't actively suppress it.

And so, since the days of the New Deal at least, we the people have been told not to think for ourselves and act for ourselves, but instead to let "the experts" run the show and do our thinking and acting for us.

And there lies the source of the "flaccidness" that your other commenters have pointed out. Life today may be too easy, but we've also been taught to *not* struggle either for or against anything. Such struggle or striving only disrupts smooth working of The Plan.

Fortunately, The Plan only works to a point. In its early days, The Plan delivers big improvements because one-size-fits-all arrangements generally are an improvement over what is usually a poverty-stricken, disorganized mess. (Think of the Soviet Union in the years after the civil war of 1917-22. Those Five Year Plans worked wonders because there was such room for improvement.) But once a society reaches a certain level of prosperity, The Plan ceases to work well-- people want variety and customized items, things that a one-size-fits-all arrangement doesn't deliver very well at all. (Again, look at the Soviet Union after about 1980, or the United States after about 1960. The wheels started coming off the machine of central planning, because what it provided was not what people actually wanted.)

And that's why I have hope for our future-- people are less content nowadays with what The Plan delivers, are starting to think and act for themselves again, and in so doing are starting to see the Progressives for what they are-- authoritarian bull-manure artists. "Tolerance" and "diversity" and "ask ourselves why they hate us" are just so much bull-manure, and is being seen as such by more and more people.

Hang in there, Roger. Better days are coming.

And thanks for reading my rant.

Apr 13, 2008 10:45 AM

GM Roper :

Being an incurable optimist I cannot but believe that the elites will cower before the jihadists, but sooner or later the rest of us will arm ourselves and protect our civilization.

Great post Roger, I'm glad I read it.

Apr 13, 2008 11:57 AM

SteveB :

You quote from James Burnham’s book Suicide of the West:

Modern liberalism does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice, and death.

And you note that the book was published in 1964.

What else was happening in 1964? Well, that was also the year that civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner were were killed in Mississippi.

Apr 13, 2008 01:13 PM

Kathy :

I wasn't at the conference, but those photographs provide almost as much information as if I had been. It's tremendously encouraging to know that the the far right is not populated solely by middle-aged white men anymore.

Now there are a few middle-aged white women.

This is progress, surely.

Apr 13, 2008 03:50 PM

Robbins :

Roger, I wish you'd write something about Roger Cohen the new addition to the New York Times op ed page.

The writer who I gather is from South Africa seems to think that Islam is a pluralistic religion that allows for diversity:

"Obama’s Indonesian Lessons"

[www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/opini...]

He also says he was offended by Hillary's defense of the 'religion of my fathers," because they are not pluralistic.

This must mean that he would also be offended by the religion of my Jewish parents.

Roger Cohen also keeps confusing South Africa with the USA.

Yes, I wish someone would write a critique of this pretentious and ignorant internationalist who thinks that Islam will help us achieve diversity.

Apr 13, 2008 09:26 PM

Dave F :

SteveB -- You are confusing categories. Fighting racism is not the sole province of liberalism. The Missisippi civil rights workers did not die for liberalism, even if they were liberals.

Apr 14, 2008 04:14 AM

william :

Roger,
THIS IS A GREAT POST. Sadly, as Al Fin says the college professors will not wake up to this. That is true I teach at a college and I've never seen a group of people so out of reality in my life. In one sense it is very discouraging. In another I have faith that the citizens are and will wake up to this real on going threat.

Apr 14, 2008 05:08 AM

KenB :

I was so happy to be able to attend last week's conference, and to see and meet some of the heros from the war for our civilization. It was spectacular.

Thank you Roger and all your team and the folks at FDD for organizing it.

The next day I started my subscription to The New Criterion.

Apr 14, 2008 08:12 AM

SteveB :

Dave F:
Well, that's an interesting standard you're proposing. In order to claim that someone has "died for liberalism", it isn't enough that they be a liberal themselves, dying in service to a cause supported by other liberals and opposed by conservatives (let's remember, William F. Buckley's National Review was harshly critical of the civil rights movement). No, it must be the case the liberals and liberals alone must support the cause for which you've died.

I really don't see why you have to be so stingy in allowing us our martyrs. If you'll give me Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, I'll gladly concede that the roughly four thousand Americans who died in Iraq died for Conservatism, or at least for the Republican Party.

Apr 14, 2008 08:49 AM

Charles :

Freedom of one's race or people was never a liberal issue, simply a human one. Sure, many say that they died under a liberal banner. As for the civil rights movement, it was passed largely under republican influence in the house and senate. Freedom is something that transcends ties between liberal and conservative views (both depend on it! I just wish more liberals saw that!).

Don't forget that someone in one of those freedom marches in the 60's died a proud president of the NRA.

Just a thought.

Apr 14, 2008 12:50 PM

SteveB :

Charles -- You write:
Freedom is something that transcends ties between liberal and conservative views

Now let's go back to the original quote by Burnham, that Roger Kimball referenced:

Modern liberalism does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice, and death.

So you and I seem to agree that liberalism might incline one to value freedom, and it seems reasonable that someone who values freedom might even be willing to risk death for it (as Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were), but, according to Burnham, liberalism does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice, and death.

Seems like a contradiction, doesn't it? Do you agree with Burnham, or not?

Apr 14, 2008 02:10 PM

John N. Frary :

I have a fragmentary memory of a quote from the memoirs of a German socialist recording a conversation with a group of fellow resisters. They marveled at the number of reactionaries who had gone to the Nazi concentration camps or guillotines while so many liberals who had been outspoken critics of the Nazis in the Weimar days had made their accomodations. They concluded that maybe character was more important than ideology.

Burnham's observations suggest a symbiotic relationship between character and conviction.

Apr 15, 2008 02:19 AM

SteveB :

John N, Frary --You write:
They concluded that maybe character was more important than ideology.

I think that's true, which is why I think it's dangerous to make generalizations about how people of a certain ideology (e.g. liberalism) will react to certain situations.

Burhnam isn't claiming "a symbiotic relationship between character and conviction." He's saying that people of a certain ideology are unwilling to risk death for their beliefs, because those beliefs offer no compelling reason to do so. This flies in the face of more than a hundred years of historical evidence.

Have you heard of the Bayview massacre, for example? Workers in Milwaukee, on strike for the eight hour day (a good liberal cause if there ever was one) faced down National Guard troops outside the North Chicago Railroad rolling mills, and seven of the workers were killed. You may disagree with their cause or their tactics, but it's simply absurd to claim, as Burhnam does, that their cause didn't give them "compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice, and death."

Apr 15, 2008 05:01 AM

April 2008

Books

Free Speech in an Age of Jihad

Comments (20)

Fausta :

Harvey Weiss :

Colonel Robert Neville :

Retired E9 :

Alo Kievalar :

Al Fin :

Daniel :

Hale Adams :

GM Roper :

SteveB :

Kathy :

Robbins :

Dave F :

william :

KenB :

SteveB :

Charles :

SteveB :

John N. Frary :

SteveB :

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