Animal Farm in the Heartland: The Cartoon Controversy and Its Meaning

One of the more disturbing things about the cartoon controversy last month, besides the burning embassies, was the reaction of the United States. You would think that the Americans – who view themselves as warriors with no equal, their nation as indispensable for the survival of freedom in the world – would bid defiance to the violent protests and boldly print all the cartoons; but that did not happen, not at all. Less than five American newspapers have had the courage to print even one of the controversial cartoons. By contrast, almost thirty European papers have run them. What is going on? And what does this mean?

The episode proved that, once again, the primary threat to European and Anglo-American freedom is not from without (most Muslims were not rioting in the streets or making a bomb) but from within, from politically inspired self-censorship and the self-appointed guardians of multi-cultural orthodoxy. What is at stake is what is already being lost: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and hence freedom of thought, as well as the tradition of critical inquiry, and the liberty to satirize. It may be time to re-read John Milton’s Areopagita (1644) and the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine.

Three Lessons

I would suggest three other lessons. First, multiculturalism and freedom are not synonyms: increasing the former does not lead ineluctably to an increase in the latter. Second, the United States and Europe continue to grow apart, with Europe being at once more liberal and more traditional (conservative in the true sense of being a conservator). Who said that liberty and tradition are antithetical? They certainly may be if your tradition is hostile to freedom, but in the Occident, they may be necessary to one another: what was Edmund Burke if not a liberal of the Right? Third, the greatest threat to freedom of expression in North America is not the government, but the culture, specifically the multicultural ideology which holds together, barely, the many nations and cultures residing within the borders of the empire. We have more to contend with than just the government now.

Let me explain in more detail what I mean. In Europe, there are strict laws banning certain kinds of speech; in America (thanks to the First Amendment) there are no such laws, but there is something worse here – self-imposed censorship, censorship imposed by private persons, by deeply ingrained cultural norms, by the very institutions of society. Here the censors are the boards of directors, the lawyers, and the public relation departments of the media conglomerates. And not only them: newspaper editors, news anchors, and reporters are censors too; as are educators; and the people themselves, organized into various phalanxes of ethnic and religious assertion. The people seem to have internalized the apparatus of repression in the form of sensitivity codes, politically correct taboos, multicultural myths (the products of years of conditioning by teachers, advertisers, journalists, and television producers and writers), and the result is a population governed by fear: fear of terrorism, fear of offending someone powerful or protected, fear of printing a cartoon.

Continental Solidarity

For contrast, let us review how Europeans, in general, responded to the controversy, to the threats, and to the violence. Right after the Danish paper, Jyllands-Posten, ran the twelve cartoons, on the last day of September 2005, a group of local imams demanded to see the Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Quite rightly, he refused. The imams then took their complaints to the resident Arab ambassadors, ten of whom demanded to see the Prime Minister. Again, he refused – an act inconceivable in the United States. In the months that followed, despite increasing pressure and violence, Rasmussen never backed down from his position that Denmark is a free country with a free press and the Danish government has nothing to do with whether a newspaper chooses to print satirical cartoons, whatever the subject. As he said in February: "A Danish government can never apologize on behalf of a free and independent newspaper."

On January 10, a Norwegian Christian paper, Magazinet, in a gesture of solidarity with the Danes, republished the cartoons. On February 1, newspapers in France, Spain, Italy, and Germany also did so. They were France Soir, Spain’s El Mundo, Italy’s La Stampa, and Germany’s Die Welt. Some of them paid an immediate price. The managing editor of France Soir, Jacques LeFrance, was sacked by the owner, Raymond Lakah, who then issued a groveling apology: "We express our regrets to the Muslim community and all people who have been shocked or made indignant by the publication." The remaining editors rebuked him, their own owner – another act inconceivable in the United States. "Imagine a society that added up all the prohibitions of different religions," they wrote. "What would remain of the freedom to think, to speak and even to come and go? We know societies like that all too well. The Iran of the mullahs, for example. But yesterday, it was the France of the Inquisition, the burning stakes and the Saint Bartholomew’s Day (a 16^th century massacre of Protestants)." The editor of Die Welt, Roger Koppel, was equally defiant. He said the publication of the cartoons was an integral part of the "news value of the story," adding that "in our culture, we have a tradition that even our most holy things can be subjected to satire or criticism. Muslims in our culture have to understand that in our culture, the representation of a holy man has another meaning." Note the confident phrase: in our culture. On February 2, more newspapers in Europe published the cartoons, including ones in Switzerland, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Hungary. The editor of the Swiss Le Temps, Patricia Biel, boldly defended her paper’s decision: "Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are fundamental achievements made by democratic societies, and the latter do not have to bow in the face of demands that endanger these hard-won principles." On February 3, the Irish Daily Star (Dublin) also published the cartoons.

Far from pressuring their papers not to publish, or to apologize, many Europeans leaders supported them. For example, Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French foreign minister, while admitting that "it is not normal to caricature a whole religion as an extremist or terrorist movement," quickly added that the violent protests and extreme reaction "would suggest the caricaturists were right." Wolfgang Schauble, the interior minister of Germany, said simply, "Here in Europe, governments have nothing to say about which paper publishes what."

British Equivocation

The British government sent mixed signals, or should I say the English government? On the one hand, Tony Blair’s spokesman said that the government would exert no pressure on their papers ("It is entirely a matter for media organizations to decide what they want to do"); but he didn’t need to apply any pressure: his press was self-censoring. Not one English paper printed a cartoon. The execrable Jack Straw, the pro-war but politically correct Foreign Secretary, praised them for their "considerable responsibility and sensitivity," while condemning the European papers as "unnecessary, insensitive, disrespectful, and wrong."

Not all Britons agreed. The London Telegraph warned against the "appeasement of forces hostile to Western values," even though the editors shrunk from printing the cartoons. They added that "Muslims must accept the predominant mores of their adopted culture," and also that "Muslims who cannot tolerate the openness and robustness of intellectual debate in the West have perhaps chosen to live in the wrong culture." Well ok … but what happens when they reject those mores, but also refuse to leave? Mathew Parris accused his paper, the London Times, which printed not one cartoon for the perusal of their readers, of "kowtowing to pressure." He defended the freedom to satirize and mock with this astute and telling observation: "Many faiths and ideologies achieve and maintain their predominance partly through fear. They, of course, would call it ‘respect.’ But whatever you call it, it intimidates. … Against reverence and awe the best argument is sometimes not logic, but mockery." I would add this: Muslims have no right to impose upon non-Muslims their view of what is sacred or true, even if that imposition is carried out by peaceful means (boycotts, marches, etc.). And neither does any other group, ethnic or religious.

America: The Home of the Free … or the Multicultural?

That Bush cares nothing for civil liberties is not news. So why should we be surprised that when the assault on press freedom began he was nowhere to be found? Some of his underlings suggested that the crisis could be assuaged by a groveling apology. The U.S. State Department denounced the cartoons as "offensive to the belief of Muslims" and declared their publication "unacceptable." Kurtis Cooper, the department spokesperson, added that while "we all fully respect freedom of the press and expression" (sure you do), "it must be coupled with press responsibility." That was a common refrain here, and its meaning was clear – do not publish! Later, the Secretary of State, Condi Rice, tried to gain political advantage by blaming the governments of Syria and Iran for stirring up all the trouble.

A few papers, very few, bucked the trend. The Philadelphia Inquirer was the first. Its editor, Amanda Bennett, said simply, "This is the kind of work that newspapers are in business to do." What kind of a country do we live in when such a plain, matter-of-fact, expression of basic journalistic duty sounds as heroic as Patrick Henry’s oath of defiance hurled at the British Empire? The Austin American Statesman was the second. Meanwhile the flagship publications, "the newspapers of record" – the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times – were "in the rear with the gear," running as fast as they could away from the sounds of a mob ransacking and burning an embassy, hiding behind the cant of political sensitivity and cultural diversity, writing elaborate rationalizations of cowardice and betrayal.

Animal Farm in the Heartland

For an egregious example of such special pleading go to the website of the St. Louis Post Dispatch and read commentary page editor Eric Mink’s article (February 8) defending the right "not to publish." He calls it an exercise in "editorial judgment." I call it self-censorship. I want to ask him: If one cannot examine the cartoons, how can one render an independent and informed judgment on their propriety? Are we, or are we not, citizens of a free and self-governing country? Who are you to decide whether we can see these cartoons or not? The existence of the internet provides editors like Mink with a copout. They can say, as he has, that if one wants to see them one can go to this or that website, but don’t look here, don’t expect us to publish them. And then he wonders why people increasingly regard daily newspapers as an anachronistic redundancy. By the way, St. Louis is the home of a large and growing Bosnian Muslim community (thanks to the Federal Government!), and the Post Dispatch hopes to gain new subscribers (partly to compensate for declining suburban subscriptions), so you see how the calculations of diversity lead not to an opening up but a closing down of press freedom.

Across the River in Illinois

A week later, the Daily Illini, the student newspaper at the University of Illinois, dared to go where adults fear to tread. On February 9, the paper printed six of the cartoons. The reaction was immediate and censorious: the wringing of hands, expressions of consternation and dismay, calls for reeducation seminars and disciplinary proceedings. The chancellor of the university, Richard Herman, criticized the paper’s editors, as did leaders of various student groups (the proud products of years of educational conditioning in ethnic sensitivity and group think). And of course, Muslim students raised the flag of victimhood and demanded a forum to harangue the infidels. Shaz Keiserruddin, president of the Muslim Student’s Association, deplored "hate speech" hidden under "the guise of free speech," and pointed to the rising tide of "Islamophobia." Shaz added that "they" were organizing "meetings" with university officials and student leaders to combat anti-Islamic "prejudice and hate."

The two editors responsible, Acton Gorton and Chuck Prochaska, bravely stood their ground, refusing to apologize or admit they had done anything wrong. This marked them as recalcitrant, in need of official punishment, and they soon got it. First, the paper’s student editorial board ran an editorial that accused the two of a "blatant abuse of power," and then apologized "to the Muslim community as well as the rest of our readership" for their transgressions. Two days later, the two editors were suspended and a "student task force" was formed to "investigate the internal decision making and communication" that led to the crime of publication. As the two student editors were burned alive at the stake of political correctness, the St. Louis Post Dispatch was silent, except for one independent voice – columnist Bill McClellan, the voice of old St. Louis, and a direct descendant of the General George McClellan, heroic commander of the Army of the Potomac (1861–1862) and Democrat candidate for president in 1864. In a February 20th column, McClellan, a gentleman, gently chided his own paper for not running the cartoons and failing to support the two student editors. "These cartoons from Denmark have become an integral part of a big news story. The public ought to be able to see them. Besides, when people are willing to kill in the name of religion, their decision becomes fair game to editorial cartoonists. That’s what a free press in a secular society is all about. … My daughter, who attends the university, asked me what I would have done had I been the student in charge of the paper. I’d have published the cartoons, I said. First of all, I lean to the ‘free press-secular society’ side of this particular debate, and second, we’re talking about a university campus, and if you can’t debate this stuff on a university campus, where can you?" Nowhere, that’s where.

Would Jefferson Recognize the Republic of Fear?

The atmosphere of repression and thought control in this country is redolent of the worst days of the Puritans, or maybe even Stalin’s time. We can see here how free speech dies: it is slandered as hate speech and institutionally and culturally proscribed – all in the name of diversity and tolerance. Hard-headed liberals (e.g. Jefferson) have always believed that liberty had to be fought for, and sometimes that fight is not physical but psychological, finding the moral courage to resist the sensitivity codes and thought police and minority bullying that is suffocating intellectual freedom in this country. Publish the cartoons? Yes, and a thousand times YES!