HItchens and his throngs of blind supporters always seem confused about the concept of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech necessitates tolerance of the expression of the most obscene and offensive views. TOLERANCE DOES NOT NECESSITATE ACCEPTANCE as Hitchens and co seem to believe.

We tolerate Nazi hate speech just like we tolerate Islamophobia. Those two concepts are actually quite similar and lead to similar consequences (wars, concentrations camps, abductions, torture, etc).

Yale University likely removed the pictures so that they would not offend Muslims, and not out of fear.

It is rather entertaining to watch people like Hitchens try to turn the freedom debate on its head. There are only a few extremists out there who believe that those Danish catoonists should not have had the right to draw the offensive cartoons. Most just exersized their right to protest.

Hitchens and pals just feel that they should have the right to speech and protest while those who disagree should not have any of those rights. This is moral depravity and a historical truism for every brutal dictator and fascist murderer. Everyone believes in rights for people which agree with them. But people who honestly believe in the right to free speech and the right to protest believe in these right for percisely the people whose views they find MOST OFFENSIVE.

The fact that Hitchens refers with derision to the 20 or so people who were killed due to the whole cartoon affair and blames the deaths on the protestors is really telling. Most of those killed were peaceful protestors who were killed by militaries confronting them about their right to protest.

The very US military, for which Hitchens is a pom-pom waiving cheerleader, was responsible for a good chunk of those deaths by spraying peaceful protest with hails of bullets in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Poyan seems to be an island of rationality in an ocean of childish anger. I can barely put it in different terms. Yale didn't want to publish the cartoons because they didn't want to annoy 1 billion people. Simple as that and nothing wrong in it.

Oh perhaps they weighed the option of receiving scorn and being labeled cowards against the potential for loss of life. If I could save people's lives by calmly accepting some insults I would do it. Would you? But perhaps this wasn't even a consideration.

I assume they rightly conclude that anyone reading the book who wants to see the cartoons can easily find them with a few clicks on a keyboard. I'm sure the book can verbally describe the cartoons with no loss of meaning. In fact, the cartoons were actually blunt and stupid, lacking all but adolescent depth in addressing the problem of radical Islamic militarism.

Why should Yale feel the need to trivialize the book by including such juvenile art?

<i>We tolerate Nazi hate speech just like we tolerate Islamophobia. Those two concepts are actually quite similar and lead to similar consequences (wars, concentrations camps, abductions, torture, etc).</i>

Yes, because advocating the death of Jews because {they're an inferior type, killed the messiah, are money-grubbing} is the same thing as reproducing pictures in an academic book discussing the controversy <b>surrounding those pictures</b>. I can't <i>imagine</i> why these throngs of blind supporters can't see that.

Why should Yale feel the need to trivialize the book by including such juvenile art?

First off, most cartoons are "juvenile" in nature. Secondly the book is about cartoons that changed the world, these cartoons had a major impact on the world and by that definition are nowhere near trivial.

Oh perhaps they weighed the option of receiving scorn and being labeled cowards against the potential for loss of life. If I could save people's lives by calmly accepting some insults I would do it. Would you? But perhaps this wasn't even a consideration.

I am sick of this tired cop-out. That is exactly how terrorism works, they make you choose between potential violence or our values and lifestyle, ie. free access to information. It is not about accepting insults, it is about defiance. It is about telling the terrorists that "we are not afraid of you". Not printing the cartoons reinforces the use or threat of violence to make demands or as a means to deal with differences.

BTW, threatening to kill people because a cartoon poked fun at you or your way of life is very juvenile. It is also embarrassing and a true sign of a lack of confidence in ones beliefs. If one is confident in themselves and in their beliefs no amount of insults, cartoon or otherwise holds any power. Allowing oneself to be offended is a clear sign of weakness of character. I have grown very tired of seeing thin-skinned people (of any race or belief) getting whipped up in a rage over something so trivial as an insult or some similar offense... why can't they just grow up?

According to Yale's spokesperson, the reason was NOT sensitivity or niceness, it was straightforward fear of violence. In fact, if I remember correctly, he said HE thought the cartoons should have been in there but he could not afford to have blood on his hands....

poyan:

The fact that Hitchens refers with derision to the 20 or so people who were killed due to the whole cartoon affair and blames the deaths on the protestors is really telling. Most of those killed were peaceful protestors who were killed by militaries confronting them about their right to protest.

The very US military, for which Hitchens is a pom-pom waiving cheerleader, was responsible for a good chunk of those deaths by spraying peaceful protest with hails of bullets in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Your sock puppet-like obfuscation of the free speech issues in this matter might have glided right by except for your overreach above. The US military could care less about the Islamic opinion regarding those cartoons.

Doubtless, you'll support any surrender of Western principles, for whatever reason, so long as Islamist ideas hold sway.

"Yale University likely removed the pictures so that they would not offend Muslims, and not out of fear."

Even if this is entirely true (we can't know for sure), the question is, why? Such a desire not to offend a particular group flies in the face of Yale's very own central mission statement. It flies in the face of what academia is all about, which is to challenge new thinking.

I understand not provoking someone just for the sake of pissing them off. But this book purports to be a serious treatise on "The Cartoons That Shook the World," and they don't even print them? What? That's like Yale Medical School not discussing sex organs in anatomy class because it might upset virgins.

No, as minor as this particular issue might be, it evidence of a complete abdication of Yale's mission. It is gutless.

I suspect it has less to do with a fear of violence as it does standard PC cowardice.

Who doubts that Yale would publish pictures of "Piss Christ" and all sorts of artwork which has outraged Christians over the years, if they were referring to these works in a treatise on "Art that Shook the Christian World"?

And when Christians protested, wrote letters to the editor and hyperventilated on talk radio, Yale would proudly defy them, explaining (correctly) that freedom of speech includes allowing speech that people find offensive, and so they must suck it up.

But the reason Yale didn't want to offend Muslims is simply this: they don't want to defend themselves against absurd charges of racism and Islamophobia from non-Western, self-styled victims of the West, and their useful idiots here in the West. They don't want the Yale Islamic Club chanting slogans outside the administration building about how they are "insensitive" to a particular group of students and faculty.

When it comes to being challenged by certain groups, this bastion of Western liberalism simply does not want to defend its Western, classically liberal values and ideas to particular groups.

That's why.

"If I could save people's lives by calmly accepting some insults I would do it. Would you?"

Oh Bsharp, you'd help tighten the noose on your neck just to make your executioner like you.

"Why should Yale feel the need to trivialize the book by including such juvenile art?"

If the whole subject is so trivial and juvenile, they shouldn't be even writing a book about it in the first place.

The whole matter of this particular little book is not important. The greater principle of the matter is enormous. Not that you would understand.

well said, Early.

@EarlyBird

As usual EB . . . you're a voice of rationality amidst a mewling cacaphony of ignorance and intolerance.

The bit about offending virgins . . . LOL.

poyan:

HItchens and his throngs of blind supporters always seem confused about the concept of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech necessitates tolerance of the expression of the most obscene and offensive views. TOLERANCE DOES NOT NECESSITATE ACCEPTANCE as Hitchens and co seem to believe.

Wow, what a profound lesson on the concept of freedom of speech. I'm always confused about it, being but a member of Hitchens's blind throngs.

omarali50:

According to Yale's spokesperson, the reason was NOT sensitivity or niceness, it was straightforward fear of violence. In fact, if I remember correctly, he said HE thought the cartoons should have been in there but he could not afford to have blood on his hands....

That's the shame and disgrace of it. The hypothetical blood would not have been on his hands. The blood would be on the hands of whichever pathological, diseased animal decided to get "revenge" for the printing of the cartoon.

Hitchens is not confused at all. If people have eggshell skulls it's for them to take the necessary steps to avoid getting a cracked skull. So if you don't like the cartoons, make sure you don't look at them. But it's a huge step to say that no-one else can see them either, even if they don't find them remotely offensive.

Why should religious people be treated any differently from, say, someone who might be offended by obscene language? Does that mean that there must be no obscene language used in media because that sensitive person might come across it? I think not.

And if, as Yale fear, there are people who would resort to violence over a few feeble cartoons, they need smoking out and dealing with. This decision by Yale is yet another submission to Islam. Fear is a common tool both within Islam (death to kaffirs, visions of hell etc) and in its interface with the wider world. Looks like it's effective.

Well said. And I would add it is also submission to Political Correctness. If Christians were freaking out about images they found offensive, Yale would say, "suck it up," and they'd be right about it.

But have dark skinned, self-styled "victims" of the West screaming about Yale's "insensitivity" and "Islamophobia" and Yale's principled stand for classical liberal values collapses like a deck of cards.