By DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI News and Commentary

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, WEEKEND EDITION, JAN. 16-18, 2015) — Free speech. It is one of the cornerstone rights that made and makes America. But in this country and around the world, in the name of “the war against terrorism,” the assault continues against this precious commodity.

THE PLANET has noticed with dismay that much of the post hoc concern a couple weeks after the attack against the staff of the French satiric magazine Charlie Hebdo has been on limiting free speech, the kind exercised by the magazine in its over-the-top criticisms of Islam and The Prophet Mohammed.

The most recent example came from Pope Francis, who told journalists traveling with him on his visit to the Philippines that “You can’t provoke. You can’t insult the faith of others. You can’t make fun of faith. I think both freedom of religion and freedom of expression are both fundamental human rights,” Francis said. “Everyone has not only the freedom but the obligation to say what he thinks for the common good. We have the right to have this freedom openly without offending. … You can’t make a toy out of the religion of others. These people provoke and then [something can happen]. In freedom of expression there are limits.”

Here it is point blank: The Pope is wrong. In freedom of expression there can be no limits.

Here’s what lack of free speech leads to. Click on the red, highlighted hot link below that says “Britain First.” It’s a link to a CNN report.

02:53

1,161,874 Views

Free Speech, However Sharp, However Provocative

With all do respect to the Holy Father, he can’t have it both ways. He can’t defend free speech on the one hand and then rope off an entire sector of human behavior from its aim.

We as a society must always be free to express our views, however controversial, however sharp or pointed, however wrong or pig-headed. Truth will sift out the dross. We must be a people hardened to accept no limits on free speech and opened — softened if you will — to allow reason, logic, common sense, intelligence, and thoughtful consideration to give us the tools to reject (though not ban) views that we find to be wrong and misguided. The errant expression of free speech provides a measuring stick against which we can better determine truth.

Above all, writers, journalists, artists, and anyone who communicates professionally must have the absolute freedom of expression. We must retain the right to say and write what we want, to change our minds, and to express ideas we know will provoke and, yes, offend. We must feel free “to offend and understand the impact of the offense and to regret it [or not].”

Free speech means the license to “wrestle with language — to be angry, moving, ironic, kind, and bitter; to be both elegant and inelegant; to grunt and to pontificate; and to use words of however many letters in a vigorous engagement on the battlefield of meaning and understanding” (Source: Chronicle of Higher Education, March 17, 1995).

The Testimony of Salman Rushdie

Our colleague, Salman Rushdie, spoke about this issue Wednesday at the University of Vermont at Burlington. Rushdie is a qualified expert, having been under a death threat from Muslim religious leaders following the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses (1988).

In 1988, Viking Penguin, also Rushdie’s publisher, brought out our tome, Clout!. Rushdie and Valenti were in the same stable, as it were. Because of the threats against Rushdie, Viking cancelled all publicity plans for all of its books and authors. Our book/media tour for Clout! was nixed. The publisher didn’t want to send its authors out on the road. Too risky. No question we lost sales, paying a literal price for the threats. But the main impression then, and now, is how easy thugs find it to “win” in a free society, to make us cower.

Our very freedoms make us vulnerable. That’s the battle going on here. At what point does “security” undermine the foundation upon which this country was built?

‘Freedom is Indivisible’

Here is some of what Rushdie said in his talk at U of V (from AP):

“The thing that I really resent is the way in which these, our dead comrades … who died using the same implement that I use, which is a pen or pencil, have been almost immediately vilified and called racists and I don’t know what else.”

He said some believe speech should be free, but with the caveat that it shouldn’t upset anyone or go too far.

“Both John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela use the same three-word phrase which in my mind says it all, which is, ‘Freedom is Indivisible,'” he said. “You can’t slice it up, otherwise it ceases to be freedom. You can dislike Charlie Hedbo. … But the fact that you dislike them has nothing to do with their right to speak.”

He said the role of art is to go to the edge, open the universe and expand minds. But doing that is not easy, and artists can’t occupy a middle ground.

“And so artists who go to that edge and push outwards often find very powerful forces pushing back. They find the forces of silence opposing the forces of speech. The forces of censorship against the forces of utterance,” he said. “At that boundary is that push-and-pull between more and less. And that push and pull can be very dangerous to the artist. And many artists have suffered terribly for that.”

He was using “artists” in the broad sense, to include not just painters but writers, authors, and, yes, journalists.

—————————————————————-

Six Sigma or Sick Stigma?

THE PLANET has written about and, on PLANET VALENTI TELEVISION in our most recent episode (Jan. 15) spoke about councilor-at-large Kathy Amuso‘s petition to introduce Six Sigma quality to city government.

As we have examined, Six Sigma aims for Total Quality and is a proven tool for allowing businesses and organizations (yes, even local government) remove cost from their operations while enhancing quality. There are two delimiters, though, in getting the City of Pittsfield — Haven for Political Hackery — to buy into Six Sigma:

(1) The political climate here is to fight any attempt at removing cost, streamlining services, and boosting quality. Such efforts would upset too many mini-feifdoms.

(2) Amuso has shrewdly emasculated the entire process before it even has a chance to get off the ground by specifying that any Six Sigma effort exempt personnel. That provision takes a factor that accounts for 85% of the city’s $145 million budget off the table. This strongly suggests that Amuso’s petition is entirely political, convenient in a re-election season.

Now, if her petition is modified to include personnel in a Six Sigma effort, that’s another story. That would be a great move, and THE PLANET would endorse it heartily. If that is not done, the most that can happen in Pittsfield isn’t Six Sigma but Sick Stigma.

Have a great weekend everybody.

 ————————————————————————————————–

“Dear love, for nothing less than three / Would I have broke this happy dream; / It was a theme / For reason, much too strong for fantasy; / Therefore, thou wak’dst me wisely.” — John Donne, opening lines for his poem, “The Dream,” (1633).

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE”

LOVE TO ALL.