It's easy to defend freedom of speech as a universal human right when you agree with what's being said. When what is being said is heretical, bigoted, abohorrent, ugly, and regressive, it's much more difficult.
That is to say- when it's WikiLeaks, everybody is an advocate for Free Speech. The Internet Tough Guys come out in force to punish Enemies Of Freedom. Justice is (sort of) done.
But when it's some bigoted asshole with a stupid, poorly written and sparsely read anti-Muslim WordPress blog, there is no call for justice. His (nearly unreadable) blog simply goes silent, and the Enemies Of Freedom pat themselves on the back for a job well done.
The Council for American-Islamic Relations, itself the target of a lot of gob-smackingly stupid bigotry, decided to start some of its own when the call went out to pressure WordPress.com into censoring this blog.
They got it taken down on a technicality, because of one post that they said "taught readers how to kill Muslims", which is "inciting violence", which is against the WordPress.com Terms of Service agreement:
the Content is not pornographic, does not contain threats or incite violence towards individuals or entities, and does not violate the privacy or publicity rights of any third party;
The post in question was in fact a lame joke about how if you shoot a Muslim with a bullet coated in bacon grease, you'll send him straight to Muslim hell.
Here's the full text from Google's cache:
I personally prefer a Triton Quik-Shok .357 SIG 125 Grain round modified slightly. Drillinto the bullet tip a short way, and place a mixture. of pork fat and full strength bugkiller concentrate. Seal the hole with Beeswax, and it is ready for use. The extra hole will make it mushroom more causing a wider damage area. A direct impact in the chest will deliver a hydrostatic Shock that can produce brain hemorraging. Even if you only scratch him, the bug killer will make his descent to hell slow and painful, but he will surely go.
The pork fat assures that he will go to muslim hell for sure.
I like to warn first before dispatching them. For this purpose a half round cartridge lapel pin with the bullet painted red is excellent. If that does not produce a religious conversion, and he proceeds to annoy, then his ass is at risk of a sudden departure to hell.
Leaving aside the obvious eschatological issues of using the rules of a religion you don't believe in against its followers, this isn't "incitement to violence". It's tasteless, violent, abhorrent, and all the rest, but it's not "incitement to violence".
Elsewhere on his blog, in a post called "how to get rid of Muslims and Islam" (and really, he deserves partial credit for understanding both terms and their usage), he has a laundry list of very non-violent things people can do to "get rid of" Muslims and Islam in their communities- mostly how to oppose the construction of mosques.
At the bottom of the post he starts talking about carrying around baseball bats "in case there's any trouble" with Muslims, and to "get armed" so you can use a weapon "in self defense" against Muslims.
That's pretty circumspect to be considered "incitement to violence", if you ask me.
The legal term for the category of unprotected speech that CAIR is ham-fistedly claiming to uphold is incitement to imminent lawless action. Note the imminent. That bit is important.
I am aware that WordPress is a private company and that users are bound by its Terms of Service, not the First Amendment, but WordPress.com has made a big show in the past of supporting the First Amendment, and in this case, they need to suck it up, face the negative publicity, and prove that they mean what they say.
Saying "I'm butthurt about a mosque in a nearby city, and I'm gonna get me a gun, you hear me?" is different from saying "meet me out back of the Sizzler at 8 and bring a book of matches so we can burn that mosque down", and the difference is important.
We have to tolerate abhorrent, ugly, stupid and regressive views in a free society, and if you take a look at the Google cache of this idiot's blog (that's bootislam.wordpress.com if you want to look it up), you'll see why- plenty of the people who commented on it were either calling him an idiot or educating him about the differences between Arabs and Muslims, or what have you.
I hate bigotry. That is, I am bigoted against bigots. I'll pick a fight with skinheads any day of the week. I'll erase their swastikas from park benches. I'll argue with them loudly in public. That's called discourse.
What I wouldn't do is vote for a law making swastikas on park benches illegal, or a "hate crime". For that matter I probably wouldn't vote for any "hate crimes" laws at all, as most of them only extend protection to chosen (that is, politically represented) out groups. Or any law banning certain types of clothing, or "gang colors" or whatever.
These laws seek to prevent discourse from taking place, and like any law that ever banned anything in all of history, all that does is move whatever was banned underground, where it incubates and grows worse.
It hasn't happened yet, but I'll bet you (and I'd give you great odds) that this overreach by WordPress.com is going to be turned into a martyrdom by the mainstream anti-Muslim press. Places like Atlas Shrugged and No Quarter are going to go completely apeshit. And then, eventually, Pat Buchanan is going to spout off somewhere on cable TV about the "double standard" applied to "anti-Christian" blogs, or some similar nonsense.
And the guy behind that stupid blog is going to get a job somewhere, where they're going to polish up his writing and public speaking skills, and in 6 months the sonofabitch will be in a suit and tie as a paid contributor on Fox News.
My girlfriend is reading Fahrenheit 451 a few feet from my desk. How poetic.
Cross-posted at beatpanda