Funnies Are Serious Business...as is Freedom (UPDATE)

How can some satiric cartoons in an obscure Danish newspaper stir the Muslim world to outrage and violence, stirred further by their governments? The New York Post headlines, "Going Atomic Over A Comic." (The Danish newspaper has also published anti-Israel propaganda.)

What does the reaction of Western governments and newspapers in favor of freedom of speech tell us about Western values?

Editorial cartoons, the funnies pages, and the Internet’s freedom and breadth of expression are synonymous with Western values.

We value tolerance in favor of exposure to differing viewpoints. Westerners’ approach to finding the humor in life (“G-d is the best jokester…and we’re the butt”) and not taking ourselves too seriously are components of maintaining this tolerance.

The intolerant are infamous for not having a sense of humor. Comedians are usually among their first victims.

Ask any newspaper editor about the uproar generated by eliminating a favorite comic strip or publishing a controversial editorial cartoon, and watch his or her eyes roll up.

Most newspapers publish one or more editorial cartoons daily, and several pages of valuable ink are devoted to a wide array of comic strips. Newspapers carefully budget their space. Obviously comics are important to the economics of newspapers, as they are important to their readers.

Clay Bennett, president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, says: editorial cartoons “attract 10 times more readers” as the number they repel, because “controversy sells papers.”

Comics, also, are the epitome of “a picture is worth 1000 words” when it comes to connecting readers to complex events.

The wide variety of cultural or political viewpoints implicitly or explicitly expressed or seen in the funnies pages are similar to the wide variety of expression that one encounters on the Internet.

In the United States we take for granted that we have access to anything on the Internet. In most of the rest of the world, that isn’t so.

America’s leading hi-tech firms – Cisco, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! – and many others are eagerly selling their hardware and software to repressive regimes that use it to smother freedom of speech and thought. Culprits are exposed, imprisoned, and even tortured.

The United States is facing a choice about whether we value more freedom of speech, or whether we favor censorship.

The ability of repressive regimes to stir their peoples to hate of the West is directly aided by these regimes ability to block access to more tolerant Western ways.

Congressman Christopher Smith (R-NJ) is holding hearings on February 15 of his House International Relations Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations.

To be considered is legislation to require controls over the sale or use of such American dual-use technology in ways that further repressive Internet censorship.

Please email Congressman Smith’s communications director to express your support for such legislation. Brad will pass on your email to the Congressman.

If you care about your funnies pages, wouldn’t you write? How about the bigger issue of freedom of speech and thought? How about American firms directly undermining the fundamental tenet of U.S. foreign policy goals for greater peace through greater democracy, which relies on tolerance and free speech?

UPDATE:
Best-selling author and Muslim dissident Ibn Warraq writes eloquently in Der Spiegel:

A democracy cannot survive long without freedom of expression, the freedom to argue, to dissent, even to insult and offend. It is a freedom sorely lacking in the Islamic world, and without it Islam will remain unassailed in its dogmatic, fanatical, medieval fortress; ossified, totalitarian and intolerant. Without this fundamental freedom, Islam will continue to stifle thought, human rights, individuality; originality and truth.

Unless, we show some solidarity, unashamed, noisy, public solidarity with the Danish cartoonists, then the forces that are trying to impose on the Free West a totalitarian ideology will have won; the Islamization of Europe will have begun in earnest. Do not apologize.