Audio: Hugh Hewitt versus Bill “Those Charlie Hebdo attackers were right to be angry” Donohue « Hot Air

Audio: Hugh Hewitt versus Bill “Those Charlie Hebdo attackers were right to be angry” Donohue « Hot Air: "Hewitt asks the correct question in response: What do you do when people defy that norm? How far are you willing to go to enforce it? Donohue’s against criminalizing the practice, he claims, but is that because he genuinely opposes penalties or because he suspects people won’t hear him out if he takes too harsh of an approach to blasphemy at this point in the public debate? His logic is conspicuously similar to the collectivist logic used by fans of “hate speech” laws, including his creepy reference to “abuse of freedom”: We should protect free speech up to the point that it’s not hurting society, at which point it’s time to start carving out exceptions. It’s the “heckler’s veto” as social ideal. Provocative speech, which is hurtful to some slice of the public almost by definition, would have a tough time surviving in that moral ecosystem. In fact, years before jihadis decided to escalate the sanction, Charlie Hebdo was sued in French courts on grounds of “racism” for publishing the Danish Mohammed cartoons. They did survive, but as the entire world now knows, Charlie Hebdo was unusually dogged in its willingness to take risks for satire. Hewitt’s rightly suspicious here that Donohue’s system of “moral” sanction for blasphemy would calcify into a system of legal sanction. And you know what? Given the polling, he’s right to be."



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