Sunday, January 11, 2015

Why We Should All Be Charlie--And Not Rupert, Or Bill (Either Of Them)

Like most of you, I suspect, I had never heard of Charlie Hebdo until last week's tragedy in Paris.  I had no knowledge of the newspaper's views on Islam.  I had never seen any of the cartoons that allegedly motivated the murderers of the cartoonists, or the others in their attack.  Which means that any offense taken by those cartoons is minuscule compared to the choice to take the lives of others.

And, because of that latter choice, those cartoons now have a level of exposure they never would have experienced otherwise.  So, if those cartoons were indeed "dangerous," guess what, murderous thugs?  You've guaranteed whatever "danger" you thought you were stopping when you pulled the triggers.  So, morally and legally, you've committed crimes against humanity for an exercise in political and religious futility.

Why then, are their voices rising in their defense?

Because those voices have a vested interest in promoting conflict, conflict that has the capacity to consume an entire planet and all of its people, just so they can line their well-lined pocket a little bit more.

The worst examples of this are Rupert Murdock and Bill Maher.  Both of them invite you to sit in judgment on an entire religion and its adherents, as if that were ever the answer to any tragedy like this.  As if that wasn't an invitation to genocide.  And as if their weren't any number of examples illustrating the falsity of their premise. A falsity that can be found in the Arab media itself.  And in the lives of Muslims living here in this country.  And in the thousand-year-plus reality that Christianity has its own track record of violent persecution of those it deems "unbelievers"--a track record that runs into the present.

One would hope that their self-serving interests--Murdock's in selling papers and attracting views, Maher's in trashing religion generally--would be transparent to everyone. Perhaps a little less transparent are the motives of the Catholic League president, the "other Bill," Bill Donohue, who goes so far as to sympathize with the murderers.  A right-wing Catholic on board with jihad?  Are you really all that surprised?  Well, take a close look at his statements in the linked article.  It's not as if he's renouncing the idea of violence against Islam.  Far from it.  He's endorsing the idea of using violence against those who hold opposing views, based on alleged "provocation."  He knows that the acceptance of that perspective can be used against any opposing views and those who hold them.

And the opposition need not be religious in nature.  It can be political.  Or racial.  And there are examples of both right under our noses.  Take a look.  Then take a look again.  Don't doubt for a second that Donohue is on board with people like this.  He has a notorious history not only of intolerance, but belligerent intolerance.  And he's far from alone among American conservatives.

If we listen to the voices of the Murdocks, Mahers and Donohues of the world, we will simply be feeding the violence that gives them short-term profits, and the long-term destruction of our democracy.  We will become little more than a collection of tribes using any means necessary to destroy each other, because our differences threaten us.  We will end up betraying not only the best of our history, but of our ideals.  Especially the one embodied in our long-forgotten motto, E pluribus unum, the one that reflects the idea that our differences are not more powerful than our similarities.

And that is why all of us have to stand with Charlie Hebdo, and its right to exist on its own terms.  Not because we agree with its views, but because we agree with its right to exist.  No one should have the power to destroy another life, simply because of differing ideas.  Not anywhere, and certainly not in a democracy.  We may disagree on whether or not God created life, but we can all agree that we did not create it, and we have no right to take it for so trivial a reason as the way a person thinks.  All of us are potential sources of offense.  None of us would be here if we had to die for that reason.

So, take a little advice commonly misattributed to a well-known Frenchman named Voltaire.  And practice it daily, in your personal life and in whatever public and political life you have, knowing that offense is a part of the fabric of living, and sometimes gives birth to better thoughts and ideas that might not have been created otherwise.  Giving offense should never be a death sentence.  All of us should be free to think and to speak.  All of us benefit from that freedom.  And all of us die, at least a little bit, when someone is killed exercising it.

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