David irving revisited and free speech defended


Robert Scheer, who was sacked by the LA Times for his outspoken opposition to the Iraq war, defends the right of Irving to express his nonsense about the Holocaust. Scheer quotes a 16th century German peasant's song which was revived during the Nazi period for obvious reasons ("Thoughts or ideas or free"):
I think as I please
And this gives me pleasure.
My conscience decrees,
This right I must treasure.
My thoughts will not cater
To duke or dictator,
No man can deny --
Die gedanken sind frei.
He concludes his article in the San Francisco Chronicle (which employed him after his shameful sacking by the lA Times) as follows:
Speech that is not felt by some powerful group to be loathsome is hardly in need of protection. The value of an absolutist opposition to the censorship of speech, as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, is that it holds out the prospect that the right to speak will be honored even when the content of those utterances is not. What is disturbing in both the Irving and Muhammad cartoon situations is the stuttering hesitancy of many who claim to be committed to free speech to speak out in opposition to those -- be they Muslim clerics or Austrian judges -- who seek to limit the free expression of individuals expressing views they detest.
In both instances, the world has been presented with a teaching moment, in which the argument for free thought -- that die gedanken sind frei ("thoughts are free") that the Nazis and every other absolutist dictatorship have excelled in crushing -- was not advanced by those who know better. As a result, a world sorely in need of a crash course in the efficacy of free debate received nothing of the sort. Instead, the lesson has been that the suppression of ideas is valid, as long as the suppressors are convinced that they are in the right.

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Posted: Sun - February 26, 2006 at 09:30 PM        

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