Still Got It After All These Years . . .

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Not that this test was particularly tough, but I'm a sucker for quick evaluations that purport to test innate intellectual ability. From Crooked Timber.

Are We Helping Them Win?

Simon Jenkins of the London Times has a pretty good piece out today on the actual and perceived threats posed by terrorism, and how incompetent leadership can transform the latter into the former. He calls terror attacks "trivial" and points out that their most pernicious effects are diffused throughout the target nation's population by its news media and governing parties. The resulting suppressions of civil liberties and counterproductive warmongering play directly into the hands of our enemies, exposing our vaunted commitment to liberal values as a superficial nicety. The upshot for America and Britain 4 1/2 years after 9/11 is a net loss in both global prestige and their own citizen's faith in the strength of democracy.

Jenkins' analysis works wonderfully for the types of terrorism we've seen thus far, but it fails to address the possibility of dramatically more lethal attacks. If terrorists can acquire the potential to destroy the entire population of a major city through nuclear, chemical, biological, or other means, we should impose every measure at our disposal to stop them, provided they are properly and publicly vetted to ensure maximal fitness to the task at hand. Surely there must be some point at which the number of potential lost lives rises high enough to justify uncomfortable government action, and it is here that the question becomes quantitative: how can we meaningfully calibrate the number of potential dead to the severity of the countermeasure? I have no idea, but I wish our leaders would start engaging the issue seriously rather than using people's fears to advance preexisting agendas.

'Rollback' in the Wild

From the Washington Post, more evidence of the Bush administration's intolerance of inconvenient research: cantankerous climatologist James Hansen recently accused NOAA bigwigs of restricting the flow of scientific results from the agency to the public. According to Hansen, scientists' conversations with the media are monitored by 'minders' for the ostensible purpose of protecting the former, though he doesn't buy that rationale. Administration loyalists deny the charge, and recently-terminated spokesman George Deutsch had some harsh words for Hansen:

"There is no pressure or mandate, from the Bush administration or elsewhere, to alter or water down scientific data at NASA, period," Deutsch said, adding that after being tasked to work with Hansen, "I quickly learned one thing: Dr. Hansen and his supporters have a very partisan agenda and ties reaching to the top of the Democratic Party."

Which is a real knee-slapper in light of the current White House's track record on scientific spin. Give me a break already.

The Danish Cartoons: A Nuanced Perspective

The biggest story in the news today just so happens to be right up this blog's alley: radical Islamic protesters, angry at unflattering depictions of the prophet Muhammad that originated in a Danish newspaper and have been reprinted throughout Europe, have burned down Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria and Lebanon. The paper in which the cartoons were originally published received bomb threats even after apologizing; Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Syria have recalled their ambassadors from Denmark; Palestinians are threatening Danish citizens with bodily harm if they don't leave Gaza and the West Bank; and Muslim protesters in London have advocated beheading the artists responsible. Is all this sound and fury really the sole result of a few comics published five months ago? Don't believe it. Islamic fundamentalists are using the cartoons to solicit public support for a clash of civilizations, and they're taking full advantage of the fact that the caricatures are widely considered among Muslims to illustrate a general Western disdain for their beliefs. So, in a sense, Jyllands-Posten has abetted the radicals by publishing a convenient set of easily-transferrable anti-Western propaganda. Poor decisions have clearly been made on both sides, but I have to stand with the proponents of free speech on this issue.

It goes without saying that free speech is a bedrock Western value. I'm probably not well-educated enough to offer an adequate defense of the principle here, but as to its importance I'll merely say this: the defense of free expression helps ensure that neither the government nor any other constituency can force people to act against their will. Under this justification, free speech becomes identified with freedom itself—after all, how free can a nation possibly be if external forces control what, how, and to whom its people can express themselves? Free speech, like the overarching freedom it helps constitute, has its limits (shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, making death threats), but JP did not violate them.

And yet, the editorial decision to publish the cartoons was a poor one. Freedom without responsibility can be extremely destructive, and whoever approved the illustrations for publication demonstrated exactly that fact. Notwithstanding the fact that visually representing Muhammad in any way violates the Islamic faith, the worst and most frequently cited of the cartoons (the one in which he's drawn with a bomb for a turban) appears to directly equate Islam with terrorism. I don't think that's the message we want to send out to a global Muslim public that already mistrusts the West deeply. As I mentioned earlier, the bomb/turban image is already being employed by radicals as anti-European propaganda, just as the images of Abu Ghraib were used against the US. For this reason, I support those papers which have declined to reproduce the cartoons—they've exercised the discretion that JP should have in the first place.

And yet again, the paper's right to be wrong bears vigorous and unequivocal defense. It's completely tenable and consistent to condemn the images while affirming their right to exist and to be disseminated without fear of violent reprisal. Voltaire encapsulated the sentiment well in the 18th century, and it applies with just as much force today: wars of pure opinion should be fought across the printed page, the television screen, and the computer monitor; and never with guns and bombs. Any media organization that is willing to withstand the firestorm of criticism that generally accompanies the publication of potentially offensive material needs to feel free to move forward, but it's imperative that said firestorm remain metaphorical.

Unfortunately, it appears as though many in the Islamic world don't share our Western reverence of free speech. It may very well be that an inevitable clash between two irreconcilable worldviews is brewing, but that will depend on how many Muslims truly consider blasphemy a capital offense. If, as some have contended, the violence is predominantly a product of Islamists hoping to push their own radical agenda, there may be hope yet, and I sincerely want to believe this is the case. But if it turns out that most Muslims condone the murder of those who offend their faith through the media, I see no way to stave off a long, costly war of both ideas and bullets.