Viewpoint: Spitzer: Free speech should be protected at all costs

My View from the Sept. 24, 2012, edition of Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer.

Eliot Spitzer:

As world leaders descend upon the United Nations this week for the annual meeting of the General Assembly, plenty of voices will be heard, including one voice notorious for the hateful words he speaks: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran.

While the topics will cover a broad spectrum, the focus will surely be on the continuing unrest in the Middle East and, most recently, North Africa. Yet, most importantly, no voices will be censored.

The arc of the unfortunate story is now well told: Using a perceived attack on the Quran by a private voice as a pretext to ignite anger, forces of intolerance incite riots against visible U.S. interests and representatives often diplomats usually causing damage of some sort, and in the most recent incident in Benghazi, leading to a tragic and devastating loss of life.

One of the tough questions that follows is, how should we respond, both to the initial provocation and then as well to the assault on U.S. interests?

We should be clear in understanding that these attacks are the price we pay for believing in free speech, especially in a world where such tolerance is not universally accepted. We are used to dismissing as cranks and crazies the fringe voices who preach everything from anarchy to wild conspiracy or who feel compelled to elevate their own religious or political views by speaking in venomous terms about those of others.

Yet in parts of the world where the notion of free speech has not become an accepted part of the political or social fabric, such speech can be used by those with multiple motives to incite. As Bill Keller points out in his op-ed in todays New York Times, it is often the intent of those causing the riot that tough restrictions on speech be imposed the very violence they cause being the argument they can then use to stifle opposition voices.

All of which brings me to a simple point: By appearing at all queasy in our dedication to the founding principle of free speech and tolerance for that right in others, we give sustenance to those who would squelch it and weaken the overwhelming long-term appeal we have in those nations now going through a tumultuous upheaval.

Of course, we cannot expect the end result to be universal adoption of our vision of freedom, but if we at all waver in defending it as a principle, then we will give up hope that we can move toward that goal.

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Viewpoint: Spitzer: Free speech should be protected at all costs