Amendment 1.5

Using the examples of Jesus and Socrates, Victor Davis Hanson reminds us at National Review that

Banning free expression is never presented as provocative, but always the final act of an aggrieved and understandably provoked society.

Lately, the West in general and America in particular seems to have forgotten the free-speech pillar of Western constitutional government. In 2012 an obscure Egyptian-born videomaker, Nakoula Nakoula, made an amateurish Internet video criticizing Islam. Innocence of Muslims went global and viral. Violent demonstrations in the Islamic world followed. In an effort to placate Muslims, the Obama administration falsely blamed Nakoula’s video for the storming of the American consulate in Benghazi. Leading the Obama pack was the opportunistic secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who saw in Nakoula a convenient fall guy to explain away U.S. security lapses in Libya. In reality, the killing of Americans there was the preplanned work of an al-Qaeda terrorist affiliate that took advantage of absent-minded U.S. officials.

The best strategy now for stifling free speech is to arbitrarily substitute the word “hate” for “free” — and then suddenly we all must unite to curb “hate speech.” The effort is insidious and growing, from silly “trigger warnings” in university classes about time-honored classics that trendy and mostly poorly educated race/class/gender activists now think contain hurtful language and ideas, to the common tactic of shouting down campus speakers or declaring them to be dangerous “extremists” who traffic in “hate speech” if their politics are deemed insufficiently progressive.

And what about Pamela Geller and her free speech event in Garland, Texas?

Geller, and not the jihadists who sought to kill those with whom they disagreed, was supposedly at fault. Her critics could not figure out that radical Muslims object not just to caricatures and cartoons, but to any iconographic representation of Mohammed. Had Geller offered invitations to artists to compete for the most majestic statue of the Prophet, jihadists might still have tried to use violence to stop it. Had she held a beauty pageant for gay Muslims or a public wedding for gay Muslim couples, jihadists would certainly have shown up. Had she offered a contest for the bravest Islamic apostates, jihadists would have galvanized to kill the non-believers. Had she organized a support rally for Israel, jihadists might well have tried to kill the innocent, as they did in Paris when they murderously attacked a kosher market.

Geller’s critics also do not understand that radical Islam has already cut a huge swath out of American free speech through more than a decade of death threats. Ever since 9/11, they have largely succeeded by demanding special rules for public discourse about Islam in a way accorded no other religion. Disagree, and one is branded “Islamophobic,” as that now-ubiquitous buzzphrase “hate speech” magically pops up. Of course, when other so-called artists have desecrated Christian images, they operated on the belief not just that they would not be harmed, but that, as in “Piss Christ,” they would actually be subsidized by the U.S. government.

Apparently there is no longer a First Amendment as our Founders wrote it, but instead something like an Orwellian Amendment 1.5, which reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press — except if someone finds some speech hurtful, controversial, or not helpful.”

Among those who attack free expression the most loudly are progressives who do not like politically incorrect speech that does not further their own agendas. The term “illegal alien,” an exact description of foreign nationals who entered and reside in the United States without legal sanction, is now nearly taboo. The effort to ban the phrase is not because it is hateful or inaccurate, but because it does not euphemistically advance the supposedly noble cause of amnesties and open borders. Of course, the politically correct restrictionists have no compunction about smearing their critics with slurs such as xenophobe, racist, or nativist.

...radical gays demand the exclusive right to force an artist — and a cake decorator is an artist of sorts — to express himself in ways that they deem correct.

Without free speech, the United States becomes just another two-bit society of sycophants, opportunists, and toadies who warp expression for their own careerist and political agendas. How odd that we of the 21st century lack the vision and courage of our 18th-century Founders, who warned us of exactly what we are now becoming.

Read more here.