CHARLIE HEBDO IS DEAD WRONG

I have some thoughts concerning the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, operating in Paris. Using an analogy, on a hot day, I am setting in a bar with my wife enjoying a cool beer. In walks a 280-pound football player type guy, a stranger. While setting down next to us he looked over at us and said, “You have an ugly wife”. I told him he was an animal or some such thing then pulled out a gun and shot the guy in the shoulder.

Does he have free speech? Of course, he does. Is what he said to me right or wrong? Of course, it was obviously wrong. Is what I did right or wrong? Of course, what I did was wrong. He responded to being shot by saying, “Oh, I was joking. Why aren’t you laughing?” Does what he said after being shot make what I did more wrong?

This gap in the law has existed since the beginning of democracy; we refer to it as human decency versus the lack of human decency; it is curse of Democracy. According to the law, Charlie Hebdo has the right to do what it does. However, according to the law, the people who were insulted do not have the right to do what they did. Short of defamation of character, people do not have any intermediate option.

The point I am making is that there is an important gap in human relations. In this case, it relates to what we refer to as, “free speech”. There are important reasons for having “free speech”; however, “free speech” does not include insulting each other. There is no law to prohibit insulting speech. The point is that we have little or no intermediate ground to control insulting speech but by using violence. Some Supreme Court judge is reported to have said about pornography, “I cannot define it but I know it when I see it.” The same is true of insulting speech. Charlie Hebdo is just as wrong as the big guy who insulted the women in the bar in my little imaginary story. Charlie Hebdo say what they do is OK because they insult everyone; twisted logic. What they do is wrong. Free speech or not, what they do is dead wrong!

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