[MD] Barbarian attack

[Platt Holden]

To All:

A blatant attack by barbarians on the intellectual value of free speech 
is now underway in many parts of the world. Yet who among are 
intellectual elite are speaking out against the mobs who attack Western 
businesses and embassies over a cartoon? Not many. Instead we hear 
words of appeasement, such as the U.S State Department's press officer, 
Janelle Hironimus who said, "Inciting religious or ethnic hatred in 
this manner is not acceptable." So much for free speech which is not 
free if it does not include the freedom to offend.

What we are witnessing is the whirlwind from years of political 
correctness as codified in university speech codes, supported by 
decades of preaching with arrogant moral certainty the overriding 
virtue of tolerance. After all, no one is to blame for anything; each 
is nothing but a product her culture. And as we all know, no culture 
can be thought to be superior to any other.

In Pirsig's hierarchy of morals, among the highest is the intellectual 
value of free speech. That more intellectuals are blind to this value, 
trumpet moral relativism and fail to take to the ramparts to defend 
free speech against assaults by barbarians is the shame of our time. 
When histories write the postmortem on the West, this will be among the 
causes of death.

Platt