Fighting With Words

"Dishes it out but cannot take it. Too sensitive. Glass jaw. Takes themselves too seriously." These are all expressions that often apply to the schoolyard bully. You know the one, they like to invent provocations from the other, weaker, children in order to rationalize violence against them. The juvenile bully has an incredibly fragile ego and any slight, however small, prompts them to retaliate violently and out of proportion. Why? Because the intention is not to seek justice, or even vengeance, but to intimidate and dominate everyone around them. This is true whether on the playground, in cyberspace, or in the "grownup" world where we are supposed to behave better.

Wednesday's attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris were carried out by bullies somewhat more complex than the schoolyard variety, but the motivation was fundamentally the same. The terrorists who killed ten journalists and two police officers in France were allegedly Islamic fundamentalists. They decided that Charlie Hebdo's cartoons, which sometimes depict Mohammed in less than flattering terms, should be violently and publicly attacked for this slight. The attack has been denounced almost universally because civilization has also decided that you do not answer the pen with the sword. Bullies who disagree with this idea come in every shape, color, and texture but do not constitute the entirety of any group. After all, if three Muslims picked AK-47s to avenge the honor of their beliefs, over a billion others did not.

Modern France and the United States are nations born out of the Enlightenment. They share many values such as individual freedom, freedom of inquiry, freedom of expression, and the freedom of each citizen to pursue happiness and improvement in nearly any way they see fit. Not everyone in those societies shares these values and a minority is often motivated to censor and stifle these freedoms. Liberal societies such as France must embrace tolerance and pluralism if everyone's freedom is to be guaranteed. Freedom comes with responsibility and individuals who succumb to the bully characteristics from the opening of this post must be shunned by society, their ideas left invalidated. But why is freedom of expression and of the press important in the first place? For most of human history the powerful have suppressed the common people, that is well known.

The answer is simple, since the Enlightenment and it's rejection of "might makes right" societies that embrace freedom have experienced an exponential increase in progress. Happiness, knowledge, art, and fulfillment all come from the freedom to pursue truth and your passions. The sum total of human knowledge and achievement since the Enlightenment has been incredible. This would not have been possible under the bullies' regime of fear and intimidation. The freedom of Charlie Hebdo or the Onion on this side of the Atlantic must be defended because they are a bulwark against the return of intimidation. Satire has a humbling effect on people who take themselves too seriously or cannot tolerate differences between people.