You know what really bugs me about all this cartoon row, its the fact that many people have been saying that the Danish paper in question should be able to publish whatever they want and everyone else should simply accept it as free speech and be happy we live in such an open and democratic world.
I agree with the first portion, one can say and do whatever one wants. Yet its the second part I don’t agree with. I remember that my ol R.E. teacher once said to the class:
You can do whatever you want in this world…..but you must be aware there may be consequences to those actions
I agree completely with that statement. Yes the Danish newspaper has the right to say and do what they want. But they should have realised that there would likely be consequences and opposition to those actions. You can’t have free speech without a reaction because then you would be denying any affected peoples free speech. Again I don’t agree with some of the reactions of certain individuals, but then that’s my right to comment on them.
Its a similar situation that I used to see when I was studying for a Fine Art degree. Endless discussions about what is art and what is not art. Our answer to those sort of ponderences was often, everything that is called art is art, the only way of judging it is by saying if you like it or not. Which of course then differs from the next person, so you are in another argument.
He (Kant) denied that we can reach a valid universal aesthetic judgment of the form “All objects possessing such and such qualities are beautiful.”
Kind of lost my thread now, but I really just want to make the point that all of these reactions aren’t really that surprising, people are aways going to disagree with a point of view and its important to challenge various points of view, but don’t be surprised if people take angrily to someone telling them they are wrong. The Danish newspaper was either being naive about what would happen, wanted it to happen or just blind.