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Suicide bomber costumes no problem, says Goldberg
The Animal House conservative (who I keep reminding you is the most pervasive presence at the blog of America’s leading “conservative” magazine) writes:
… I changed my mind on the Penn-Suicide Bomber Costume story. I just decided that we’re supposed to dress like monsters on Halloween and even if I didn’t think the costume was particularly funny, in great taste, or Gutmann’s judgment ideal, ultimately it just isn’t a big deal.Backing up his own position, Goldberg links an entry by John Moser at NoLeftTurns, the blog of the Ashcroft Center:
FIRE [The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education], which has spent years defending individuals and groups on college campuses from speech codes and accusations of “insensitivity,” wonders, I think rightly, whether this flap isn’t going to make their jobs harder. “Lest Halloween parties become the next frontier for the campus sensitivity police,” writes FIRE senior program officer Tara Sweeney, “people need to recognize that Halloween is a good time for satire, and that sometimes a costume is just a costume.”Such is the “conservatism” that is merely a variant of liberalism. Liberalism defines society purely in terms of rights, equality, and freedom. Conservatism, or, better, traditionalism (since conservatism is such an uncertain and compromised concept), defines society in terms of substantive realities and values and the standards that come from them. “Conservatives” who are afraid of setting any standards of what is right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, because such standards may limit someone’s freedom, are simply liberals. It is true that conservatives must fight for the fundamental right of speech against the PC tyranny that seeks to ban conservative views, which is the mission of FIRE. But that cannot be the end of the process. To be a conservative in the true sense means promoting a society that has true standards and the ability to enforce them, which will mean that not all expressive acts will be equally free.
To equate the suicide bomber costume with normal Halloween costumes, and to say that the right to wear the latter implies the right to wear the former, evidences a loss of fundamental distinctions without which civilized life is impossible. The spooks and ghosts and witches and monsters of Hollyween costumes are the stuff of fantasy. Suicide bombers are real and active and they are seeking to wreak their demonic mayhem at this moment. They step into a restaurant or or a market or a public square and set off a bomb blowing scores of people into smithereeens. To say that people should not be horrified and object in the strongest terms to a person who comes to a party dressed as a suicide bomber is not just liberalism, it is nihilism. But, as we’ve often pointed out, liberalism is nihilism. Once you say that freedom and equality are the highest values, you have denied the existence of moral truth, which is the very definition of nihilism. Email entry |