Last week, the editor and owner of The New Republic wrote that “Muslim life is cheap,” and that he wonders “whether I need honor these people and pretend they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”
In response to Nick Kristof’s column in yesterday’s New York Times, Peretz today announced that that second sentence is an embarrassment to him, as he doesn’t actually believe what he wrote:
I do not mean to suggest that the Constitution and its order of rights should in any way be abrogated. I would abhor such a prospect. I do not wish upon Muslim Americans the sorts of calumnies that were endured by Italian Americans in connection with Sacco and Vanzetti….
Ok, then! You think. Coolio!
Ah, but no.
The other sentence [with which Kristof takes issue] is: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, especially for Muslims.” This is a statement of fact, not value….
Every week brings more and more gruesome evidence of this, in the the [sic] Middle East and Central Asia and elsewhere. The idea that in remarking upon the cheapening of Muslim lives I was calling for the cheapening of Muslim lives, as some have suggested, is preposterous. There is no hatred in my heart; there is deep anxiety about the dangers of Islamism, and anger at the refusal of certain politicians and commentators to adequately grasp those dangers, but there is no hatred, none. In these unusually inflamed days, I am glad to say so clearly.
I agree: Marty Peretz did not call for the cheapening of anyone’s life — he actively cheapened it.
When you state, as bald fact (“not value”!), that “X life is cheap,” you are serving notice to any number of people even more unhinged than yourself that they can feel free to act on their desire to wipe those people out. It’s a tactic that has been used throughout human history — it’s called dehumanization. And Jews know a little something about it.
Moreover, it takes a spectacularly narrow reading of human history to not notice that everybody kills everybody. As I said last Tuesday:
How many Christians have been killed by the majority-Christian American forces since 1776? For instance, as we’ve swanned about the Middle East in recent years, have we been carefully differentiating between the Arab Muslims and the Arab Christians? …I would submit that sheer casualty numbers indicate that American Christians find Christian life to be very cheap indeed.
Not to mention that to write that “there is no hatred in my heart” mere millimeters away from saying that someone’s life is, objectively speaking, cheap, and mere days after writing that you’re not sure you want to “pretend [Muslims] are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment” indicates a staggering lack of self-awareness — and a very real problem with the English language.
Hatred – n. Intense animosity or hostility. (The American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition)
And if Peretz’s columns of the last few days aren’t enough evidence of his “intense animosity or hostility,” one can always dip oneself in the apparently endless, flowing waters of it at The Peretz Dossier. Or read this piece in which Jack Shafer shined a big, bold spotlight on it, back in 1991. There’s animosity and/or hostility to spare!
Finally, and not for nothing, but imagine for a moment that you’re one of America’s seven million or so Muslim citizens (perhaps you are one, and don’t even have to imagine!). Your country is currently abuzz with the comments of an influential magazine editor who believes that your life — and the life of your children, spouse, friends, folks you pray with, brothers and sisters, mother and father — is “cheap.”
Marty Peretz is absolutely free to say whatever he wants — the First Amendment to which he has suddenly returned with such fervor grants him that right, and I’m a big fan of the Constitution — but I don’t believe that with rights always comes wisdom.
Sure he can say it! And it’s my right — my duty — to call him on it.
Declaring the lives of any one group of people to be cheap, and then sticking to your guns on that declaration, defending it as “a statement of fact, not of value,” is rank bigotry of the very nature that this country was founded in order to counter. It’s ugly, it’s un-American, and it’s damn dangerous.
I quoted Eboo Patel the other day — and I’ll quote him again:
American history is an arc toward freedom, dignity and inclusiveness for all. That will include Muslims, sooner or later. Everyone knows you can’t stop that arc. And everyone knows that those who try to throw the arc off-course are recorded and held up in history books years later as an example to kids of who not to be like. They are the demons of American history.
Mr. Peretz, I have no doubt that the First Amendment would have withstood your assault, even in the absence of your apology — but there are Muslim lives that may not.
h/t to John Cole at Balloon Juice for the Shafer article, and to Alexander Lobov (@alexlobov) for The Peretz Dossier.
Emily L. Hauser - In My Head 
NefariousNewt
/ September 13, 2010Freedom of speech means you are free to be an idiot. If you choose to advocate for something nonsensical, ridiculous, illogical, or offensive, you have that right, but you must be willing to bear the consequences. As pastor Terry Jones just found out, it is easy to say you are going to do something that offends the sensibilities — it is quite another to have to live up to it in the glare of the spotlight. Free speech means not just that you get to speak your peace, but others get to criticize you.
PaulW
/ September 13, 2010The problem is that the right to free speech is getting abused like never before. There is no accountability for the advocacy of hatred of others, for example. And there’s certainly no accountability for the haters who use lies and exaggerations to justify their ‘beliefs’. There’s no one coming along telling Terry Jones he’s lost his license to preach, or that his ‘church’ has lost tax-exempt status because he’s advocating political partisanship disguised as religious bigotry. And because there’s high reward – everyone’s got their cameras on me! – and low risk – nobody’s telling me to stop being a bastard! – people like Terry Jones is gonna keep rolling like this until people DO die all because bastards like him worked up the gullible and desperate with the worst possible lies.
People have and are criticizing Jones’ statements and threats of action. Problem is, no one is in a position to out-shout Jones and his ilk. As long as they have their venues of hatred, these snake-oil rage merchants will keep raking in the money and the attention until it’s too late.
Omnes Omnibus
/ September 13, 2010Nicely put.