Oliver Kamm

A racist in Sweden

This is a disturbing indication of the extent of human credulity. An English-language newspaper in Sweden, The Local, reports (link taken from Engage):

The Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism (SCAA) has criticized the Social Democrats for inviting controversial British-Israeli musician and political commentator Gilad Atzmon to speak at a seminar on Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan, which was held in Stockholm on March 18th.

Writing in newspaper Expressen on Thursday, SCAA chairman Jesper Svartvik urged the party to distance itself from the decision of its Christian organization, Broderskapsrörelsen, and the Workers' Educational Association (Arbetarnas Bildningsförbund - ABF) to bring Atzmon to the capital.

I am - to repeat - close to being an absolutist on free speech, even (indeed, particularly) for those of vile opinions. But that principle doesn't entail an obligation on the part of democratic organisations to extend a platform for the expression of vile opinions. I can't say how representative or influential is the social democratic organisation referred to (I'm close to Scandinavia, but not unfortunately to Swedish politics). But the type of argument quoted later in the article is very familiar to me indeed:

In a statement released to The Local, Ulf Carmesund, international secretary of the Christian Social Democrats, rejects the allegations made by SCAA.

"Gilad Atzmon is himself a Jew, and when the Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism starts calling Jews anti-Semites there is a risk that they undermine the term anti-Semite and do the fight against anti-Semitism a disservice," said Carmesund.

"Atzmon is critical of the state of Israel's politics and of Jewish organizations that support the state of Israel's politics in the name of all Jews. Atzmon belongs to that group of Jews that refuses to be associated with the Israeli occupation and the state of Israel's breaches of international law.

"He aims his criticism not at Jewishness but at the politics and ideology that lead to breaches of international law," he added.

Where do you start? Antisemitism is a diverse phenomenon that, as my readers will know well, tends to operate by insinuation: the word "Zionist" is often employed as a code word for "Jew" and "Jewish". Mr Carmesund is on the evidence of his public comment unlikely to have grasped this. It's fortunate therefore that Atzmon is too thick to operate by insinuation: he is open in his bigotry. I believe I reported on his singular political commentaries earlier than any other blogger, and must stress to anyone who doubts his virulence that Atzmon frankly asserts that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion accurately depicts the state of modern America. He also believes that the problem with Holocaust denial is that there isn't enough of it going on. He's a racist and an antisemite by any objective standards. It's not an elevated level on which to be politically active, but I take some pride in the fact that this disgusting man regards me as a natural enemy.

If any Swedish readers were minded to explain to this social democratic organisation what it's got itself into, I should be obliged.

"Propaganda" over Iran

Paul Reynolds of the BBC is an informed and experienced correspondent. But this doesn't seem to me to help understanding of the Iran stand-off:

Britain and Iran are engaged in a propaganda battle over the 15 captured British sailors and marines.

Britain went public with coordinates to try to prove that its naval party had not gone into Iranian waters and ridiculing Iranian claims to the contrary. Iran hit back by showing the prisoners on television and interviewing the only woman in the group, Faye Turney. They had rapidly established that she was a mother, and got her to make admissions about being in Iranian waters and about how "compassionate" her captors were.

Britain had its figures but Iran had its admission.

British servicemen are being held captive in defiance of international law and are plainly being mistreated under the provisions of the Geneva Convention. So when Reynolds states further that "Britain has suggested that the Turney interview was done under duress and direction and with the promise of her release" he is presenting as a speculative hypothesis what is an obvious matter of fact. Of course the Turney interview was made under duress, by definition. She's a prisoner. Her captors are the agents of a lawless and lying regime practising piracy. Let's have a sense of proportion, please.

UPDATE: This, on the other hand, is a sensible suggestion by Timothy Garton Ash:

There is something Europe should do: flex its economic muscles. The EU is by far Iran's biggest trading partner. More than 40% of its imports come from, and more than a quarter of its exports go to, the EU. Remarkably, this trade has grown strongly in the last years of looming crisis. Much of it is underpinned by export credit guarantees given by European governments, notably those of Germany, France and Italy. According to the most recent figures available from the German economics ministry, Iran is Germany's third-largest beneficiary of export credit guarantees, outdone only by Russia and China. Iran comes second to none in terms of the proportion of German exports - in recent years up to 65% - underwritten by the German government....

So here's a challenge for the German presidency of the European Union: will you put your money where your mouth is? Or are all your Sunday speeches about European solidarity in the cause of peace and freedom not even worth the paper they are written on?

Since the defeat of Chancellor Schroeder - a man who besmirched the good name of German social democracy and was far the worst Chancellor in the noble history of the Federal Republic - Germany has been conspicuously well governed. Germany recently proposed banning travel to the EU by people linked to Iran's aggressive military programme. Chancellor Merkel ought to be receptive to our requests for help in dealing with the regime; European solidarity is a cause worth supporting and advancing.

Political blogging's pretensions

You have only a few hours to catch this, but it's worth seeing last night's Newsnight (available here) before it's replaced by this evening's edition. The item of particular interest is described this way:

Guido Fawkes

He says that traditional political journalists are too close to the very MPs they claim to scrutinise and so short change the viewer. They say that he misunderstands their role. Who is right - the controversial blogger or the political lobby? In a special piece - Guido confronts his broadcast and print counterparts - and goes up against the Guardian's Michael White, live.

I know nothing of the pseudonymous Mr Fawkes, but I'm deeply sceptical of the value of political blogs and hostile to the whole medium of blogging. (I argued the point here and here.) Mr Fawkes's film is in my view ludicrous self-promotion, the vapidity of whose message is emphasised by the absurd affectation of its author's wishing to be anonymous and to be filmed only in darkness. (According to one of his interviewees, BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson, he wasn't particularly straight in his editing either.) Michael White spiritedly referred to Mr Fawkes in the discussion afterwards as "Paul Staines" and generally made Staines (if that is indeed his name) look foolish. I don't know if Staines is foolish, but his argument certainly is. I recommend you watch and relish White taking it apart.

I'm increasingly convinced not only that blogs impoverish our political culture but that they poison it too. The Times columnist Libby Purves wrote this week that "there should be at least a degree of justifiable fear and public contumely surrounding libellous bloggers", among others, and I agree. Yet - a point made by White - bloggers in practice write what they like without inherent constraints of accuracy. They aren't in the normal course of events sued, because the potential costs greatly outweigh any benefit. I am close to being an absolutist on freedom of speech; I don't believe that something that is offensive is necessarily wrong, and in any case that offensiveness is no grounds for restricting speech. But the absence of an editorial function, of which bloggers themselves make much, is one reason for being apprehensive at the potential destructiveness of the medium. Something must give; I hope it is the unwarranted reputation of blogs as a source for political coverage. Watch the Newsnight discussion, and see if I'm not right.

NOTE: This is a trivial point of autobiographical concern, but is one I should declare in this discussion. As some of my readers may recall, I am the counterexample to the notion that bloggers can't be sued, as I appear to be the only UK blogger ever to have received a writ for libel. Ironically it was a worthless claim issued with high incompetence in the wrong court by a hapless blogger who didn't even deny the truth of what I had written about him (notably here). Being certain of my facts, I declined to withdraw my remarks let alone apologise for them, and my lawyers had no difficulty having the purported writ immediately struck out by the Court as an abuse of process. (My antagonist then enterprisingly appealed to me to help him out of the hole he'd dug for himself and acquiesce in his abuse of process - a plea whose merits I could not discern and which my lawyers therefore declined.) My point is that with so much genuinely defamatory stuff around on the Web, it's notable that this experience is so unusual, and that those who have legitimate cause for complaint are in the main reticent.

How not to respond to aggression

This government has, in my view, a good record on foreign policy (and not a bad one on domestic policy, so far as it goes). But I despair on reading this type of thing after the Iranian abduction and televised taunting of British servicemen:

After being criticised for failing to react more strongly to the seizure, Mrs Beckett admitted that Teheran had not responded to attempts "to resolve this issue quickly and quietly, through behind-the-scenes diplomacy".

She had suggested to the Iranian foreign minister this week that the whole affair appeared to be a "misunderstanding" which could be resolved by immediate release.

However, Iran then sent a "corrected" grid reference, in an attempt to prove that the frigate Cornwall had been in its waters when it was seized - in direct contradiction of its first co-ordinates, which showed the incident was in Iraqi, not Iranian, waters.

It was "impossible to believe", said Mrs Beckett, that Iran could have made such a mistake, given the seriousness of the incident.

There is much to be said for diplomacy. There is nothing to be said for refusing to recognise the limits of diplomacy. Of course it's impossible to believe Iran's "corrections", because it's impossible to believe Iran on anything. Iran's aggressive foreign policy is founded on lies, most particularly with regard to its uranium enrichment programme. We know this already. We also know, from a similar kidnapping of British serviceman in 2004, that Iran practises piracy against those enforcing UN Security Council resolutions. No, the government has not been weak: it's been obtuse and uncomprehending. Dealing with Iran is not like dealing with Canada or Sweden.

You would have thought - or maybe you wouldn't, but I would - that the principal voice of British liberalism, The Guardian newspaper, which has done much to defend progressive values in foreign policy debate, would understand this point better than most. Its leader today is feeble (calling Iran's aggression "Unacceptable behaviour" - whatever that means). The message appears to be that the worst aspect of this imbroglio is that it confirms what American neoconservatives have been saying all along:

Iran should not underestimate the damage it is doing to its own cause on the much more fundamental issue of its refusal to abandon uranium enrichment, by behaving the way it has in this episode. The hardliners are only making the neoconservative case in Washington and Israel for them. There were two US carrier groups in the Gulf out on exercises yesterday and no one is in any doubt that the Pentagon's plans for an airstrike on Iran's nuclear facilities are far advanced, should sanctions fail. For the moment, the pragmatists in the US State Department are holding sway by arguing that diplomatic pressure on Iran has some way to run. Sanctions are not exhausted. But what better argument could you make against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, and the effect it would have on proxies in the Middle East, than the one that is being made by Iran's conventional forces and their commanders?

I'm not a neoconservative; I'm a liberal. But the apologetic manner in which my ideological allies approach gross provocations by a theocratic tyranny is one reason for believing that a variant of neoconservatism (broadly that of Paul Wolfowitz rather than the late Jeane Kirkpatrick) is a more reliable force for liberal values.

UPDATE: It's only fair to add that Gerard Baker, the US editor of The Times and a columnist whose interventionist views on foreign policy are in many respects similar to mine, believes the government has handled this much better than I believe it has. By concidence (I hadn't seen his piece before I wrote this post, and was directed to it from The Guardian's "Comment is Free" site), Gerard too mentions Jeane Kirkpatrick disparagingly in the context of her sympathies for the Argentine dictatorship during the Falklands War:

It was only the steely and determined efforts of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (later, pointedly, knighted by the Queen), the sheer bovine implacability of the Argentine leadership and the good judgment of Ronald Reagan himself that ensured the US eventually jumped the right way and provided diplomatic and military logistical support to the UK. So when you hear American conservatives bemoaning the fact that there is no-one of Mrs Thatcher's stature in Britain these days, remind yourself that the main reason she survived was no thanks whatsoever to their contributions.

(I am a lot more critical of President Reagan, whose early statements on the crisis expressed a sorrowful apprehension that two friends of the US should come to blows, and who urged on Mrs Thatcher a ceasefire as British troops advanced on Port Stanley. A minor autobiographical note: during the Falklands War I stayed with my dear relative Martin Bell, then BBC correspondent in Washington, and recall the anguished requests he received from senior American politicians to be interviewed so that British viewers would know of Congressional dissent from Reagan's pusillanimous line. Congressman Tom Foley was one who appeared on BBC News expressing dismay that the administration couldn't make up its mind to support a democratic ally seeking to reverse Argentina's illegal aggression. Foley's later role as Speaker of the House ended in controversy, but I have always regarded him with respect for his position over the Falklands.)

Gerard goes on to draw an analogy with the current government's position over Iran's aggression. I only hope he's right:

The right approach, as frustratingly dilatory as it seems, is the one the UK is currently taking. The Iranian attack is an outrage, but it presents an important opportunity to demonstrate to the world (which shouldn't need reminding, but does) just how vile a regime Teheran is. Let no-one be in any doubt as to who is the aggressor is. Produce the evidence that this was no hostile action by the British but simply an operation rooted in international law. Steadily ratchet up the diplomatic pressure on Iran, isolating the country in international opinion. All of that will lay a much better groundwork in global public opinion as the US and its allies prepare for the long difficult struggle to stop Iran from achieving regional hegemony under the shelter of its own nuclear umbrella.

It is frustrating work, but all of the alternative are worse. What is certain is that bewailing British weakness through false analogies to a very different crisis a quarter of a century ago won't bring anyone home anytime soon.

"Not out of order"

Yesterday I wrote about Iran's kidnapping of British servicemen who were fulfilling a UN Security Council mandate on behalf of an emerging constitutional state in Iraq. I hardly imagined it needed to be argued that piracy and aggression by a tyranny whose President is a messianic religious fanatic and a virulent racist bigot stand outwith the bounds of legitimate practice. I should have remembered, though, that the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan and ubiquitous bigmouth Craig Murray ventures his opinions freely. According to Iran's official media (or perhaps I should say mouthpiece) he has done so on this issue:

Craig Murray has supported Iran's decision to arrest the UK marines in the Persian Gulf last week. "In international law the Iranian government were not out of order in detaining foreign military personnel in waters to which they have a legitimate claim," said Murray, also a previous head of Foreign Office maritime section, carrying out negotiations on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

It's conceivable of course that Murray has been misquoted, and the first sentence I have quoted from the "report" is clearly an editorial interpolation. But Iran's "not being out of order" is surely an unambiguous statement. I mention this just in case - as is surely unlikely - any of my readers is in danger of mistaking this embittered and ludicrous crank for a voice of integrity and erudition, or might have publicly supported his Independent candidature for Blackburn (Jack Straw's constituency) in the last general election.

UPDATE: Craig Murray speaks out, on his blog: "[T]he Iranians, having made their point, should have handed back the captives immediately." Not out of order, then, but guilty perhaps of excessive enthusiasm. And who is responsible for provoking them? Why, we are of course: "[B]y producing a fake map of the Iran/Iraq boundary, notably unfavourable to Iran, we can only harden the Iranian position."

I apologise to my readers for having described this man as an embittered and ludicrous crank. I can't shake off this inherently British habit of understatement, you see.

Might, might, might

The Times reports the coroner's verdict on the death of Anna Nicole Smith. In the print edition of the paper a large photograph of the late model has the caption: "Anna Nicole Smith's life may have been saved if she had heeded her companion's advice and gone to hospital for her high fever."

No, no, no. I have no idea why journalists find this distinction so difficult. The fact of Ms Smith's death is unfortunately not in doubt. The caption should therefore read "might have been saved" not "may have been saved". Misuse of language is the least important aspect of a sad story. Precision in language is still worth observing, though. It will ensure we don't have to rely on previous knowledge to make sense of a statement.

Hang on. We’re taking the soft approach towards Iran?

This article appears in The Times today.

The seizure by Iran of 15 Royal Navy sailors and Marines on Friday has elicited a cool-headed diplomatic response. Downing Street and the Foreign Office have emphasised the need for consular access to our servicemen while seeking to calm a tense stand-off. The Foreign Secretary made it “very clear” there had been no incursion into Iranian waters and demanded a “full explanation” for Iran’s actions. The UK Ambassador to Tehran reinforced the message. Only yesterday did the Prime Minister increase the pressure by describing Iran’s action as “unjustified and wrong” and insisting that “the quicker [the situation] is resolved, the easier it will be for all of us”.

God help us. From the moment British servicemen were abducted, the danger was that the Government would underreact. So it has. You can understand an overriding concern with getting its people back unharmed. But purely from that pragmatic standpoint, never mind wider principles, the wrong message has been given. Even if the sailors are released quickly, a damaging precedent will have been transmogrified into a pattern.

The Iranians mounted a similar attack in 2004, when six Royal Marines and two sailors were abducted from the Shatt al-Arab waterway. The servicemen were spirited to Tehran and paraded blindfold on television, which broadcast their apprehensive apologies for a “big mistake”. If those servicemen did indeed make a mistake by inadvertently straying into Iranian waters, the treatment they received remained unconscionable.

Iran’s repeat kidnapping of British servicemen is piracy. The men (and one woman) seized are part of a force operating under a UN Security Council resolution. That force has authority under international law to board vessels in Iraqi waters. Its work in protecting Iraqi oil platforms is essential to the welfare of an emerging constitutional state.

That background explains much about Iranian foreign policy. How we and our allies deal with a recalcitrant, untrustworthy and erratic state has important repercussions for the security of the region. Intelligence reports strongly suggest that Iran is smuggling improvised explosive devices across the border with Iraq for use by Shia militias.

President Ahmadinejad has introduced into international discourse a distinctively modern strain of anti-Semitism through gleeful anticipation of the extinction of Israel and sponsorship of Holocaust denial. Most disturbing and flagrant is Iran’s serial nuclear deceptions to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN.

On Saturday the UN Security Council imposed military and financial sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend its nuclear programme. The disapproval was hardly sweeping, nor were the measures draconian, yet Iran has announced withdrawal even from its current veneer of cooperation with the IAEA. A spokesman for the US National Security Council, expressing the brutish unilateralism for which the Bush Administration is famed, declared: “Considering the international community is united in its desire to work with Iran on a solution, their comments are disappointing.”

There we go again. Like Charlie Brown expecting Lucy not to pull the football away this time, the Western democracies assume Iran will join the community of nations if only we are sufficiently accommodating. But accommodation is already extensive. It includes accepting Iran’s right to develop peaceful nuclear technology without necessarily pressing for a cessation of work on the nuclear fuel cycle. The US has also accepted a compromise proposal from Russia for some uranium enrichment activity to be moved from Iran to Russia. Yet Iran’s response is obdurate, and its behaviour patently aggressive. Fifteen British sailors and Marines are only the latest victims of this provocative and threatening regime.

Their welfare and that of Iran’s neighbours require something more than declarations of disapproval. The question is what.

It is unlikely that the US or Israel is seriously, or at least imminently, contemplating military action against Iran. The logistical difficulties, risk of failure and potential diplomatic costs would be huge. The colossal failures of the occupation of Iraq aside, the growth of civil society in Iran and its chafing at theocratic oppression are assets that Western diplomacy can use, as were not available under the singular barbarism of Saddam Hussein.

A grand rapprochement with the mullahs is probably out of reach. Given Iran’s flagrant deceptions, that may be just as well. Our message should instead be one of diplomatic and economic pressure, on the premise urged in 1947 by the architect of containment, George Kennan: the regime “can easily withdraw — and usually does — when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so.”

Kennan was of course writing of the Soviet Union under Stalin. His policy has wider and current applicability. Pressure works. Iran did twice agree to freeze its nuclear programme till it saw a diplomatic opportunity to restart it. European powers who urge multilateral diplomacy must stand by the integrity of the writ of the UN Security Council, and Resolution 1737 requiring Iran to suspend its work on uranium enrichment. They must impose and police sanctions on dual-use technology to hamper and disrupt Iran’s ambitions.

In particular, we must insist that the provocative stance of an insular and aggrandising theocracy will not be entertained or taken seriously. Our servicemen must be released. The way we press for that may ultimately assist the release of Iran’s people too.

Dalyell's war

"Tam Dalyell is invariably worth listening to," wrote one admiring and normally shrewd political columnist in 2002, of the veteran Labour MP and anti-war campaigner.

Dalyell is no longer in the Commons, having retired at the 2005 general election. But the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War provides an opportunity to revisit his most celebrated campaign, in opposition to the campaign to liberate those islands from Argentine aggression. Earlier this week I cited Dalyell's warning in 1982 that “the closeness of the analogy with Vietnam has not been sufficiently considered on the British side of the Atlantic”. From the same source - Dalyell's book, One Man's Falkands - comes this observation (p. 127):

To Protestant Ulster, the events of 1982 carried a message, perhaps a deceptive message, but still a message. Protestant Ulster does not now think it can be sold down the river. When the crunch comes, they argue, kith and kin will not be betrayed, whatever those "scheming civil servants" in the Northern Ireland Office, the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office get up to.... The cost of the Falklands - in placing the possibility of compromise in Northern Ireland farther off than ever - may turn out to be very, very costly.

Invariably worth listening to, indeed. There's plenty more where that came from, and I shall be relating it here over the next few weeks.

Blair on the Falklands

The Guardian reports an interview given by the Prime Minister in which he comments on the Falklands War with the benefit of historical retrospective:

Tony Blair has said that the Falklands war took "a lot of political courage" to fight but he would have done the same thing in Margaret Thatcher's shoes because it was "the right thing to do".

Speaking to Simon Schama, the TV historian and lecturer at Downing Street, in a podcast for the No 10 website, the prime minister expressed his support for the historic decisions taken almost 25 years ago.

"When I look back, I mean I was much, much younger at the time obviously, but when I look back, yes, I have got no doubt it was the right thing to do," he said. "But for reasons not simply to do with British sovereignty but also because I think there was a principle at stake which is that, you know, a land shouldn't be annexed in that way and people shouldn't be put under a different rule in that way."

In 1982 Tony Blair was a young Labour candidate fighting a hopeless by-election campaign in the safe Conservative seat of Beaconsfield. He therefore is unfortunate enough to have had his contemporary views on the Falklands War recorded. They were a little different from what they are now. The Times quoted him in its edition for 12 May 1982:

I have a tremendous sympathy with the Falklanders' cause, but if it is the case, which I think it is now, that we are faced with an option between compromising and really a full-scale war, then I think that realistically we have got to say that we are prepared to compromise.

Younger readers, and readers outside the UK, will have to take my word for it that this was not so bad an answer for a young Labour candidate of that time. Blair at least did not compare the Falkland islanders to Algerian colons or white Rhodesians. Labour was then led by a patently unserious politician whose principal cause was unilateral nuclear disarmament. It was very rare to find a prospective Labour parliamentary candidate who even looked and sounded normal relative to Michael Foot. Blair was one. His was also a coherent position at the outset of the Falklands campaign. It was possible to argue that the sending of the Task Force to reverse Argentine aggression was necessary to reinforce diplomatic efforts to end the crisis. The other candidates in the Beaconsfield by-election moreover gave far less coherent answers than the future PM did. (Tim Smith, the Conservative candidate who won the seat handsomely and held it till 1997 - he stood down reluctantly in the general election campaign of that year after admitting he had taken cash from Mohammed al-Fayed - declined to commit himself to whether there was a military solution to the Falklands crisis, on the feeble grounds that he was not a "military expert".)

But of course the young Tony Blair was wrong. The notion that the Task Force might be an adjunct to diplomacy rather than an alternative to it foundered on the brute incomprehension of the Argentine military dictatorship. General Galtieri and his murderous junta did not understand that their aggression was unconscionable and a gross violation of international law, and that no civilised democratic nation could allow it to stand. This was in fact clear by the time Tony Blair made the remarks I've quoted. When our side took back South Georgia on 25 April, there was still a possibility in theory that the Argentine junta might come to its senses and withdraw without substantial loss of life. It didn't, and so there was no option available to us other than military force. It was to the credit of Mrs Thatcher that she recognised this and did not take the route of "compromise" with imperialist aggression. It is to the credit of Mrs Thatcher's successor but one that he recognises this too, and is prepared to say so.

Free speech upheld

The BBC reports:

The editor of a satirical French magazine accused of insulting Muslims by reprinting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad has been acquitted. A French court has ruled in favour of weekly Charlie Hebdo, rejecting accusations by Islamic groups who said it incited hatred against Muslims.

This is certainly good news. I commented on the case in this post, and particularly commended the stand taken by Nicolas Sarkozy in defence of free speech. Note, however, one apect of the judgement, according to the BBC report, that troubles me: "The cartoons were covered by freedom of expression laws and were not an attack on Islam, but fundamentalists, it said."

Do freedom of expression laws not cover an attack on Islam? It is essential that they should. There is nothing wrong with an attack on Islam (or any other sacred belief). There is nothing wrong with giving offence to religious groups. The judgement appears implicitly to reject these principles. Defenders of a free society must assert them militantly. I have an article arguing this point in the excellent and essential Index on Censorship magazine next month, and will be returning to the subject here.

UPDATE: You can listen (in French, from the website of Le Monde) here to the magazine's lawyer comment aptly on "good news for freedom of expression". So it is. Despite my initial suspicion of the notion of tempering speech in the interests of civility, I'm sure the importance lies in the judgement that free speech must be upheld. Those who claim that the state of their religious sensibilities is a justification for punishing speech have been rightly rebuffed.