Blaming The Victim -- Charlie Hebdo & Free Speech

If a young woman wearing a short skirt and high heels walks down a dangerous street late at night, does she have it coming to her when she gets kidnapped, raped and murdered?

Far too many people have made an equivalent “they had it coming” argument about the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris. Time to wake up!

Seventeen innocent people died horrifically bloody deaths over cartoons.

Few things in life are absolute, but this one is: There is no “perspective” here.

Yes, everyone was resolute and united during Paris' historic march a week ago. But by the next afternoon, the main story at The New York Times site was that the satirical French magazine's new Mohammed cover was “fueling a debate on free speech.”

A “high Islamic authority” in Egypt said the cartoon would “exacerbate tensions.” A French anti-Islamophobia group insisted “there is a limit when [free expression] goes too far.” A similar group in Britain complained that “free speech had been allowed to defy common sense,” the Times reported.

Yes, yes, you must report the news — although it's hard to see the Times blithely printing a comment saying “wearing a short skirt goes too far” after a brutal rape and murder because it's “common sense” that men can't control their sexual desire.

And what about the pope? Gesturing to one of his assistants, Pope Francis said last week, “If [he] says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It's normal.”

Reporting the story, The Financial Times headlined it, “Pope backs free speech, but faith is off limits,” as if these two phrases can possibly go together.

Actually, there is no “debate” over free speech. Either you have it or you don't.

And contrary to the Pope's cute vignette, it's sort of a main tenet of Western civilization that you don't answer words with violence.

Lots of smart people like the Times' David Brooks have taken this opportunity to point out that the dead French cartoonists' drawings were dumb or racist, anyway.

In other words, as if death weren't punishment enough, the victims must come in for intellectual criticism. (And how does that argument apply to the murders at the Jewish market — is it that kosher food doesn't taste good?)

The other “blame the victim” line is that France had it coming, because it is, um, an imperfect Western nation.

Yes, yes, isolated housing projects were a bad idea; high youth unemployment is sad; racism is bad; French people are rude. So what? Almost no one who must put up with those conditions resorts to mass murder.

This strain doesn't hold up terrifically, anyway, when applied to other situations:

• Was the 2013 Boston bombers' alienation the fault of liberal Cambridge, where they grew up?
• Did America fail by failing to integrate the self-styled ISIS jihadist who tried to kill two New York cops with an ax last October?
• How 'bout the guy who attacked a man in Brooklyn synagogue in December — with cops killing him to save an innocent life? Did America fail that jihadist, too?

All of this victim-blaming isn't just revolting. It's dangerous.

If you're just asking for your body to be blown apart by an automatic weapon if you draw a cartoon — or if don't make everyone in your society perfectly happy, then:

• What if you're a religious Jew who wears a skullcap? That, too, is free expression. But do you only have yourself to blame by making it easier for a violent anti-Semite to pick you out of the crowd?
• Should a svelte blonde be allowed to jog through a predominantly Muslim neighborhood wearing Spandex instead of a niqab?

Blaming the dead for their own murders is dangerous in another way, too.

Nobody with power likes free speech. If you write for a living, you learn that important people will try almost anything to get things in print or keep them out of print.

Today, it's maybe irresponsible — and therefore should be illegal? — to print a Mohammed cartoon. Tomorrow, maybe it'll be irresponsible to criticize a wartime president or prime minister.

To get an idea of how tempting it is for power to censor, consider that more than half of American colleges restrict campus speech, vaguely prohibiting things like “inappropriate expression.”

The dead cartoonists, in the end, were right. If you can't put pen to paper without risking death, you can't do anything freely.

To make one exception means to make them all.

Now let's see how many supposed defenders of speech will just stop there ... instead of adding the “but, but, but” that shows they don't believe in free expression when it really counts — when people just died for it.

This piece originally appeared in New York Post

This piece originally appeared in New York Post