Against Bruno Walther 2

Despite my reply to Steve below, I have taken him up on his advice - at least somewhat so, since I have moderated rather than removed my ad hominems against Walther. If it improves the chances of the Taipei Times at long last allowing a word or two against this individual and his like, then it's well worth it.

Sirs,

Contrary to the claim of Bruno Walther published in your pages today, the appalling shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and innocent bystanders was not "the result of political hate-mongering"; it was the result of the actions of a lunatic who had apparently taken a dislike to Ms Giffords back in 2007, long before Sarah Palin had become a national figure in the U.S. and long before the Tea Party had been formed. The necessary implications of this for the probity of Mr Walther's claims I shall leave for others to draw for themselves.

The "central question" of "how far should the fundamental right to freedom of expression go?" is transparently oxymoronic to anyone not suffering from the confusion of what Isaiah Berlin politely termed "positive" liberty (i.e. "freedom to") with "negative liberty" (i.e. "freedom from"). The "freedom to" achieve a particular social outcome (i.e. capacity or power), as distinct from the condition of being free from coercion, is what lies behind Walther's fixation upon "the freedom to express wrong and stupid opinions"; he does not see that in questioning the limits of the right to free speech, he corrupts the meaning of those words by equating them to a privilege granted by the State which, though it may be desirable, is ultimately frivolous relative to the momentous importance of broadcasting the correct opinions of luminaries such as Mr Walther himself.

I protest: if a right is "fundamental" then our attempts to uphold that right can admit of no compromise whatever, since it is the basis of other, derivative political rights - to compromise the integrity of the right to free speech is to open the door to further State encroachment upon this right and, moreover, an encroachment which can no longer be limited and held in check by any rational principle, but only the uncertain sufferance of political parties.

To further embolden my claim that it is Berlin's concept of "positive liberty", or more simply expressed, power, with which Walther mistakenly argues for limits on free speech, it is worth pointing out that in a comments thread to an article in the Guardian on August 20th last year, the journalist Leo Hickman rejected Walther's call to remove comments with which he disagreed, citing Voltaire's famous invective against just such suppression of free speech:

"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

Walther complains of having been likened to "excrement" by bloggers, and though I am not guilty of that myself, I have never hesitated to brand his views as “fascist”, often with the modifying prefix of "eco-" and the reason for that is to convey the general sense of "bully" as identified by George Orwell in his 1944 essay, “What Is Fascism?" That is precisely what this man Walther is - he is nothing but a bully trying to silence people who do not agree with him and who do not agree with him for entirely liberal and well articulable reasons.

Yours freely,
Michael Fagan.

(Sent: Friday 14th January 2011. Published, minus the entire final two paragraphs, by the Taipei Times, Monday January 17th 2011).