pumpkinstrokemarrow

But words will never hurt me. Or so the primary school playground jingle went. An early and important lesson in the difference between the sign and the signified. Or is it the sign and the signifier?

However, like all simple and pleasing truths not altogether true, on which account I return to the idiot with moustaches (see above). See also August 27.

In the western world, we like to pride ourselves on our freedom of speech. Everyone is free to express their opinions without fear of retribution, retaliation or the secret police (not thinking here of those hidden microphones they are putting in our wheelie bins).

But this freedom has to be qualified.

Suppose I insult someone with fighting spirit and he or she wallops me, perhaps breaking my jaw. If we suppose further that I knew that the subject of the insult was with fighting spirit, the insult becomes suicidal. I might be free to do it but the results will be untoward. Perhaps the courts, if I pressed charges, would apply a test of reasonable force. If I insult you, you can knock me down but if I insult your mother, you can break my jaw. But suppose, after a mild insult, I end up with a broken jaw, the jaw breaker ends up in jail, and the rest of you have to pay the considerable costs of these proceedings. The rest of you might get fed up with this and try to deal with the problem by making it illegal to insult people. Which might deter much insult. But would also interfere with normal social intercourse, in the course of which some socialites can both give and take a fair amount of aggressive banter, and deter much free speech. Both of which are, generally speaking, a good thing.

Another scenario might be that I live in the Netherlands and I insult the holy book of the Burmans. Many Burmans in Burma (aka Myanmar) get very angry and in the absence of any action by the Netherlands authorities to punish me or apologise decide to riot and burn down the Netherlands Embassy in Rangoon (aka Yangon pending a move to Naypyidaw). In the course of the riot 15 rioters, 4 policemen, 7 diplomats and 3 locally employed embassy servants get killed with other casualties proportionate. Of these, the 4 policemen, the 7 diplomats and the 3 locally employed embassy servants are reasonably innocent third parties, although all could be charged with aiding and abetting the insult and/or the insulter.

Here, I think, I see my way a bit more clearly. Both the rioters and I have caused death, in the sense that both our contributions were necessary, both were voluntary and the results were predictable. Both meet the Catholic test of mortal sin. So while I would not want to make it illegal to insult other peoples' holy books, I would want to have powers to come down on people who do where the consequences are or threaten to be untoward. So if we were at war with France, you are free to insult the French as much as you like. This stirs up patriotic feeling and is a good thing. I think there was a fair amount of this during both world wars. But if we at peace with France, you can only insult them in moderation. If our powers that be think you are becoming immoderate they can come down on you. Severe punishment for repeat offences. And apologies to the French on behalf of the country as a whole from Prime Minister Cameron, with full panoply of national penance. Prime Minister Blair might have sought absolution from the Pope in such circumstances.

The fullness of the Prime Ministerial apology would, of course, depend on how touchy we thought the French were being. A bit of banter between consenting adults ought to be OK. We might need to remind them of this from time to time. And if we thought that their touchiness was starting to infringe on our rights and liberties, we might feel the need to stand firm and take whatever consequences there might be.

National security is a very simple case. If we at war with Iceland and I know some secret, the divulgence of which to the Icelanders would result in more or less immediate loss of the war and national humiliation, I am not free to speak that secret. Any suggestion that I might speak that secret and the securocrats can weigh in. Normal law of the land suspended. Wherein lies another tale.

Another simple case would be telling untruths with malicious intent. So I am not free to tell someone the untruth that their house is ablaze and in imminent danger of collapse and that they had better jump out of the window, never mind it being three floors up. Now off to the baker, during which expedition I might think of a more realistic example. I am confident that I will.

In the meanwhile, it is also true that one is not free to tell an untruth by omission. So, for rather bizarre example, if I were a Palestinian Israeli and seduced a Jewish Israeli without mentioning that I was a Palestinian when I might reasonably have been supposed to have been a Jew, I might be convicted of some lesser species of rape. To be fair to the authorities concerned, the particular case reported did result from a plea bargain by a repeat offender of the ordinary sort. On the other hand, the reports did not say whether the laws in question were symmetrical.

In sum, entirely confident that the right to free speech cannot be absolute. Any more than any other rights can be. The difficult bit is working out how the qualification is going to work.