eatbees blog

I began eatbees blog at the end of 2006, after returning to the U.S. from three years in Morocco. At the time, since I had friends in both places, I felt that I might be able to serve as a bridge between the two cultures, “Western” and “Arab-Islamic,” that were too often (and still are) portrayed as incompatible or even at war. I wanted my friends in the U.S. to know that Arab and Muslim youth aspire to democracy, personal dignity, freedom of thought and self-expression just as we do. Equally important, I wanted my friends back in Morocco to keep the faith that despite outward appearances (these were the worst of the Bush years) we in the West hadn’t abandoned these ideals.

I wanted my blog to show that conversation was possible, something I knew from the many rich discussions I’d had about politics, religion, and culture during my time in Morocco. It was an experiment, and during its heyday, 2007–2009, it proved to be a great success. Thanks to the many new friends I made as a blogger, often young Moroccans (or Tunisians, Egyptians, Syrians, Iranians…) who were blogging themselves, we tackled subjects like whether Islam can act as a progressive and democratic force, whether traditional identity is compatible with modern ideas of individual rights, and how (even then, four years before the Arab Spring) internet activism can enable young people to engage in critical thinking and challenge the “red lines” of the authoritarian state. I deeply appreciate the exchanges we had then, in which a community formed that supported and enriched each others’ efforts. Quite often, a theme raised on one blog would be taken up and expanded on other blogs in a web of interconnected commentary and debate. Many of the people I met then, online, ended up becoming friends in the real world when I returned to Morocco in 2009. But for all its richness, that era died out — and since those days, I’ve struggled to feel the same motivation for blogging I felt then.

One thing that happened is that many of my friends from that era simply stopped blogging, and they’ve stopped coming here to comment on new pieces I write. Their blogs are either updated so rarely as to have gone into a coma, or they’ve disappeared altogether. Of course, I’m as responsible for this failure as anyone, as a glance at my archives will show — my blogging has slowed dramatically in the past three or four years. Another problem, which isn’t really a problem at all, is that events have caught up with us, and leaped beyond us. Instead of merely speculating about the possibility of change in the Arab world, now we are living it, with upheavals in many countries that are far more dramatic than anything we could have imagined in 2007. Journalists also cover the Arab world very differently today. It’s no longer just about the way the Middle East impacts the security of Western states (though it’s still too much about that) — the media have finally figured out that history can be made in the Arab world, by and for Arabs, just like in Latin America, Asia, or anywhere else. So what we were trying to do as bloggers is maybe less necessary now. People no longer need to be persuaded of what we were saying, because those who went into the streets took it out of our hands. Certainly it’s out of my hands as a Western observer — and in the hands of Egyptians, Tunisians, Libyans, Syrians, and all the rest.

Another point I want to make is that as a blogger, at a certain point one has to make a decision. Either one is going to “turn pro,” become an “authority,” or keep doing what one is doing as a purely personal venture. Nearly all of the bloggers I follow regularly now are the ones who’ve gone pro. Either they are working journalists who keep blogs as part of their work, or they are academics who follow social, political, and economic trends regularly and in depth. A few are activists who’ve made a name for themselves, and made the leap to being full-time policy voices. I might, at some point, have had my own chance to “turn pro” — but if there’s anything I’ve been consistent about throughout my life, it’s that I’m not an expert on anything — especially not a place as rich and complex as Morocco, where I wasn’t born and raised, and don’t have any kind of special insider knowledge. As a teenager I used to hate “experts” who set themselves up to talk about the very things they know least about. In the field of Arab or Islamic culture, such people are called Orientalists — and I’m damned if I’m going to Orientalize my time in Morocco, because Morocco is not my sphere of expertise, it’s my everyday life, and these are my friends. So, paradoxically, since returning to Fez in 2009, I’ve found it harder to talk about Morocco than when I was away, because it’s too real, too intimate, and too mundane. If I see kids with smart phones in the local café, does that mean there’s an “emerging Moroccan middle class”? If I see a street protest, does that mean “Moroccans are losing their fear”? I’ll leave that to the objectifiers, the specialists, the “experts” real and imagined. This blog will have to remain personal, if it is to continue to exist at all.

That said, I apologize for not writing here more often in recent times. I realize I still have friends who come here occasionally to learn what I’m up to, or to discover my thoughts on this or that — and they’re bound to be disappointed if, as is the case now, I haven’t authored a new post in several weeks. For this, I have several excuses. In our era of instant communication, where the world’s news stories are updated online from minute to minute, there are times when I get so caught up in chasing all the latest developments, and examining the new leads, that I have no time left over to write about what I’m reading. Besides, there are others who do that for a living, so if my readers really wanted that information, they could get it for themselves in the same way I do. I’m thinking about events like the new Egyptian constitution that was approved last year in an atmosphere of extreme political tension, or the controversy around the selection of Chuck Hagel as U.S. Secretary of Defense, or the recent elections in Israel and Italy, or the selection of a new Pope, or the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent hunt for the suspects. When, in the past, I’ve tried to comment on events like these as they happen, I’m often embarassed by what I write just a few days later, because by then the rush of events has made my initial reaction look foolish and incomplete. Perhaps in the future I’ll just throw up a few links to whatever stories I’m reading at the moment, as I’ve seen other bloggers do, without even a word of commentary, and let you, my readers, follow them if you like. It pains me to do this, because I like to explain what I’m thinking, but in this busy world, who has time to stop and explain?

Besides the difficulty of keeping up with events, there are other reasons why I don’t update my blog more often. One is that, obviously, I have a personal life that takes priority. If someone close to me is experiencing pain and difficulty, that takes a toll on me that makes it hard to focus on blogging until the situation is resolved. In a similar vein, if there is happiness around me, my instinct is to jump in and live the moment, rather than set that aside for an abstract pleasure like blogging. Beyond that, I’ve found that I can’t always vent my feelings, be they good or bad, in a public place like this, because they involve other people who may cherish their privacy. So I edit out a good deal when I write here, and I don’t like to do that, because I’m a fairly transparent person by nature. The result is that I stick to abstract subjects like politics that don’t touch me directly, which gives an incomplete picture of what really matters to me. What I care about most are people — people as unique individuals — and this blog began as an effort to reach out to people in new ways. Yet paradoxically, blogging takes me away from the people I care about, or they take me away from the blog. I still haven’t found the right balance between self-exposure, which makes writing real, and the abstraction needed to make what I say matter in a lasting, universal way. Occasionally I feel like I’ve hit the right balance — as in In or Out? which explores my conflicting impulses toward engagement or isolation, or Women: Parasites or Saviors? which asks where misogyny comes from — and these are among my most popular posts. I’d love to do more of this kind of writing, but all I can say is, I’ll try. The flash of inspiration doesn’t always come when I need it, nor do I always have the time.

So where do we go next? For a while, I was thinking of wiping the slate clean. I would take all my old articles offline, and start over with a new look and new themes. The focus would no longer be on current events, but rather on culture and history. Perhaps I would talk about the books that I’m reading, like Paul Bowles’ The Spider’s House, or Khalil and Dimna, a fable from ancient India, or Utopia by Ahmed Tawfik, a nihilist’s view of near-future Egypt. I would talk about the films that I’ve seen lately that interest me, whether old (Heaven’s Gate, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Battle of Algiers) or new (Enter the Void, Road to Nowhere, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Headless Woman). I would talk about the relation between psychology and propaganda, as related in the documentary Century of the Self. I would mention the music I’m listening to, from Carlos Gardel to Fela Kuti to Joy Division, and the trips that I’ve taken, to the Dades Gorge in southern Morocco, or to the Mani Peninsula in Greece. I might throw in a few photos, along with descriptions of where they were taken and what they mean to me. I might even offer some poetry and short fiction. I would describe the researches I’ve done on the reign of Edward II of England, or the White Lotus movement in Yuan dynasty China. (Just recently, a friend asked me if Voltaire had provided “elite justifications” for slavery, and I researched that too, finding to my shock that it’s more true than you might think.) I would write posts that start from nowhere and go nowhere, and expose thoughts that to an outsider must seem arbitrary, chaotic, and fleeting. Above all, eatbees blog would avoid the news of the day, and instead offer a glimpse of my broader enthusiasms, however whimsical and opaque. The blog would take on a new identity, and become something entirely different from what it’s been until now.

On reflection, I decided that I can do all that without wiping the previous blog from existence. It’s one thing to make a fresh start, but I owe it to those who commented here in the old days to keep a record of what we did then. Many of those articles still attract readers, either because they are linked from other sites, or because people find them in web searches. Besides, even if I start anew, there’s no guarantee, despite my best intentions, that I’ll update the blog any more often than I have in the recent past. I’ll still be just as busy as I am now, and as easily distracted — and writing will be just as much work. Better to have a solid foundation, then, of past articles, than start over from zero. If I did wipe the blog clean, the site might remain empty for a long time! If I leave the past work in place, however, and keep plugging away, then over time the tone of the blog will change naturally on its own, and people will see that change for themselves. No reason to get too dramatic about it.

I do want to express here, however, my intention to do something different, and strike off in a new direction. And in this, I hope you will help me. First of all, we have to return to the days when comments were frequent, and the commenters (you) talked to each other. So if you’re out there, even if you’re not the sort of person who normally comments on blogs, please take the time to leave a comment on this post. Maybe you just want to say hi! Maybe you want to give me a push to post here more often — and in that case, the best way to do that is to tell me what you want to hear. Do you want pictures of mountain goats? My poetry translated into Arabic? A list of my favorite rap songs? Stories of paranoia and drug addiction in Reagan’s America? Shocking images of babies thrown from towers into the jaws of crocodiles? An examination of Brahman and Atman and how this relates to Gnostic Christianity? A discussion of dark matter? Links to articles about Fernando Pessoa? Whatever it is, just tell me, and that will be our starting point. Don’t worry, I’m not desperate — I’ll only follow your suggestions if they make sense to me. I already have a life, and I don’t need whatever attention this blog brings. But I do enjoy a good conversation, and I’m curious about you, so I’m leaving the door open to see who walks in. Leave a note!

Yahya Dbouk, “Gaza Attack Will Break the Siege,” Al-Akhbar English (Beirut):

“For the Palestinians, there can be no ceasefire without an end to the siege on Gaza, regardless of how this is reached. There can also be no ceasefire without Israel pledging that they will not resume their assassinations when things are calmer, and attacks by both sides have stopped.”

If the Palestinians can achieve this, and Israel can achieve guarantees (backed by Egypt?) that missiles will no longer be brought into Gaza or fired from there (which means monitoring land and sea traffic once the blockade is lifted), a more durable peace is possible.

From today’s New York Times:

“Israeli forces killed at least 11 people, including several children, in a single airstrike that destroyed a home [in Gaza City] on Sunday…. The airstrike, which the Israeli military said was meant to kill a Palestinian militant involved in the recent rocket attacks, was the deadliest operation to date…. Among the dead were five women and four small children, The Associated Press reported, citing a Palestinian health official. …

“‘There’s no country on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,’ Mr. Obama said in his first public comments since the violence broke out. ‘We are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself.’”

So the U.S. position is that missiles raining down on Gaza from Israel are justified self-defense, while missiles raining down on Israel from Gaza are something no country on earth would tolerate.

UPDATE: One day later, however, we see a little nuance.

“William Hague, the British foreign minister, said in a television appearance on Sunday that he and Prime Minister David Cameron ‘stressed to our Israeli counterparts that a ground invasion of Gaza would lose Israel a lot of the international support and sympathy that they have in this situation,’ The Associated Press reported.”

And this:

“Reda Fahmy, a member of Egypt’s upper house of Parliament and of the nation’s dominant Islamist party, who is following the talks…insisted Sunday that Israel was to blame for starting the current round of violence by killing Hamas’s top military leader, and that Israel would have to act to end it. … ‘We can’t pressure the victim while the perpetrator isn’t even ready to settle,’ he said.”

So who is to blame for starting the violence? Was it the militants of Gaza for escalating their rocket attacks over the past months, or was it Israel for its assassination of Hamas’ military leader, Ahmed Jabari, at the very moment when he was preparing to sign off on a long-term cease-fire proposal? Peace activist Gershon Baskin writes in the New York Times:

“Passing messages between the two sides [Israel and Hamas], I was able to learn firsthand that Mr. Jabari wasn’t just interested in a long-term cease-fire; he was also the person responsible for enforcing previous cease-fire understandings brokered by the Egyptian intelligence agency. … On the morning that he was killed, Mr. Jabari received a draft proposal for an extended cease-fire with Israel, including mechanisms that would verify intentions and ensure compliance. This draft was agreed upon by me and Hamas’s deputy foreign minister, Mr. Hamad, when we met last week in Egypt.”

More on Baskin’s cease-fire proposal here. Baskin was the one responsible for opening back-channel negotiations with Hamas that led to Gilad Shalit’s release.

Robert Wright, “The Real David Petraeus Scandal,” The Atlantic:

“In contrast to things like invading or bombing a country as part of some well-defined and plausibly finite campaign, our drone strike program is diffuse and, by all appearances, endless. Every month, God knows how many people are killed in the name of the US in any of several countries, and God knows how many of these people were actually militants, or how many of the actual militants were actual threats to the US, or how much hatred the strikes are generating or how much of that hatred will eventually morph into anti-American terrorism. It might behoove us, before we accept this nauseating spectacle as a permanent feature of life, to fill in as many of these blanks as possible.”

President Obama has only been reelected for one week, and already the U.S. and the world seem to be hit with a series of cascading crises, real and manufactured: the “fiscal cliff” budget negotiations in Washington; the Petraeus scandal; ongoing controversy over Benghazi; the recognition of the Syrian opposition by France, Turkey, and the Gulf States; signs of revolution in Jordan; unrest across southern Europe regarding austerity; and what looks like will soon be a new land war in Gaza. It’s as if the world held its collective breath until after the American elections, and is now vomiting all its accumulated bile at once.

The “fiscal cliff” is a manufactured problem, in the sense that it can be solved as soon as Obama can agree with Republican members of Congress on a plan to reduce the federal deficit, most likely through a combination of increased revenues (higher tax rates or lower deduction limits for the top 2%), tweaks to Social Security and Medicare, and trimming of domestic programs. Progressives insist there is no reason to cut the deficit for now, and technically they are right, because world markets are eager to buy U.S. Treasuries and fund our further debt. However, there is a limit to what the market will bear, as seen in Greece, Spain, Italy, and even France, which are all being forced into austerity precisely because the markets are unwilling to finance further spending. Nor do we want to end up like Japan, which has no problem with the markets but has carried debt equal to 200% of GDP for the better part of tweo decades, putting a brake on its economy. Careful debt trimming doesn’t seem like a bad idea to me, as a cautionary measure for the future. The trick will be to make most of the burden fall on the wealthy who have benefitted enormously over the past ten years, and are still benefiting despite the crisis, while preserving support for working families and small businesses that are essential to our fragile recovery. I have hope that common sense will prevail, and a reasonable compromise will be found over the coming weeks.

The Petraeus scandal — in which CIA director David Petraeus was caught in an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, when Broadwell sent threatening emails to another woman, Jill Kelley, whom she saw as a rival — provides a fascinating glimpse into how politics at the top level in Washington is deeply personal. Critics of the CIA-run drone warfare program, and the related militarization of the CIA, have rightly questioned why these aren’t the real scandal, rather than a personal dalliance that should have concerned no one but the parties involved. True, but people forget that for better or worse, Washington is a tightly knit social circle of highly ambitious people drawn by the taste of power. With elected officials, political appointees, military officers, lobbyists, and pundits switching roles as they climb the ladder of influence, there is much opportunity for intrigue, and personal relations do affect policy. Some people have asked whether Petraeus really had to resign, but he was the CIA director, and he exposed himself to the possibility of blackmail and manipulation — either from Broadwell herself if she turned vengeful, or from some interested third party who found out. Moreover, and most important in my mind, it seems that he didn’t report the situation to his boss, the Director of National Intelligence, as soon as he realized he was in hot water. Even after being interviewed by the FBI, he apparently said nothing, as if hoping to keep it to himself until it blew over. If I were his boss, James R. Clapper, the first thing I would have asked him after learning what happened is, “Why am I hearing this from the FBI and not from you?” Petraeus showed every sign of putting personal interest above the interests of the institution he was serving, and this would be a firing offense in any company.

The question of what happened in Benghazi seems to be one of those controversies that is ginned up for political advantage. Dark motives are being attributed to the Obama administration for initially blaming the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others on an angry mob gone out of control, rather than a preplanned attack by an extremist militia. The idea is that the Obama administration ignores terrorist threats or is perhaps even an enabler of them, and is now engaged in a coverup of that fact. This ignores that Ambassador Stevens himself was the person most responsible for assessing his embassy’s security needs, and he chose to take risks so he could meet with local leaders in their own homes, something that won him respect and admiration. Bssides, whether the attack was preplanned or not seems like a matter of semantics, since the Ansar al-Sharia militia was based nearby and its potential for violence was well known. Did they have the September 11 date in mind all along, or did they seize the opportunity of a mob that had gathered to protest the anti-Mohammed film? These are the kinds of details it is impossible to judge without careful investigation — and faced with the need to inform the American public, the administration went with the information it had in the first days after the attack. Those trying to turn this into a scandal seem to have the impression that the administration deliberately leaves its embassies unprotected because of “sensitivities in the region.” This is absurd because the last person interested in risking Stevens’ life was Obama himself, who had chosen this man for the post above all others because of his unique understanding of Libya and his communicative gifts.

Turning from Washington scandals to world affairs, the U.S. has finally succeeded, working behind the scenes with Qatar, France, Turkey, and its other allies in the region, to cajole the Syrian opposition into forming a unified coalition with a reasonable claim to international recognition and support. France has already granted recognition to the Syrian National Coalition as the sole representative of the Syrian people, and it is poised to send them arms and other material aid. Turkey and six Gulf States have also extended recognition. While the U.S. is awaiting further proofs of the group’s legitimacy before going as far as Turkey or France, they are clearly pleased at this latest step, which Hillary Clinton called for a month ago. (When Hillary speaks, the world responds!) I suspect that the next move will be to help the SNC to establish a provisional government within Syria, perhaps with the aid of “humanitarian corridors” to ensure a flow of supplies, from which they will be able to call on the world to protect them against Assad’s aerial attacks. This will lead to either the declaration of a “no-fly zone” and an endgame similar to Libya, or if the Russians resist this, then pressure on the Russians to wash their hands of Assad and ensure a negotiated solution. In either case, NATO, the Arab League, and the U.S. are coming out of the closet in their direct backing of the Syrian opposition — and with that coalition behind them, it will be only a matter of time before the uprising succeeds.

This may seem like smart maneuvering by the Americans, or at least effective management of a situation they neither initiated nor control, but developments in neighboring Jordan cut against American interests in the short term. How many destabilized countries can the Middle East afford at once? Iraq has never returned to a stabilty after it was invaded by George W. Bush; tensions are rising in Lebanon as its many factions take sides in the Syrian confilct; and Egypt’s path to stability remains precarious a year and a half after the fall of Mubarak. Now Jordan, a U.S. ally and one of two Arab nations (along with Egypt) to have a peace treaty with Israel, has experienced three straight days of protests and rioting, aimed not at the puppet government but directly at the king. The trigger for the protests was a rise in the price of gasoline and bottled gas, due to the reduction of subsidies as part of economic reform efforts. Reports state that those protesting aren’t so much members of the organized opposition, but rather the underclass that knows little of politics, but regards their economic future with increasing desperation. Elections are coming soon that the opposition is likely to win, but recent constitutional reforms still leave King Abdullah with near-absolute power. He has already changed prime ministers four times in the past year, leaving himself isolated, with no positive effect on the lives of the people. This is an explosive situation that will be tricky to manage, should a longstanding U.S. ally fall to a popular uprising before the situation is resolved in Syria in favor of the NATO/Gulf alliance.

In Europe, the rolling austerity crisis trundles on with no end in sight. The EU as a whole just went officially into recession, meaning that it has known two consecutive quarters of economic contraction. The Greek parliament passed yet another round of severe austerity measures, guaranteeing the next installment of EU bailout aid, as violent protests occurred outside. Meanwhile, Spain and Portugal underwent a day of general strikes, as labor movements in Italy and elsewhere protested in solidarity. It’s possible that at some point a tipping point will be reached, and the people of southern Europe will decide that the price of economic unity with the more prosperous north is one they are no longer willing to pay. However, until now the politicians have been able to bring the people along with them, almost despite themselves, because everyone knows that the cost of a Euro breakup would be worse than the pain of gritting their teeth, for now, and enduring the attempts to fix the system. My sense is that eventually the crisis will burn itself out and stability will return, at the cost of several years or even a decade of lost economic potential for Europe. The alternative is a direct challenge to the global capitalist order itself. That could be interesting, but it’s not on the horizon for now.

And finally, on top of all that, things are heating up again in Gaza. You will recall that the last time Israel staged a ground invasion there, the result was hundreds of civilians dead (along with a large number of militants), leading to the Goldstone Report accusing Israel of war crimes, and the embarassing American veto of that report at the UN. Now, Israel is poised to do it again — they say they will invade Gaza and personally target any Hamas leader who dares to show his face. Apparently there have been an unusual number of missles landing in Israeli territory lately, and Israel has decided it is time to practice its favorite sport, aggressive deterrence. The first step was the assassination by missile of Ahmed al-Jabari, described in the Western press as Hamas’ top military leader. This was followed by a series of air strikes on missile launching sites in Gaza, and the ground invasion is now days, if not hours, away. President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt, whose Muslim Brotherhood faction shares ideological roots with Hamas, addressed the nation to say, “The Israelis must understand that we do not accept this aggression.” He also recalled his ambassador to Israel, and called on President Obama and the UN to intervene. He later went to Gaza himself on a solidarity visit, perhaps forcing the Israelis to put off their invasion for a day or two. Past experience shows that once the Israelis have made up their minds to do something, no outside pressure will deter them until they themselves decide they are finished. So we are likely to see a week or two of carnage in Gaza, adding yet one more match to the tinderbox in a region where flames are already bursting out all over.

Welcome to your second term, President Obama, and best of luck!

Why did President Obama seem tired and off his game during last night’s debate with Mitt Romney? My theory:

“The Turkish military pounded targets inside Syria on Thursday in retaliation for the mortar attack a day earlier that killed five civilians in Turkey. … The exchanges sent tremors across a region fearful that the mounting violence in Syria would spill into neighboring countries. … The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to which Turkey belongs and whose charter calls in some cases for collective action when one of its members is targeted militarily, met Wednesday night to discuss the crisis. … ‘The conflict in Syria is spilling well over its borders,’ said Andrew Tabler, a Syria analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. ‘I don’t see how the Obama administration continues policy as usual after this.’”

Both Turkey and Syria are saying they don’t want this border incident to spark a larger war, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Just a reminder that being president means being confronted with unpredictable challenges, even on the night of a big debate which could determine your political future. Romney, on the contrary, looked energetic and refreshed. He doesn’t yet have these worries.

President Obama addressed the anti-Mohammed hate video yesterday in his speech to the United Nations. I feel that he got the balance just about right.

[Over] the last two weeks…a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well — for as the city outside these walls [New York] makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and religion. We are home to Muslims who worship across our country. We not only respect the freedom of religion — we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe. We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them.

I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. The answer is enshrined in our laws: our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech. Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense. Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs. Moreover, as President of our country, and Commander-in-Chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so. Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views — even views that we disagree with.

We do so not because we support hateful speech, but because our Founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views, and practice their own faith, may be threatened. We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics, or oppress minorities. We do so because given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech — the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.

When I met last week with two Moroccan friends whom I hadn’t seen in a while, the first thing each of them wanted to talk about (the meetings were separate) was the anti-Mohammed hate film and the controversy it has caused. Both of them were upset, but they are worldly types who know that YouTube is filled with all kinds of trash, so they weren’t thrown into a frenzy by the simple fact that such a film could exist. They know they are haters out there. What they did want to know was how the U.S. government could stand by and do nothing, when the film was clearly designed to insult a whole community of innocent people (Muslim believers), and stir up trouble. Especially once the embassies were attacked and four Americans killed, wasn’t it the government’s obligation to shut the film down — if only to protect their own interests, not to mention prevent further offense? And didn’t their refusal to do so represent some kind of endorsement?

My response was, first of all, to point out that the filmmakers are a bunch of losers, completely unknown before the film went viral and had its stunning “success.” It is beyond the capacities of even the U.S. government to watch every video on YouTube, and estimate the potential for future harm before it happens. My friends were doubtful about this, perhaps because they give too much credit to the power and reach of the U.S. government, and perhaps because they live in a state that keeps a watchful eye on everything its citizens are doing and thinking. But I explained that our government has far more important things to worry about than fringe dwellers on YouTube. They are engaged in wars, overt and covert, in several nations, and are trying to figure out if Iran is preparing a nuclear bomb. They are trying to manage a financial crisis at home, and deal with the consequences of its bastard stepchild in Europe. There is the Chinese leadership transition to think about, and so on. Do they really have the time to notice a video on YouTube which, until the events of last week, only a few thousand people had seen?

My friends accepted this logic, though they still had their doubts. They began to look around for a conspiracy, and insist that there was more to this than met the eye. Surely Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, Steve Klein, and the others hadn’t made this film on their own. Someone had put them up to it — perhaps the Syrians, perhaps the Israelis, perhaps even the U.S. government itself. I mentioned Occam’s Razor, the idea that when trying to decide why something happened, the explanation “that makes the fewest assumptions” is often the best. Sometimes, I said, Oswald really is the lone gunner, the planes that flew into the World Trade Center are the cause of its collapse, and a hate film made by a bunch of nobodies is able to provoke rage in twenty countries. To imagine otherwise is to believe not only that the conspirators can forsee the results of their actions with eerie precision, but that they are able to control everything down to the smallest detail to get the intended result. Sometimes, I insisted, stuff happens — things no one saw coming, that create the illusion of a malign genius pulling the strings.

This left one other question on the table. Once the damage done by the film became known, why did the U.S. government continue to defend its right to exist? Why didn’t they just pull it off the internet, and arrest the filmmakers? This may seem like an outrageous question to many Americans, who put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the mobs who resorted to violence. For an American, a verbal assault never justifies violence — they are two different things, and a person who leaps from one to the other is displaying a moral weakness, a dangerous lack of self-control. (We can argue whether this is really true. What about bar fights? But we do tend to blame the person who threw the first punch, not the first slur.) My friends, who come from a different culture, see things from a different angle. For them, social harmony is more important, and freedom of speech is never the right to insult and defame. They see nothing wrong with expecting people to dress modestly, avoid vulgar language, and keep their carousing out of sight. After all, your grandmother might be offended — it’s a simple question of respect. Even more so for a film whose sole purpose is to offend others. Isn’t that like dumping your garbage on someone’s lawn? What right does that have to be protected speech?

I explained what free speech means in America. Different societies have different standards, I said, and the U.S. has perhaps the broadest standard of all. The only red lines I’m aware of are direct calls to violence, or spreading false information (such as slander or fraud) that does material harm. Even then, a crime must be proven, with evidence of intent and according to law. There is simply no way to remove a film proactively from circulation, on the simple assumption that someone’s feelings might be hurt. So there is nothing illegal about the Mohammed film, no matter how disgusting we may find it — and there’s a reason for that. America was settled by people fleeing from religious or political persecution, and they placed a very high value on the freedom to express their beliefs. In fact, this is the core value on which all our other freedoms are based. To protect that right, we must extend it to everyone. This means that no matter how strange or offensive an opinion may be to the rest of us, we protect it in order to protect our own perhaps equally bizarre opinions. And we accept the consequences of this, namely that we can never expect the government to step in and tell someone he’s wrong. If we find an opinion harmful we need to defeat it in argument, not through the force of the state — or just learn to “live and let live.”

Of course, as I think any American understands, this is the ideal, but the reality is far from perfect. These protections weren’t extended to Communists in the 1950s, who were considered to be agents of an enemy power. Another example is the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were persecuted in the 1940s for refusing military service on religious grounds. Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, was martyred in 1844, and from the Wobblies to the Civil Rights movement to the Occupy movement today, the U.S. government has a history of spying on opposition movements. Perhaps to a greater extent than we realize, we pick and choose which opinions to tolerate, which to celebrate, and which to suppress or condemn. The idea of freedom of speech as an incontrovertible right plays a fundamential role in our self-image as Americans, but in practice, we do place limits in the name of protecting ourselves against a greater danger. So the question remains — why is the Mohammed film okay, particularly when it has placed our relations with a large part of the world at risk? Is it possible that this is a symptom of something deeper in the American psyche? Is it possible that hate speech against Muslims is something we are prepared to defend, more so than other forms of hate speech?

Keep in mind, this film didn’t appear in a vacuum. Now, this isn’t the same as saying that the film was made by hidden conspirators, or anyone other than the handful of losers whose names we know. But there does exist an international network of anti-Muslim hate groups, from the English Defence League to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to people like Anders Behring Brevik, the Norweigian mass murderer, that has strong roots in the U.S. as well. Bloggers like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are the “intellectual” leaders of this movement, with Geller currently running ads on buses and subways in American cities that refer to Muslims as “savages.” Politicians like Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachman, and Peter King have lent their support to this movement as well. Mosques have been burned, referendums have been passed against the nonexistent threat of Sharia law, and an attempt to build a Muslim cultural center in lower Manhattan drew national controversy before it was finally approved. Our own president is often accused of being a Muslim — as if that were the deepest insult, a fatal sign of his “otherness.” Fortunately none of these are majority views. But it does show a certain tolerance for anti-Muslim hate speech, a double standard that calls into question our claim to universal rights.

In defending the right to make a film insulting Mohammed, are we merely sticking up for our principles? Or are we picking and choosing? If a group of Hezbollah supporters living in the U.S. were to make a film portraying Jews as pederasts, money-grubbers, and depraved lunatics — which is how Mohammed was portrayed — would our first instinct be to champion their right to free speech? Or would outrage and condemnation rain down from all sides, along with calls to investigate their finances, their network of connections, and even kick them out of the country? Perhaps the viewpoint of my Moroccan friends, which places social harmony first and asks people to use their rights responsibly, is worth hearing. Of course, it’s never okay to storm an embassy by scaling the walls, setting fires, sacking and pillaging. But that shouldn’t obscure the fact that millions of people who didn’t do these things — engineers, grandmothers, shopkeepers, schoolchildren — were deeply hurt and offended. Is our message to them that we don’t care, because they’re Muslims and somehow deserve it? Or can we show some respect? If they were our neighbors — which in this world of YouTube and Twitter, we all are — would we toss our garbage on their lawn, or would we strive to be neighborly?

It feels silly to appeal to basic decency, because that’s such an unhip value. It feels silly to say, “Muslims are people too,” but they are. Perhaps the rush of claims and counterclaims in the media makes us lose track of that fact. Muslims aren’t some abstract group of “others.” They get up in the morning and have breakfast, kiss the kids and send them to school, get on the bus to go to work, sell shoes or chop meat or fill out paperwork, study hard because they want to pass the test, have illicit affairs, go drinking with their pals, fall asleep in front of the TV. What are we trying to say to these people, when we claim that it is an American value to insult their religion, their cherished beliefs, and the bonds that tie them together? I support the right of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula to make that film — it’s our principle of free speech. But I think there’s a conversation we should be having as Americans, as to whether it’s the right thing to do. After all, we value social harmony as much as Muslims do. We voluntarily place limits on our own freedom. We don’t think it’s okay to walk up to people on the street and start hurling insults — so why do it on YouTube? It may be legal, and it may be protected speech, but a person obesessed with insulting others is not very healthy. Perhaps we should shame them in the same way we shame anti-Black racists, or anti-Semites. If Muslims are the last group in the world whom it’s okay for Americans to insult, that doesn’t reflect very well on us as a culture.

You know, the looters and moochers who are in the tank for Obama no matter what.

Mitt Romney, caught on tape at a fundraiser:

“All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what… These are people who pay no income tax…. So my job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

The term “looters and moochers” comes from Ayn Rand, the inspiration for Romney running mate Paul Ryan’s political philosophy. In Rand’s alternate universe, uber-capitalist superheroes are the “job creators,” while those of us who want some kind of social safety net are bloodsuckers leading America into a world of collectivist depravity. For an interesting take-down of Rand’s early admiration for serial killer William Edward Hickman, see this piece by Mark Ames.

By the way, Ayn Rand said on a 1979 talk show that Israel is the “advanced, technological, civilized country amidst a group of almost totally primitive savages,” so she had that part of the modern Republican Party philosophy down too.

Read this now. He gets everything right.

“The same danger is now looming from Cairo to Benghazi to the rest of the Arab and Muslim world—for militant Salafis or Wahhabis to abuse this ignoramus film to derail a world historic succession of revolutions. … The US has done enough atrocities around the globe to be blamed for just about everything—but this is a different season—this is the season of the Green Movement and the Arab Spring—do not be fooled by these zealotries of the fanatics who are trying to steal the revolution. … President Obama must do absolutely nothing. The true measure of his statesmanship is [to]…let Muslims raise their own voice in condemning both bigotry and violence at one and the time—as indeed we see it happening in both Libya and Egypt…. This is the season of the Arab Spring—binary banalities of fanatics on both sides of the divide cannot derail the course of history anymore.”