Says Usama1: "Saudi Arabia is a nationalistic monarchy of the Saudi tribe. It gained power through British colonial intervention and it has sustained control through British then American military and political power"
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This is partly incorrect. The Saudis gained power through tribal warfare and dynastic politics. They have maintained power INTERNALLY through tribal politics. They have used British and American alliances to protect them from FOREIGN threats. Like Iraq and Iran.

The only role that "British colonial intervention" played in the Saudi rise to power was to limit it. Abdul Aziz al Saud wanted to add Trans-Jordan, Palestine and Syria to his kingdom, but was prevented from doing do by the British. It didn't go well for the Arabs. One famous incident involved a British biplane pursuing camel-mounted Bedouin cavaly for miles with machine guns blazing. Then the British set up the deposed rulers of western Arabia as the rulers of Jordan & Iraq to limit Saudi expension.

Usama says:
Slavery? Aha , yes throw it on the fault of the Muslim world!!!!!

The world abolished slavery but Muslim countries did not. They could not because their Allah stated in the Quran, which is the main source if not the only source for their constitutions, that "A man can marry two, three or four wives plus all the slaves he owns."
Who hunted the African tribes for slaves other than the Arab Muslims? A negro is referred to as an "Abed"(slave in Arabic) on the streets of Khartoum today and Negroes of Sudan refer to the Arab hybrids of the North as "Jallaba" (slave trader in Arabic). Usama! if you do not believe me just visit there.

WestTexan and Abhab,
Saudi Arabia is a nationalistic monarchy of the Saudi tribe. It gained power through British colonial intervention and it has sustained control through British then American military and political power. It is currently a diehard ally of America with (?)trillions invested in the American economy. It is NOT, repeat, NOT representative of Islam. It is an amalgamation of European born state nationalism, monarchy, and capitalism, with selective application of Islamic law.

The Saudis are notorious for ruling with hypocricy. Muslims are the first to point that out.

Slavery? Aha , yes throw it on the fault of the Muslim world!!!!!

Except THE WORLD IS LED BY THE WEST, SPECIFICALLY AMERICA AND EUROPE!!! In fact, the America set up and/or leads the institutions which govern the world, such as the UN, World Bank, NATO, GATT!!!! And the world economy is led by the G7 nations which are led by America, the world's single most powerful national economy! And the capitalist model propagated by America is: privatization, deregulation, globalization.

And despite all of this, slavery has become pervasive, ecspecially in the heart of the Free World, the West, the Capitalist Christian world: Europe!!!! As I said, even the FBI admits to 10s of 1000s of slaves in America at any time.

The reality is: slavery 1400 years ago is not slavery today. Slavery has been officially outlawed in every country of the world. But the Capitalist model pushed by the G7, World Bank, IMF is: Privatization, Deregulation, Globalization.
The absence of government regulation & oversight gave life to the trend which has also allowed for Wall street to fleece America of $1 trillion dollars while failing to fund pensions and retirement accounts to a tune of $over 500 billion. So its no surprise that this same Capitalist led World has also given rise to global slavery just as it has given rise to global trade in narcotic drugs.

I believe they call this beneficial, productive chaos.
But who is benefitting from this Capitalist 'chaos'?

Hi,
BEfore asserting own rights let also know the rights of others.
An open society doesnot mean a society of group of abuser abusing each other in the name of the freedom of speech.
Can an indivudual ride on the collective will?
i donot think that society is going to loose freedom with just this act.There are more things we to also see.wes hould promote creative wrintg based on fact not the abuser writer based on fiction.

Indeed, publishers should NOT be cowed. But cowed they are, and easily, too, most often by a cowardly unwillingness to challenge Establishment interests.

Was it by accident that, in the run up to war, virtually all the "mainstream" outlets in America repeated without question Administration talking points about the imminence of Saddam's threat, his WMDs, his ties to bin Laden, to al Qaeda, and his culpability for the fall of the Twin Towers?

Reporting before we attacked, the European press proved it was in no way confused about what we now know to have been true: Bush's justifications were bogus pretexts.

It's much like shooting frogs in a barrel to bewail radical muslims muzzling the press.

But Mr. Goodhart's piece performs a useful service nevertheless: by lashing an easy, "foreign" target, while ignoring the servility of the American press to confront U.S. officials who lawlessly embarked on war, Mr. Goodhart has established his own servility, and his own marvelous prospects for continued employment in the American mainstream.

Gary A

Westtexan 2008 tells Usama

“In Saudi, humans are still regularly bought and sold (de jure slavery);”

This is true in most of the predominantly Muslim countries because their religion allows slavery and none had abolished it. Their prophet owned slaves. You probably have seen the slave market in Jeddah. I have seen the one in Omdurman, Sudan. I know that people are bought and sold in Sudan till this day.
Mohammad Ali, the founder of the last Egyptian dynasty, invaded Sudan in the early 19th Century mainly to cash in on the slave trade.

"noslok Author Profile Page:
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Ben Franklin
October 9, 2008 3:34 PM | Report Offensive Comments"

thats why the chinese execute those involved in crimes against humanity like terrorists and drug dealing...problem solved...

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Ben Franklin

Usama1,

Thank you. Your last post helps make my point for me.

It is the Liberty, Fraternity and Equality of Western Philosophic Liberalism that allows each of us to post on this free website as equal s – a right that would evaporate under the rule of jihadists. One merely need look at Saudi Arabia or Iran or the Maldives to know this to be true.
As to economic Imperialism and slavery, one need only look again to Saudi Arabia again. While there are abuses in the West, they are treated as criminal acts. In Saudi, humans are still regularly bought and sold (de jure slavery); the passports of third-country nationals held by their employers (de facto slavery) and laws only selectively enforced based on one’s ‘position in society.’ The society that the jihadists long for has economic imperialism as one of its hallmarks – of course, they are the ‘haves’ in that picture – and based on their rhetoric and two current examples that I cite, the very rich will always be very rich and the very poor will always be very poor.

(I am using Saudi Arabia as the example because it is the spiritual home of much of the world’s jihadism and is a country with which I am very familiar.)

Clash of Civilizations?
Except in reality, Enlightened liberalism means: economic imperialism and institutionalized greed.

Fraternity?
Except slavery is now more pervasive at higher numbers than at any time in history. And that slavery is NOT a result of some economic necessity, rather its a result of greed, lust, and the corruption of justice and authority.

We have a fundamental clash of world view and culture. On one side, Western Enlightenment Liberalism with it's Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. On the other, what is essentially a death cult that sees any view but its own as anathema. One feeds on ideas and shared thoughts, the other on fear and control. One teaches its children to cherish life; the other teaches their children to cherish death. One is often angered by its critics; the other simply silences those who disagree. These two world views cannot co-exist - one must defeat the other.

'Freedom of speech' is not a moral. Its merely a playing field. Its a license to act within certain legal limits. And while some good that has emerged from this, there is also some evil which prospers.

Those who hold a moral standard are not required to accept as equal amorality under the premise of 'freedom of speech'.

And while violence and terrorism is condemnable- and it is- some random individual or group of individuals perpetrating violence for some moral code are NOT the only ones who have resorted to violence to advance their goals. In fact America and Europe have used violence, including terrorism, both state and group levels, to advance their ideological goals.

Just ask much of the 3rd world/developing world today if America and Europe used violence as well as terrorism in order to conqure, subjugate, and alter their lives and societies for American and European advantages which they now assert are protected for 'freedom'.

And Random House acted in a manner in which is true to the purpose and spirit of the idea of 'freedom of speech': free enterprise. Its that businesses are free to 'speak' as they like for commerce: advertising, marketting, promotions, etc., which is the heart of the matter of 'Free speech'. It should be evident by now that actual HUMAN morality is secondary, tertiary even, to the primary interests of allowing free enterprise (ie. you can buy a pill which will extend a certain part of the male anatomy).

It just so happens that the global juggernaut of Free market capitalism which has provided the world with the wonderful Globalized Financial Disaster is confronting a matter which people find more valuable than free enterprise. Simply rolling over these people is the conquerors way.

Concisely, succinctly, beautifully sums up the problem with hobbling free speech.

There is a fundamental discrepancy in the idea of what constitutes free speech across the Atlantic. The European version is willing to compromise free speech to protect the sensibilities of certain minorities. The American version is not.

Europeans see the American version as condoning hate-speech. Americans see the Europeans as appeasing those who would undermine civil liberties. The question is which is the greater evil.

My bias is for absolute free-speech and for intolerance of violence against acts of speech. For one, in a truly free media environment, hate-speech gets exposed for what it is. And, the public domain remains free of sensitivity to any one faith or belief system, protecting everyone equally.

However, the Europeans, due to their bad luck with continental wars, have never really had absolute free-speech, and are very wary of letting public sentiments boil over. They fear public reactions that would be uncontrollable. But in this regard, they remain hostage to anyone who would claim to have his faith offended, for there is no standard or criteria that can be applied. It is not clear to me how this works out in the best public interest.

If my faith is deeply offended by pictures of peeled bananas, and I will firebomb all grocery stores that sell bananas, then my demands will be accommodated.

Actually Random House has no such responsibility. It has a responsibility only to its owners and shareholders. They routinely publish money making drivel and ignore more interesting work so why should anyone be surprised.

However the proliferation of the internet, and the bravery of some small publishing houses renders this all moot. Things today are far less 'filtered' than in the past because of the variety of ways things can get published. This means that not having Random House or some other big publishing house behind you isn't a kiss of death anymore.

Thats a good thing by the way...........

Actually Random House has no such responsibility. It has a responsibility only to its owners and shareholders. They routinely publish money making drivel and ignore more interesting work so why should anyone be surprised.

However the proliferation of the internet, and the bravery of some small publishing houses renders this all moot. Things today are far less 'filtered' than in the past because of the variety of ways things can get published. This means that not having Random House or some other big publishing house behind you isn't a kiss of death anymore.

Thats a good thing by the way...........

Interesting that a furor breaks out when books critical (or allegedly critical) of Islam are censured, but not when books critical of Israel get censored.

Consider the case of Dr. Norman Finkelstein's most recent book, Beyond Chutzpah. This book shows clearly that Israel routinely violates Palestinian human rights, and unmasks Alan Dershowitz as a crude propagandist. Yet Finkelstein found his first publisher pressured into dropping Beyond Chutzpah. When the Univ. of California Press agreed to publish Beyond Chutzpah, it came under tremendous pressure from Dershowitz to drop it. Dershowitz even hired Cravath, Swaine & Moore, one of the elite Wall Street law firms, to write threatening letters.

Fortunately, the UC Press published Beyond Chutzaph, even sending it through extra levels of fact checking and peer review.

But there was no furor in the mainstream media over this. Furor over censorship seems to be reserved only for attempted censorship of books critical of Muslims or Islam.

Nice piece, Mr. Goodhart. Don't worry about Random House, though. They make up for their obvious bias by publishing volumes and volumes about that wonderful, open, ordained-by-G_d "Jewish democracy" (what a contradiction!) in Occupied Palestine. Not.

I agree with the idea of publishing on the internet. An author who writes a controversial book can be paid a cash payment and the book be then allowed to be read online or even downloaded.

Of course I do have to say that Westerners enjoy giving offense and maybe free speech should not be so completely "sacred". Remember when D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller were banned? Now of course they are literary lions, and the divorce rate has gone through the roof. If the Muslim world does not want that, maybe they are more intelligent than we think.

The troublesome fact is that we are all connected. What one person writes affects even those who do not read it. Naturally we don't want to give some honcho the right to decide what shall be read by the public, but we do need some way to enforce public responsibility on writers.

We are too lazy to learn Arabic, or Farsi, but we love to titillate ourselves reading about Muhammad's wife, and we do not have to do any hard work at all! There is something wrong with that kind of "education."

I was not going to comment because, even if the heading "Publishers Should Not Be Cowed" sets out in no uncertain terms Mr. Goodhart's position, his nod to the liberals' choice of 'joining of forces with "deep believers" to declare that it is morally unacceptable to give offense' reveals a false open-mindedness.

But, luckily for me, Mr. Goodhart mentions the financial crisis, and I can seize on that one to recall that, when the late Milton Friedman used to pontificate about the 'incontrovertible statistical evidence' he had marshalled, to gether with Anna Schwartz, in support of his policy prescription that, year-in, year-out whatever phase the business cycle is in, the rate of increase of the money supply should be at a fixed immutable rate, he was dismissed by the fine LSE Economist Frank Hahn as "intellectually lazy". The same criticism applies to Mr. Goodhart's defense of the 'open society'.

Besides relatively recent news about several (admittedly psychologically vulnerable) people being driven to suicide by malicious, unfounded accusations posted in Facebook or on internet blogs, Mr. Goodhart must be aware of the laws relating to libel. Is Mr. Goodhart saying that those laws should be scrapped? Is Mr. Goodhart ready to deny categorically that there is a grey area between the kind of publication that would rightly be subjected to censure by the laws relating to libel and the rest, which grey area could be deemed so deliberately offensive that censure would be more congenail with the right concept of an 'open society' than a totally libertarian publication policy?

What Mr. Goodhart is right to condemn unequivocally is the violence of the method used to express one's right to take offense as well as the timidity of a publisher to take a firm, principled stand.

By failing to articulate his thoughts more clearly, Mr. Good hart is as intellectually lazy as Frank Hahn claimed Milton Friedman to have been. Friedman often had excellent theoretical and empirical contributions to make, but, in the case of the Monetary Rule, he had become as much of a 'fundamentalist' as Ricahrd Dawkins has turned out to be a 'fundamentalist' atheist -- not agnostic, intelligent enough to understand the difference among "known unkown', 'knowable' and 'unknowable', but refusing to apply it to any conception of the sacred or the deity.

David, what a great essay. Brief, concise, courageous and correct. Thanks!

"To bear other people's afflictions, everyone has courage and enough to spare." (Benjamin Franklin)

Well, looks like I'll be buying a copy of Jewel of Medina. To hell with those barbarians.

I am intrigued by the idea of a civilized society in which no one offends anyone else. Does this occur because it is impossible by nature? Or because those who are offended are allowed to kill the offender? I would suggest in line with another comment that the right to be offended goes with the more powerful actor. Being offended and punishing the offender is the right of the people "in charge" who decide reality for the rest of us. Amazingly, this concept is still alive and well in "civilized" society. But what do we do to change it?

David Goodhard MUST BE racist for even bringing up the issue, right?

I say, let immigrants and any self-proclaimed minority do whatever they like, and bring any practice or custom they like to Western shores! it's diversity!

A person can take offense with your actions if it the action goes counter to that person's beliefs.

Your actions have the potential to offend everyone, regardless of their good intent.

The desire of people to live without umbrage or offense is not just ridiculous, it is cowardly, craven, and subservient.

The desire to live without conflict is the state of mind where fearmongers and demagogues pull their audiences.

Those who enforce their punishments on society more effectively gain the ability to define societies' rules.

A new age of war has begun, not fought on a battle field with soldiers and tanks, but with ideas and criminal acts. Refusing to speak in order to avoid giving offense is suicidal.

The people who take the high road here will find themselves surrounded by petty destruction, and those that wish to avoid conflict will whine for capitulation.

Craven and repugnant cowards, the lot of them. Publish the book and stand up for what you believe.

On a MHOUSTian theme...

Being civilized is about avoiding to give offense out of respect for others.

At not giving offense to others, there always is someone who is better than someone else. He who gives the most offense to others, even though he may come out ahead of where he started, is still considered the uncivilized loser.

Everyone is given offense to at least once; by death.

Now if you don't find giving offense to others to be offensive, then you're not really human.

Ergo, it is not possible to live, be human, and to give offense to others.

The only way to minimize giving offense to others is to begin learning civilized behaviour immediately.

So if you can't deal with not giving offense out of respect for others, I think you need to remove yourselves from life and commit suicide right now; because as sure as the sun rises in the east, killing everyone you cannot help giving offense to isn't going to solve your problems.

Boooooooooooo.....

There is always the alternative route of publishing on the Internet. I wonder why the author didn't do his bit to serve the community? Was it for money, perhaps, as he would not receive a red penny from this service to humankind via the web?

Random House is a business, it has shareholders and people trust it with their money to make sound business decisions. If something is a "must publish" item, the Internet is always there for just that kind of stuff.

Life is about competition.

Competition always has someone who benefits more than someone else. The one who benefits the least, even though they may come out ahead of where they started, is still considered the loser.

Everyone loses at least once; we die.

Now if you don't find losing to be offensive, then you're not really human.

Ergo, it is not possible to live, be human, and not find offense.

The only way to minimize being offended is to commit suicide immediately.

So if you can't deal with being offended, I think you need to remove yourselves from life; because as sure as the sun rises in the east, killing everyone else who offends you isn't going to solve your problems.