When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…
Christopher HitchensTags: humor friendship love hate stupidity religion atheism united-states literature censorship individualism free-speech dictatorship first-amendment principles fascism irony bullying enlightenment washington-post theocracy intimidation rushdie iran bastille demagogy fatwa george-hw-bush khomeini satanic-verses united-states-constitution
[I]n my own case at least I feel my professional need for freedom of speech and expression prejudices me toward a government whose constitution guarantees it.
John UpdikeTags: politics war united-states free-speech constitution united-states-constitution
To restrict or legalize abortion, to allow or forbid gay marriage, a legislator would need to write and pass a law, get it signed by the president or a governor, and perhaps override a veto. A Supreme Court justice need only persuade four other people. If he or she is not internally constrained by the authority of a text, he or she is not constrained.
Michael J. GersonTags: politics united-states abortion same-sex-marriage united-states-constitution scotus politics-of-the-united-states
So here we have found a means of a) alienating even the most flexible and patient Palestinians; while b) frustrating the efforts of the more principled and compromising Israelis; while c) empowering and financing some of the creepiest forces in American and Israeli society; and d) heaping ordure on our own secular founding documents. When will the Justice Department and the Congress and the Supreme Court become aware of this huge and rank offense, which is designed to bring us ever nearer to holy war?
Christopher HitchensTags: war united-states separation-of-church-and-state secularism israel palestine united-states-constitution palestinians israeli-palestinian-conflict israelis united-states-congress scotus holy-war israel-united-states-relations israeli-settlement us-department-of-justice us-treasury-department west-bank
How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.
Christopher HitchensTags: religion atheism united-states fundamentalism separation-of-church-and-state secularism united-states-constitution
It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.
Christopher HitchensTags: christianity religion atheism united-states separation-of-church-and-state pluralism religious-right united-states-constitution jerry-falwell jesse-jackson
The framers were realists; they recognized that the best constitution in the world could be distorted and destroyed by men determined to do so.
John EidsmoeTags: liberty tyranny united-states-constitution
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