The massacre of cartoonists and journalists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris by Muslims outraged by the publication's depictions of Mohammed brings up an important question: why do liberals consider Charlie Hebdo's cartoons of Mohammed, the Piss Christ and The Interview to be expressions of free speech that should not be silenced, while they routinely condemn derogatory racist and sexist epithets applied to minorities?
Is it simply hypocrisy? Political correctness run amok? Or is it a principled stand against the oppression of the weak by the powerful?
Blasphemy is irreverent speech about religious figures such as god, or Mohammed, or Jesus, the Pope, Kim Jong Un, or the books and institutions of a religion. Those institutions are powerful and influential and are completely capable of weathering criticism from cartoonists and late-night comics.
Christians, Muslims and North Koreans are equally free to condemn this irreverent speech. What we cannot abide are threats and physical harm to blasphemers and, not just coincidentally, the persons and property of the religious.
Historically, charges of blasphemy are usually leveled at competing sects from the same religion that consider the very existence of the other sect to be a blasphemy. The Sunni-Shia schism and the Christian Gnostic blasphemies come to mind.
Racist and sexist epithets, by contrast, lump an entire class of underprivileged people together as something less than human, providing justification in the minds of racists for systematic discrimination and personal ad hominem and physical attacks.
More to the point, the people who condemn racist and sexist epithets in public discourse are simply condemning racism and sexism. They may call for racists and sexists to be socially shunned or their companies boycotted. But they're not advocating that the haters be killed or jailed for their hateful speech, except when that speech crosses over into actual threats of violence.
It's not an abrogation of a conservative's right to free speech or "political correctness" when others upbraid him for calling something "gay," or express outrage when he makes watermelon and fried chicken jokes about the Obamas, or call him a dick for telling sexist jokes. They're simply exercising their First Amendment rights.
Just like he did when he spouted that crap in the first place.
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