Arguments Summed Up: Lights Out

Title & Author: Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech, and the Twilight of the West by Mark Steyn

Genre: Nonfiction--Politics & Current Affairs

My Rating: 9.0

Summed Up: In short, there is no justification for the state to regulate speech, even if that speech is unpleasant or offensive to certain groups. If all speech was pleasant and agreeable, then there would be no need to defend it. In today’s world, trying to regulate any speech that may be offensive strangles debate and is a danger to liberty in society. As Steyn says, “If you don’t believe in free speech for people you loathe, you don’t believe in free speech at all.”

Islamists are doing their best to stifle any honest or open debate about Islam by intimidation and by manipulating Western political correctness, multiculturalism, and “tolerance.” If a Dutch paper publishes a cartoon of Mohammed and then Islamists riot and kill innocent bystanders, Western states do not condemn the violence, but condemn the paper for exercising their freedom of expression. In Steyn’s case, he was brought before “human rights” commissions not because anything he wrote was untrue, libelous, or slanderous about Islam, but because it supposedly offended some Islamists.

Rather than an honest examination of facts, lables such as “Islamophobe” and “racist” and “bigot” are hurled about to stifle debate. “As I often say, I’m a phobiaphobe. I don’t subscribe to the concepts of 'homophobia' and 'Islamophobia.' They’re a lame rhetorical sleight to end the argument by denying it’s an argument at all: 'Why, you poor thing, you don’t have a philosophical disagreement with me over gay marriage or sharia, you have a mental illness! But don’t worry, we can give you counseling and medication and your “phobia” will eventually go away.'"

Steyn shows that far too many in the West are willing to put into extinction freedom of speech. But, the important question is why are so many willing to do away with one of the cornerstones of a free society? Steyn cites several reasons, including fear. Many are afraid to criticize Islam when they see what happens to those that do, like the murdered Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh.

Others are so hung up on tiptoeing around, afraid to “offend” anyone, especially certain favored groups, that they strangle free speech. Unfortunately, this leads to massive double standards and a completely unequal application and enforcement of the law. One cannot criticize Muslims, but one can say anything one wants against Christians, for example.

Steyn also makes that case that the West is undergoing cultural suicide, largely because of cultural relativism. Few are willing to defend our way of life and argue that yes, in fact, some cultures are better than others. In the words of Steyn, “The one identity we’re enjoined not to trumpet is the one that enables us to trumpet all the others: our identity as citizens of a very specific kind of society with a very particular inheritance, built on the rule of law, property rights, and freedom of speech. Heaven forbid we should assert any of that!” Steyn argues that we need a strong culture, one that exports the ideas of individual freedom, in order to counter act the growing threat of Islamist extremists.

In addition to cultural relativism, Western societies exercise extreme moral relativism. Steyn says, “The question is: What other than Hitler is our society prepared to make a moral judgment over?” Indeed, society continues to ignore actual threats and continues to search after non-existent Nazis. We refuse to decry actual, modern day evil. Everything today is in shades of gray, and this moral relativism is directly related to the cultural relativism that is leading to the decay of the West. Who are we to say that Islamist theocracies like Iran that suppress women, Jews, Christians, and others is worse than us? Unless the West decides to once again make moral judgments and defend the principles of freedom, that liberty will be lost.

The loss of liberty begins with the loss of free speech. Unless we have the ability to argue our points, to argue between right and wrong, there is no hope for right. “You defeat bad ideas—whether Nazism, Marxism, jihadism, Steynism or Trudeaupian pseudo-‘human rights’ mumbo-jumbo—in the bracing air and light of day, in vigorous open debate, not in the fetid corridors of power policed by ahistorical nitwits.”

You can read my review of Lights Out here.