'Why Barack Obama Should Resign'

Professor Glenn Reynolds is not joking around anymore. As a tenured law professor, his accusation that the President has betrayed his oath and is unfit for office bears considerable weight.

By sending — literally — brownshirted enforcers to engage in — literally — a midnight knock at the door of a man for the non-crime of embarrassing the President of the United States and his administration, President Obama violated that oath. You can try to pretty this up (It’s just about possible probation violations! Sure.), or make excuses or draw distinctions, but that’s what’s happened. It is a betrayal of his duties as President, and a disgrace.
Nor is he alone. Professor Althouse:
Gaze on that picture and see our government in a sad, shameful display, staged — presumably — to cajole the enemies of free speech into blaming a private individual instead of our country — our country, the caretaker of the freedom that allowed him to speak.
If the President were behind such an effort -- to send a photograph around the world that makes it look like we arrested the blasphemer -- then he really should resign. That is indeed a betrayal of his most basic duty.

I'm not sure there's any evidence that the President was involved. This may have been the work of local bosses who felt they were doing him a favor. They do not take oaths to uphold the Constitution, and so may avoid the blame that would befall him.

That said, what ought the President to do? On the one hand, there may be some reasonable suspicion that this fellow violated the terms of his probation. On that same hand, this is in no way a wonderful guy who symbolizes everything good about America. To judge by what we've seen of this film, and his prior conviction for fraud, he's kind of a jerk with whom we have no special reason to wish to be associated.

On the other, however, we are where we are. His movie has become the touchstone for the issue of whether America will give up a core freedom, and begin to restrict our liberty to speak in favor of avoiding blasphemy toward Islam.

Actually, it goes further than that. Since we certainly won't raise a general anti-blasphemy standard -- blasphemy against the Christian religion, for example, will continue to be a staple of the culture -- we are looking at something like a violation of the Establishment clause. Islam would be raised to the position of the only religion the United States will not allow to be blasphemed by her citizens. Islam would then be, in a real sense, the official religion of the United States: the one that we were obliged to respect.

That's a tough spot for the President. He needs to come down hard on the side of this filmmaker, in spite of the bad qualities of the man and in spite of the pain of riots around the globe. He has to do this even though the filmmaker isn't really personally deserving, and the 'work of art' being defended is barely worthy of the name at all.

Not that he will; but you can see why doing the right thing, here, would be very unappealing.

16 comments:

E Hines said...

That's a tough spot for the President. He needs to come down hard on the side of this filmmaker, in spite of the bad qualities of the man and in spite of the pain of riots around the globe.

It's not a tough spot at all, except such a move would indicate that he's been wrong all along. And that's a hard thing to recognize for the guy who occasionally sits in our President's chair.

He has to do this even though the filmmaker isn't really personally deserving, and the 'work of art' being defended is barely worthy of the name at all.

This is quite straightforward and simple. Our demand to protect the freedom of political speech is specifically in order to protect the unpopular, uncomfortable speech and the strongly disliked speaker. Because if we don't draw the line here, we're unable to draw the line at all, and free speech is lost to us. Along with both of the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Along with all of the First Amendment--without which none of the rest is possible.

Obama, et al., need to do this because the speaker seems personally [un]deserving, and the 'work of art' being defended is barely worthy of the name. Obama certainly needed not to pressure YouTube's owner, Google, to take down the movie trailer. Because it's not the speaker who's being defended, but his right to speak.

The fact that the speaker has an unsavory past, and may have committed some parole violations is just a cynical red herring being dragged by Obama in order to distract from his failure to perform.

Finally, Obama needs to come down hard on the unacceptability of butchering Americans, assaulting our embassies, desecrating our flag. Period. No predecessor, no following statements. It's clear as a standalone. Above all, not in spite of the pain of riots around the globe. That is utterly irrelevant to either matter.

What's hard here is finding the courage of the tough guy community organizer from Chicago. Upholding individual liberty really is quite simple for an honest man.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

Well, maybe. What he's likely to do (it sounds like) is allow Federal probation officers to send this guy to prison -- thus giving the clear impression that he's imprisoned the blasphemer. In theory that calms the mobs, for a little while (until they learn they've been given a veto power over American free speech if they riot hard enough). After November it won't matter anymore.

I frankly think he ought to pardon the filmmaker, so as to ensure that there's no chance of him being sent to prison at this time. He's something of a lowlife with no taste whatsoever, but all the same, just now he's our lowlife. We have to fight for him whether he's worthy or not.

Grim said...

In addition to which, I'm not sure that probation terms that forbid you from producing works of art are really constitutional. Maybe a court would uphold that restriction; prisoners and ex-cons get treated pretty roughly in the system. But really, this is a very highly protected area. Freedom of artistic expression is close to the core of freedom of speech, and is very often -- as in this case -- indistinguishable from the freedom of political speech. That's what the 1st Amendment's freedom of speech provision exists to protect.

E Hines said...

Nakoula's probation seems to have banned him from using computers or the Internet, not from making art.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

That is a distinction without a difference. If you are engaged in art by producing a movie, the internet and computers are going to be involved. (Especially since they seem to have said he couldn't have anyone else access the internet or computers for him.)

Since there was a work exception, presumably he would be OK insofar as producing a movie counts as "work." But really the protection should be stronger if it wasn't work. If he had produced the movie just to make a political point, that's exactly where his right should be most inviolable.

E Hines said...

If you are engaged in art by producing a movie, the internet and computers are going to be involved.

Only if you're going to argue that the Internet and computers are media, and not tools, like a paint brush and oils, or camera and film. It could get interesting, though, if Nakoula decides to make that argument in court.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

Mr. Hines, you know perfectly well that there is no difference between "oils" and "media." The oils are a medium for carrying an image, and YouTube is another. If I speak of a work as being "mixed media," I only mean that more than one medium was involved in its creation.

E Hines said...

Oils are a medium for creating art. YouTube is a tool for distributing art.

Brushes and brushstrokes are used both to distribute the oil, and as a medium: many an art...critic...has made his living agonizing over the texture and strokes of this or that brush by this or that artist and what the artist was trying to say with his choice of texture.

There isn't any such with distribution tools, like movie theaters, or their online analogue--YouTube.

Or I'm a Philistine. Which is possible.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

The same thing is true of a video as is true of a painting: it has light and shadow, void and form, and it conveys an image and a message. The chief distinction is that an image "distributed" on canvas affects fewer than one "distributed" on YouTube.

So the oils and the video are alike; and canvas and YouTube are alike. If you're permitted to make a work of art but forbidden from sharing it with anyone, what you are losing is exactly the political aspect. It is the sharing that makes it political, because politics by nature is not solitary.

E Hines said...

No, I'm not forbidden from making my art or sharing it; I'm just forbidden from using the Internet or computers in the creation or the distribution. There are lots of ways in which to create and distribute.

Being prevented from using some of those means might be inconvenient to me, but that inconvenience is the point of punishment. I should have considered that when I chose to misuse my tools for criminal ends.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

That's not coherent. We wouldn't prevent an actual prisoner in prison from making or distributing art; heck, prison art (and especially literature) is always a seller in certain demographics. And it is often political.

The 1st says that Congress "shall make no law." If Congress doesn't have the lawmaking power, the Executive -- which merely enforces the law -- doesn't have power over these matters either. The judiciary, which merely interprets the law, likewise lacks the power.

I don't see where anyone, whether an executive probation officer or a judiciary judge, gets off setting limits on art. Even if the art sucks, but especially if it is political art (even bad political art). There is no such authority possible under a plain language reading of the 1A.

E Hines said...

But there is no limit on the art here, only on some (and a very small fraction at that) of the means of distribution.

As to prisoners, they give up a potful of rights upon conviction, some of them permanently--the right to bear arms, for instance, and the right to vote in Federal elections.

And sometimes the right to use this or that medium to distribute their art--but not the right to create it, or to use lots of remaining means for distribution.

Eric Hines

E Hines said...

And now I'm going to drop out of this conversation for a while. One thing I've noticed (or only think I have, hubristically) is that when you and I get to going, others don't join in. I learn more from listening to others than I do from hearing my own keyboard rattle.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

You may do what you like, out of modesty or hubris, whichever it may be. In any case, I am not convinced that converting "there can be no law" into "laws treating only small parts of this are acceptable" is a reasonable answer. I think the Founders likely meant "Congress shall make no law." Any restrictions were to belong to the People, or (perhaps) to the states, since they did not think that banning Congress from making a law meant banning the law from treating a matter at all.

mtwzzyzx said...

"On that same hand, this is in no way a wonderful guy who symbolizes everything good about America."

Yes, and neither were the Neo-Nazis who wished to march in Skokie, yet the ACLU thought it right to defend them in court and the court saw that their right to free speech was of particular importance because their message was to most of us distasteful. Someone should remind the Democrats and their President that they once understood the principle. Who are they now?

Dad29 said...

I'm not sure there's any evidence that the President was involved

There never will be, unless someone leaks.