General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I do not condone killing ... [View all]Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)Example: You visit the fourth-floor apartment of a fomerly rural friend who's living in a city for the first time. You notice that a parapet on the neighboring building would enable an intruder standing on it to break and enter one of your friend's windows. Your friend hasn't even considered window security, thinking that the fourth floor was automatically safe. Would you give the friendly advice to get bars on that window? I would.
If the apartment-dweller never gets such advice and is robbed, then "criticize" would be too harsh a word, because I set it up to be non-obvious, as compared with someone leaving the front door unlocked. In the latter case, the post-robbery conversation with the victim would probably include something that could reasonably be called criticism, even if only, "Why did you leave the door unlocked?" in a tone of voice that went beyond mere curiosity.
This actually happened to me: I was staying at a hotel in downtown Detroit. I like to walk around places that I visit, but I was concerned about safety, so I asked the concierge for advice about where to go. (It might have been early evening, I forget.) She told me that none of the area around the hotel was safe for walking around. Therefore, I stayed inside. Suppose instead that I had gone for a walk anyway and had been mugged. Would you criticize me for rejecting the advice of someone who knew the dangers better than I did? I think that criticism would have been valid even though the mugger would still be at fault and I would be a victim.
The frat party is somewhat similar and somewhat different. The college student and I would each like to do something (attend party, take walk) that we would enjoy, but that would increase our risk of becoming the victim of violent crime. One difference is the degree of danger -- one hopes that even a rowdy frat party is less dangerous than a bad urban area. Another difference is the status of the criminal. If I were mugged, everyone would agree that it was a crime and that the mugger should be punished, so people could criticize my recklessness without being read as taking the mugger's side. If a student at a party is raped, there might be dispute about whether a crime occurred, was she asking for it, and many other factors that aren't present with a mugging. Someone who criticized the crime victim for making a risky choice might be seen as aligning with some of those other attitudes, a problem that wouldn't arise in the mugging case. Given these differences, one could reasonably choose to criticize my hypothetical conduct but not hers.
Applying all this to the OP, there does seem to be, in this thread, at least some sympathy for the "provocation" criticism of the victim. If I walk through a bad neighborhood, people might say I was reckless, but no one would say I was provoking an assault. Here, however, some people seem to be pointing to the alleged offensiveness of the speech as being relevant beyond the mere fact of increasing one's likelihood of being attacked. I would not join in any criticism that said or implied that cartoonists or other commentators should restrain themselves from criticizing radical Islam, so as not to provoke violence.