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By Shah N. Khan |
Click here for Part 2 |
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Politics
Limits of free speech and tolerance are tested in political, religious and other kinds of debate. Intellectual debates on complex abstract topics always present the possibility of unproductive confusion people talking past one another, saying similar things with different words, using the same words with different meanings, or otherwise wasting their efforts in merely verbal disputes. In the opinion of Grant M. Nulle, "Politicians and their deputies are merely the best at exploiting the system's impaired moral climate to organize the state's confiscatory arm to serve their backer's interests. |
Those who would treat politics and morality apart will never understand the one or the other. |
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Many intellectual believe that while our politicians may not be able to solve many of the problems they create, the political classes in many countries have proven they are still adept at causing crises—and then blaming others for the results. The trouble with the adult franchise (specially
in developing countries) is the political immaturity the voters
as well as the candidates. Remember the old saying, "Majority consists
of fools." Good democracy is said to be commensurate with literacy, class,
wealth, and occupational convergence. Many scholars lament that less-than-perfect
democracy has been achieved and existing system cannot guarantee good governance.
and stricter qualifications for the voters and the candidates are needed.
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A scene from the National Assembly of Pakistan or Indian Parliament ‘Lok Sabha” and some other countries is about the same: noise, clamor, and little genuine debate but variety of fisticuffs. |
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A scene from the National
Assembly of Pakistan or Indian Parliament ‘Lok Sabha” and some other countries
is about the same: noise, clamor, and little genuine debate but variety
of fisticuffs. While most of the Western Parliamentarians would be content
with, the retorts, quips churlish replies or at worst the quarrelsome refutations,
in India, Pakistan and a few other countries parliamentarians often cause
pandemonium and sometimes do not hesitate take to fisticuffs at the slightest
provocation? Not because great principles of policy are involved but simply
because the ignorant majority elects the wrong people.
Ambrose Bierce defined diplomacy as the patriotic art of lying for one's country. And another diplomat regards the ambassador as honest people sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. As Barbara Tuchman, U.S. historian wrote: “Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interwar period, appeasement of Fascism.” And now diplomacy has become an art of saying nastiest things in nicest words. Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Practical Reason posed a valid question: -“Certainly one may say, ‘Freedom to speak or write can be taken from us by a superior power, but never the freedom to think!’ But how much, and how correctly, would we think if we did not think, as it were, in common with others, with whom we mutually communicate!” The ideals of freedom of expression could be defined not by what we are free to express but by what we are free not to express. It is the freedom to abstain, refrain and avoid offending people of different creeds and hurting the feelings of fellow human beings, which form the basis of conforming to the moral standards of the modern world. The business of these standards and laws is to free the freedom from confusion and chaos inherent in human life, which is bound to arise if one is free to do whatever one likes without any thought or consideration of its impact on others. . Shah N. Khan
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