Thursday, September 07, 2006
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IN PRAISE OF FREE SPEECH
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The first sentence of a commentary in our paper today that bears the headline, “Newspaper must provide a forum for free speech,” reads: “It is easier to love the theory of free speech than the practice of it.” And the final sentence: “And it is the responsibility of the citizen to accept that free speech includes not only the viewpoints that the citizen agrees with, but also those which cause gravest and most heartfelt offence.” John Roe, the author of this commentary is identified as “the Editorial Page editor.” I should like to see one of our own editors writing and publishing such a commentary. As for our pundits and academics who contribute regularly to our papers: I don’t remember any one of them raising his voice against censorship. John Roe is right: we may love the theory of free speech but we, all of us, (publishers, editors, pundits, and citizens) hate the practice of it. Either that or we define free speech as the freedom to spew anti-Turkish venom.
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Friday, September 08, 2006
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TOWARDS A MORE BALANCED
VIEW OF REALITY
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Chamfort: “Everything I learned, I have forgotten: the little I remember, I guessed.”
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To understand one thing is to understand many other things.”
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An objective judgment is better than a prejudiced one.”
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By distorting reality, bias obstructs our path to understanding, and ultimately to consensus.
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These may not be as good or original assertions as Descartes’ celebrated “I think therefore I am,” but they are far more accurate than their opposites.
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Sooner or later all Armenians realize that to trust an Armenian on the grounds that he is Armenian is unwise. Among my friends and acquaintances I count several who began by trusting their fellow Armenians and ended by avoiding them like the plague.
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As a child I believed everything I was told by my schoolteachers and parish priest. As an adult I know that trusting mullahs and propagandists (regardless of race, color, and creed) is to consent to be brainwashed.
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To trust no one is as bad as to trust everyone. As an Armenian I may reject the Turkish version of the story. It doesn’t necessarily follow I accept the Armenian version.
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Our nationalist historians tell us the Turks planned to exterminate us long before the actions of our revolutionaries. What they don’t even try to explain is why would Turks do that to their “most loyal millet” at a time when enemies from within as well as without threatened their very existence?
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You don’t have to be a historian or a psychologist to recognize a contradiction when you see one. All you need is common sense, which, according to Descartes, is evenly distributed because no one complains that he doesn’t have enough of it.
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Common sense tells us, to trust the judgment of an objective outsider is wiser than to trust the judgment of participants in a quarrel or controversy. The justice system of the civilized world is based on that assumption.
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In addition to being one of the greatest historians of the 20th Century, Arnold J. Toynbee was also the first scholar to document the Genocide and to publish several studies on Turkish abuses of power. As an anti-nationalist he rejected both Turkish and Armenian versions of the story. In his version, the Genocide is undeniable fact. It is equally undeniable that by making unjustified territorial demands, Armenian nationalists were partly responsible in provoking it.
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If you reject Toynbee’s version on grounds that he is just another cold-blooded, dehumanized imperialist witness with an impaired sense of compassion and justice, I invite you to consider the testimony of an old Armenian lady who was also a survivor of the Genocide: “The Turks are nice people, provided you don’t step on their tails.”
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Is it conceivable that this traumatized old woman on her way to senility and death has a more balanced view of reality than all our pundits combined?
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A German philosopher once said, “The Germans are the best people in the world, but the trouble is there are so few of them.” Our problem may well be that our “betters” are our worst.
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Saturday, September 09, 2006
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Voltaire’s favorite prayer: “O Lord, please make all my enemies ridiculous.”
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The intolerant have a sharp eye for someone else’s intolerance, never their own.
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Once when I said that Germans had helped Turks in planning and executing the Armenian genocide, a German Armenologist reminded me that Germans had been the first scholars to establish the Sanskrit roots of the Armenian language. Academics!
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Friedrich Schlegel: “Words often understand each other better than the people who use them.”
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In his biography of Timothy Leary, of “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” fame, Greenfield writes: “Tim loved everyone as if they were his own children – except for his own actual children.” Another Saroyan!
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It has been said, when women want to behave like men, they seldom behave like gentlemen. One could also say that when Armenians behave like Turks, they seldom behave like good Turks. I shiver to think what would happen if this type of Armenian were given a yataghan and unleashed against defenseless civilians who happen to disagree with him.
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Only if you have lived in darkness may you see the light. This cannot happen to someone who assumes his darkness to be light.
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“If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Our history in a nutshell. It has been the perennial function of our academics to cover up this obvious fact.
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