Since the Charlie Hebdo attack, the usual suspects in America have been hooting and bellowing about “free speech.” Sadly, the usual suspects include many on the Right who should know better, but are overcome by the appeal of standing next to the hippies, shouting down the dissidents, in the name of free speech.

An example of that last point is this posted on National Review. It is the inspiration for this blog post. Some at National Review have an obsession with the current Pope. I suspect it due in part to the fact this Pope is a Marxist. But, many are Catholic so it is understandable that they would have a particular interest in the Pontiff. Naturally, when he came out with his position on speech offensive to religion, they jumped all over him. The claim being that the Pope wants to bring back blasphemy laws.

First off, I would hope the Pope and every other religious leader, for that matter, would want to bring back blasphemy laws. It is a weak and dying religion that invites the scorn and mockery of non-believers. Strong religions are tough and they don’t take any guff from heretics and infidels. If given the opportunity, they will stifle dissent and punish the critics. That’s what religions do. It is what they have to do or at least try to do. Otherwise, they stop being religions and instead become a list of suggestions supported by magic.

Of course, the Pope speaks for the Catholic Church. That’s his job as God’s intermediary. It is perfectly reasonable for the Pope to oppose mocking religion and to command his flock to avoid doing it as well. It makes even more sense for the Pope to convince non-Catholics to avoid criticizing his religion and his church. Getting non-Catholics to sign off on that would be very good for his church. That horse left the barn a long time ago, but you can’t blame the guy for trying. Islam is proving the value of that strategy.

As a general principle, it is probably bad form to mock religion. That’s not to say it should be illegal or even strongly discouraged. It just means it is one of the many things we can judge one another on, like our tastes in clothes and foods. A guy with a mullet and wife beater swilling cheap beer is judged differently than a guy in a suit having a salad. Similarly, someone who gratuitously mocks religion is judged differently than someone who is respectful of other faiths. Even in our degraded age, people appreciate politeness.

What’s dangerous about this latest burst of “free speech” fanaticism is it distracts from what is important and cedes ground to the Left by adopting their choice of language. Specifically, the formulation “free speech.” There’s no such thing as free speech. It is an abstract idea that conflates official censorship with social custom at the expense of the latter. The Left sees no limit to the state and no place for the organic culture that flows naturally from ethnicity, created over thousands of years of trial and error.

The fact that the libertarian weirdos are trying to out bellow the liberals on this issue once again proves that the former suffer from the same defects as the latter. I’ll grant that the increasingly deranged Karl Denninger is probably a bad example. He obviously knows nothing about religion or self restraint. Charlie Cooke is the house libertarian hipster at National Review and he is ululating about free speech as well. Again, the defect here is the the very idea of “free speech.”

Rights do not exist in the abstract any more than left handedness exists in the abstract. People have natural rights based solely on the fact they are a living human. One of those rights Americans believe humans posses is the right to speak freely and publicly on public issues, such as politics and policy. It is not an absolute right. Speech that involves incitement, false statements of fact, obscenity, child pornography, threats, and speech owned by others are all completely exempt from First Amendment protections.

In other words, Americans give the government very limited powers to regulate speech. The state must pass a high threshold in order to limit what I can say, where I can say it and to whom I can say it. But, and this is a big one, the state does have that authority. Every society gives the civil authorities this power, some more than others. That’s the place for debate. What can the state regulate and what proof must they muster in order to exercise that authority. The reason the Left hates this line of reasoning, the view of the Founders, is it means a natural limit on state power, something the Left rejects.

The worst part, is that these free speech mavens conflate state censorship with social custom. Every society has taboos. These are things we prohibit by custom. The reasons for prohibition may be sensible or magical, but every human society has them. It’s called culture. If you doubt this, start talking about your sexual interest in children at the next dinner party. It will be your last dinner party because decent people in our culture think sex with children is monstrous. It is one of our more serious taboos.

Sex with minors is illegal, but talking about your desire to have sex with a minor is not. That type of speech is permitted to a point, based on local obscenity laws. Custom, however, is not so permissive. It rarely is as permissive as the law. That’s why every human society has counted heavily on custom, the unwritten rules of society, to regulate most behavior. Being cast out from your own has always been one of the worst things that can happen to a human. The threat of it is a powerful corrective.

Conflating social custom and taboos with state power is the dream of ever liberal. It is why they keep demanding more laws. It is why our legal code has ballooned beyond the comprehension of the citizens. The Left imagine a state that more than dominates life. They imagine the state as the medium in which the citizen is defined. A system where your very humanity is defined by your relationship with the state and there’s no space between the public and private. Accepting this premise by treating the utterances of a religious leader as equal to those of a state actor gives the game away. All that is left is the time and place of surrender.

Making the made up concept of free speech a fetish obscures the real issue that is worthy of debate. The state should have power to regulate speech only at the fringes. The people, through their customs and traditional institutions should be free to sort these issues out as they see fit, without seeking permission from the state. Freedom of speech and freedom of association go hand and hand and always mean freedom from state coercion. When a group of citizens are free to not associate with another group of citizens because of the things being said, the unwritten rules are able to work and the state is not needed to referee.

That last part is important. You’ll note that the phrase being bandied about is “protect free speech.” This is only necessary when the citizens are not free to leave the room when they hear things they find objectionable. Instead of protecting freedom from the state, the state is protecting our rights from one another – at a price. Before long the state is no longer a referee but a game warden.