Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.
“For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority,” Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.
I personally would handle things differently that Borders and Waldenbooks but I understand their right to not carry something that might, at least in their opinion, endanger folks. Were it me I would carry them and maybe have a little extra security in the stores. The point here is that it’s not me running things and these businesses, not owned by the government, have made a decision. If I don’t like that decision then I won’t shop there. In reality I don’t care whether they carry the magazine or not so it won’t slow any shopping I might do at those stores. We have a free market and we can really make a difference if companies will lose money with bad decisions.
I do apologize. That looks scattered. The problem is that the company made a pretty safe decision that most people don’t care one hill of beans about. Most people excluding the moonbats who publish the rag that Borders is not carrying.
The magazine, published by the Council for Secular Humanism in suburban Amherst, includes four of the drawings that originally appeared in a Danish newspaper in September, including one depicting Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a lit fuse.
Islamic tradition bars depiction of Muhammad to prevent idol worship, which is strictly prohibited.
“What is at stake is the precious right of freedom of expression,” said Paul Kurtz, editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry. “Cartoons often provide an important form of political satire … To refuse to distribute a publication because of fear of vigilante violence is to undermine freedom of press — so vital for our democracy.”
Paul Kurtz is a moron. You cannot force a retailer to carry anything, except birth control pills but that’s another discussion. Borders cannot undermine freedom on the press as a private entity. The freedoms in the first amendment are freedoms the government cannot erode. They have nothing to do with corporations, persons, or any other private (read non-government) entity. I cannot violate your first amendment rights. I really and truly cannot. I can hit you over the head, bind you, gag you, and throw you into a closet and not be guilty of violating your freedom of speech. I would be guilty of assault and battery (possibly aggravated), kidnapping, and unlawful imprisonment right from the start but I would not be guilty of violating your first amendment freedom of speech. I could drive to each of the New York Times offices and printing facilities and burn them all down. I would be guilty of arson, attempted murder, possibly murder, and much more but I would not be guilty of violating the first amendment right of freedom of the press.
Borders and Waldenbooks, while nice stores, are in no way vital to our democracy. What is on their shelves has little if any effect on the electoral college. They are not bastions of first amendment rights. You have right to publish whatever you like. You have no right to have it distributed by any method. You are not gauranteed an audience for either freedom of press or speech. Heck you are not gauranteed and audience for freedom of religion either. Paul Kurtz, aside from the obvious mental defect of being a humanist, appears to also be totally ignorant of what our enumerated rights mean, what they stand for, or indeed how they even work. A bookstore cannot undermine freedom of the press by not carrying a book. If they could then they would be absolutely huge as they would have carry every book ever published. We have an entity for that and we call it the Library of Congress.
Bingham said the decision was made before the magazine arrived at the company’s stores. Borders Group, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., operates more than 475 Borders and 650 Waldenbooks stores in the United States, though not all regularly carry the magazine.
“We absolutely respect our customers’ right to choose what they wish to read and buy and we support the First Amendment,” Bingham said. “And we absolutely support the rights of Free Inquiry to publish the cartoons. We’ve just chosen not to carry this particular issue in our stores.”
Bingham says it all. They even support the right of their customers to read what they want even when it means they lose the business. This decision, while badly made in my mind, is entirely tenable and not even newsworthy. There is really nothing more to say about it. This is an open and shut case. A company made a decision, actually based on safety for once, and some whiney, spoiled rotten, moonbat with a fringe magazine doesn’t like it so he tries, and fails I might add, to invoke the first amendment. What a rube!
Let me ask you a question, baby. On the Ann Coulter board we were discussing a guy who wrote a book about how (he perceived) the family court’s decision regarding custody of his son to have been unfair, biased, etc. The family court then ruled that he cannot write and distribute such a book because he was violating the family court traditional gag order (no one is allowed to talk about what happens in family court — ever). The judge who made this ruling was one of the judges he lambasted in his book (can you say conflict of interests?)
Someone on ACOC said that it wasn’t a violation of the 1st ammendment because the court is not Congress. (”Congress shall make no law…”) Regardless of your opinion on the rest of the matter, does the 1st apply to the courts? Or can they ban any book they want?
The 1’st applies to all government offices. The Supreme’s rule on whether things violate the constitution. That decision, would in my opinion, violate his first amendment rights. It violates both freedom of speech and press. However it is a little more complicated than that. He would have needed to get a higher court to throw out the gag order before publishing the book. As it stands, regardless of his rights, he violated the gag order. He has to have said gag order tossed. It would cost a ton of dosh to do so though so it is likely he won’t.
You know…Border’s is a little….dumb.
My sister works there…so this is nothing against her. But they’re not going to put out that magazine because they think it’ll cause riots too. However, at least my local Border’s was okay with putting out a statue of Buddha and putting a whole bunch of Islam and other of the same type of religion books out like it was equal to Christianity. I asked my sister what was up with the Buddha thing and she said, “Oh…we’re having a book signing and the book is about that.”
But…they wouldn’t ever have a book signing on a book about Christianity. And if they did, they wouldn’t put out a picture of the Last Supper or Moses or anything in the front of the store.