Charlie Hebdo is a disgusting publication. I don’t mean primarily because it uses juvenile sexual crudity to deman people, although that’s pretty bad – don’t type “Charlie Hebdo cover” in Google Images unless you have a strong stomach. What’s primarily disgusting is not the sexual crudity used to demean people, but the fact that the publication seems to exist primarily to demean people.

Now, how do I make it clear that in spite of the fact that Charlie Hebdo is disgusting, I regard the right of Charlie Hebdo to be Charlie Hebdo as worthy of the highest protection? Is it still possible to say that Charlie Hebdo is disgusting but I am prepared to die for its right to be what it is? Or is there now only a choice between sentimental gas that condemns neither Charlie Hebdo nor attacks on free speech, and a sort of free speech idolatry that says we are not defending the right to be Charlie Hebdo if we are not celebrating the content of Charlie Hebdo?

Does “I Am Charlie Hebdo” imply I approve of the content of Charlie Hebdo? I can’t tell. A lot of people seem to think so.

You will have difficulty finding someone who enjoys the writing of Mark Steyn more than myself, but since the massacre, nobody’s stance on free speech seems to be strong enough for him. If you are anything less than celebratory of the content of Charlie Hebdo, or if you focus your response on affirming the power of ideas rather than on the (also important) imperative to hunt these terrorists down and kill them, your affirmations of free speech rights are somehow compromised in his eyes.

I think he’s particularly off base in suggesting that the cover of the new issue somehow reflects a decline in courage on the editors’ part:

When skilled persons who have never shied away from clarity produce a work whose meaning is unclear, then it is reasonable to assume the unclearness is itself the meaning.

No, it is not. The editors may be “skilled,” but think about what must have been involved in putting out a new issue under the conditions that now prevail at Charlie Hebdo. Publishing is a hectic world even when you haven’t just been blown up by a bomb. If the cover was unclear, a rushed production is the obvious culprit.

The editors profess that they intended the meaning of the cover to be clear. Gérard Biard, editor-in-chief, says:

“It is we who forgive, not Muhammad.”

I believe him. If even he has not established that he’s the kind of guy who says what he really thinks, who has?

Steyn is right that there is a temptation to say “I support free speech, but…” and then compromise free speech away. But there is an equal and opposite temptation to think that free speech has not been protected unless the speech itself achieves the highest possible level of unpleasantness, or if we then fail to celebrate its having done so.

Sign me up with Ahmed Aboutaleb, the mayor of Rotterdam. He identifies as Muslim and says to his coreligionists who don’t embrace religious freedom:

It’s incomprehensible that you turn against freedom like that, but if you don’t like this freedom, for heaven’s sake, get your suitcase, and leave. There might be a place where you belong, and be honest with yourself about that. Don’t kill innocent journalists. And if you don’t like it here because you don’t like the humorists who make a little newspaper — if I may dare say so — just f*** off.

I am Ahmed Aboutaleb!