The Cairo Embassy's Self-Defeating Statement on "Religious Incitement"

The approach isn't just wrong-it won't work.

A quick footnote to Matt's excellent post about the Cairo embassy's comments on "religious incitement": In addition to being wrongheaded, these little announcements are self-defeating. When you issue such statements, you encourage the view that the government is somehow responsible for the speech you're condemning. Even if you succeed in calming the crowds—and to judge from what happened yesterday, you shouldn't expect to achieve even that much—any fringe film that you haven't anathematized can become the next cause célèbre. And if you think you can keep pumping out statements attacking every one of them, ponder what will happen if a mob decides to riot over the comments of a congressman, or someone else that a diplomat wouldn't want to officially denounce. Better to embrace free speech from the beginning than to lend support to the idea that your job requires you to sort acceptable expression from bad.