As my colleague Helene Cooper reports, President Barack Obama devoted most of his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday to the Arab democracy movement and the tension between free speech and mutual respect among cultures and faiths in an era of instant, global communication.
PBS Newshour posted video of the entire 30-minute speech online.
Mr. Obama's remarks began and ended with a tribute to “an American named Chris Stevens,†the ambassador to Libya who was killed in Benghazi this month, on the first day of protests over a trailer for a crude film about the life of Islam's founder posted on YouTube in California.
The president praised Libyans who marched in their thousands to protest the killing of the diplomat, and three other Americans, and discussed the impossibility of constraining speech now that it is possible for Syrian protesters and anti-Islam zealots alike to harness the power of the Web to reach a global audience with their broadcasts.
I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech. We recognize that. But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete. The question, then, is how do we respond?
And on this we must agree: There is no speech that justifies mindless violence. There are no words that excuse the killing of i nnocents. There's no video that justifies an attack on an embassy. There's no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon, or destroy a school in Tunis, or cause death and destruction in Pakistan.
In this modern world with modern technologies, for us to respond in that way to hateful speech empowers any individual who engages in such speech to create chaos around the world. We empower the worst of us if that's how we respond.
