"Terrible ideas do not disappear if you ban them"

You remember that the White House petitioned YouTube and its parent company, Google, to have the reprehensible "Innocence of Muslims" film removed from their website. In Bill Keller's recent op-ed piece, he quoted, Salman Rushdie, who would have liked a more robust defence of the right to free speech that made the video's emergence possible in the first place. He said, "It’s not for the American government to regret what American citizens do. They should just say, ‘This is not our affair and the [violent] response is completely inappropriate.’" Keller agrees, mostly:

I would cut the diplomats a little more slack when they are trying to defuse an explosive situation. But I agree that the administration pushed up against the line that separates prudence from weakness. And the White House request that Google consider taking down the anti-Muslim video, however gentle the nudge, was a mistake.

We've been talking about these issues a lot recently. NB post here.