“...Mr. Rose’s life is now forever marked by the Cartoon Crisis. He’s had about a decade to reflect on some daunting questions, including, “What do you say to people who ask how you can sleep at night when hundreds of people have died because of what you have done?”
His book-length answer to that question is impressive. “The Tyranny of Silence” is one of the three or four best books that the libertarian Cato Institute has ever had a hand in publishing — up there with Gene Healy’s “The Cult of the Presidency” and Jonathan Rauch’s other free speech classic, “The Kindly Inquisitors.” Not coincidentally, the back cover of Mr. Rose’s work carries an endorsement by Mr. Rauch, which begins, “Should I be afraid to blurb this book? Reading it makes me wonder.”
The book is not so much a rousing defense of freedom of expression as an exploration of what happens when journalists cave in to the censors, the would-be ayatollahs, the placard wavers or just the ordinary decent people who don’t understand why we can’t all be nicer. It documents a ratchet effect more pronounced in Muslim countries and communities but present in every society. Some folks claim offense, they are conciliated, the conciliations are passed into law, and this only emboldens more people to be outraged...”
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Tags: Flemming Rose, free speech, The Tyranny of Silence, Cato Institute, Charlie Hebdo

“The book covers a tremendous range of interlocking issues about free speech and even about the modern liberal idea of the rule of law, going way beyond just the idea of any possible religious insult from the cartoons.  One central theme is whether people outside a putatively marginalized cultural group have the “right” to publish materials about people in that group.  For me, that is the inverse of the issue I face as a writer: I focus on my own story, whereas real “writers”, so to speak, make a living by writing about characters or people very different from themselves (Stephen King, in the fiction world, for example).  Another theme concerns how freedom of speech meshes with other rights on both individual and group levels.  There is concern over whether there is a right “not to be insulted” (although that plays out differently on individual and group levels.)  There is the idea that “free speech” can marginalize groups in such a way that dictators can then pounce and scapegoat the group (this theory of how Hitler pursued his “Final Solution” is examined). There is also a delineation between western individualistic cultures conflict with “fear-based” hierarchal societies common in history and characterizing totalitarian regimes today.  Rose sees the psychology of extreme communism, fascism, and “radical Islam” (the name I’ll use for now) as fundamentally similar.  Rose also give some understanding of why young men turn to combative ideology as with radical Islam.  Liberal society, with its notion of individualized accomplishment does not work for them, but a world based on the use of force, where they are able to compete socially, does work.  Put all of these ideas together and you get something very grim, and its implications for speech.  Those who criticize a belief system (religious or not), or idolized leadership (think about North Korea, for example), are to be targeted, with such determination that a normal legal system cannot stop it.  A “fear culture”, whether a religious establishment or a rogue state (or a combo of both) can, from abroad, go to war with individual citizens who even criticize it publicly. Indeed, in his endorsement on the dust cover, gay and apatheistic libertarian author  Jonathan Rauch speculates on fear associated even with a “blurb” for the book, and Nat Hentoff characterizes the “self-censorship among individuals and societies confronted by highly combative cultures that allow no criticism of their sacred beliefs.”  And to be honest, even civilized people don't like to see some beliefs overtaken, but civilization keeps us from making too much of other people's business. “
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Tags: Flemming Rose, free speech, The Tyranny of Silence, Jyllands-Posten