No, we shouldn't publish cartoons mocking Mahommed because a lot of people will get killed if we do. Nor should we publish advertisements of motor cars because hundreds of thousands of people get killed in them each year, tens of millions in your average modern century. Nor should we lend Mein Kamf to jobless teenagers mooching round Lismore library because look what happened last time. All this nonsense comes from the well-meaning fools who thought up verbal violence and racial vilification and passed laws about them. Once you say 'freedom of speech except...' you might as well forget the whole thing.

Let's be frank about this. There are ministers of religion who threaten with eternal, screaming, howling, searing hellfire those who are not baptised in their religion. Is this verbal violence? Or a justifiable utterance of sincerely held belief? There are priests and nuns and pastors and deaconesses and imams and caliphs who hold that beheading, or hell, or purgatory, or a severe talking to awaits all homosexuals, who should pull it out immediately and settle down with the nice girl next door. Is this verbal violence? Does this tend to vilify a minority, and cause violence against them? Why not?

It's an enormous question. And the right to publish Lolita, the right to praise Osama, the right to agree with St Paul in his trashing of marriage, the right to advocate abortion though it sometimes kills or sterilises teenage girls, the right to call for the murder of Salman Rushdie or Yasser Arafat or Saddam Hussein or the right to speak up for marihuana, a drug that assists in some people the onset of schizophrenia, the right to shout 'fire!' in a crowded theatre, the right to abuse a cricket umpire, are all part of it. For only barbarism forbids free utterance of particular words and sentences, and only civilisation permits the utterance of all of them.

If it was meant to be easy it would not have taken four thousand years to achieve, and thirty years, thus far, to rapidly lose most of. From the end of the not-in-front-of-the-ladies years, or round 1972, to the not-in-front-of-the-Muslims years that began last week, and should last a thousand years, was too short and rapid a descent. We should have tried harder, and not have been blackmailed by, in particular, militant post-Friedan lesbians into senseless vigilant good manners, senseless left-wing wowserism and virulent self-righteousness without limit in a world too complex for bulldyke sarmajors with lists of words you shouldn't say.

American Impotence

A recent Murdoch puff piece calling Condoleezza Rice 'the most powerful woman in the world' left me wondering who, in fact, she scares any more. Not Hamas. Not Ahmadinejad of Iran. Not Kim Jong-Il. Not Putin. Not Angela Merkel. Not Helen Clark. Not Alexander Downer who, since the Wheat Board scandal, is calling Americans cunning rumour-mongers. Not even Tony Blair who seems, though it's hard to tell with him, to oppose torture, favour Kyoto, and be keen to pull troops out of Iraq by, well, Guy Fawkes' Day.

So wherein lies this imperium, this mana, this laurel wreath, which this cliche-babbling big-toothed non-event is supposed to wear so lightly and so royally worldwide? Can she drum up a willing coalition to invade and bomb Iran? No. Can she order the Israelis to lay down their arms and hereafter abjure violence? No. Can she stop any nation that wants to, from pulling out of Iraq. Can she order craven Pakistanis to bring her the head of Osama bin Laden? No. Can she order Helen Clark to stop endangering Hollywood by permitting bigger, better films to be made in New Zealand. No.

The old Commie sneer 'paper tiger' seems to suit this prowling virgin unusually well, more than it suits in contrast, say, Nicole Kidman, who is actually liked in most parts of the world and may in her new UN gig be a real force for good in the world, as Peter Ustinov was, and Audrey Hepburn, and Shirley Temple, and Fred Hollows. For whom even in America can Condi order round with any confidence? Not Rumsfeld at Defence. Not Wolfowitz at the World Bank. Not the House of Representatives. Not the Senate. Not her Commander-in-Chief who is back on the piss, immersed in prayer in denial of everything. All except maybe Bush believe her to be the President's bint, unworthily promoted, and observing her padded-shouldered power-walk to any international forum laugh behind their hands.

It's time American impotence was proclaimed, cheered and celebrated in the civilised world. There is no country, any more, they can bomb or invade and since Colin Powell was fired there's no Cabinet officer with a true friend in Europe, the Middle East, Asia or, amazingly, Australia. American power is over, and it was always something of a mirage. Spread the word.