In his comment on my last posting, Shawn Bannon raised the interesting question of how Lincoln's Cooper Union speech might have fared today, in the age of the Internet. In reply, I said that Lincoln was a shrewd politician who mastered the media of his era, and would probably have done the same in our own time.

But, as I considered the matter, it occurred to me that speed of communication might have produced some embarrassments for "Honest Abe" had communication been faster during his first campaign for President in 1860.

The story goes that Lincoln was campaigning in southern Illinois when he was asked, "If Congress passes an abolition bill, will you sign it?"

This was a loaded question, because the economy of southern Illinois was tied closely to the South. The farmers of that region shipped their produce down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. Any interruption of commerce with the southern states would have serious economic consequences for the local people. So they were by no means in favor of abolition.

Lincoln replied, "If Congress passes an abolition bill, I will be the last man to sign it!" And he departed amid loud and sustained cheers.

News traveled a lot more slowly back then, but eventually, one of Lincoln's friends in Springfield -- a militant abolitionist -- found out about Lincoln's declaration. In high dudgeon, he took himself to Lincoln's parlor and berated him. "How could you, Abe?" he demanded. "How could you possibly say such a thing?"

Lincoln flashed a conspiratorial smile and told his friend to simmer down. "Think about it," he said. "When Congress passes a bill, who is the last man to sign it? As I recall, it's the President."

It must be a slow news day in our nation's capital, since this morning's Washington Post carried a story about how President Bush "seems fixated" on the rug in the Oval Office.

According to the Post, Mr. Bush delights in telling visitors -- even world leaders -- that presidents can pick or even design their own rugs, so he had Laura design his. As befits a busy executive, he left the details to her, stipulating only that the rug should proclaim that he was an "optimistic person." Laura obliged with a carpet done in a warm, sunny yellow.

Lately, the President's pride in his rug has been creeping into his speeches. He's mentioned it in the course of three speaking engagements so far this year.

Nicholle Wallace, the White House communications director, says that the "optimistic" tone of the rug is "very symbolic of what [Mr. Bush] wants his presidency to be about."

I'm sorry, but I'm not impressed. If you want to know about a president who really used his Oval Office rug to make a statement, you have to go back to Calvin Coolidge.

Coolidge was once badgered by a congresswoman from the Chicago area, who was determined to get a federal judgeship for one of her constituents. The man wasn't qualified, so Coolidge refused. When her own lobbying efforts failed to change the President's mind, the lady arranged for a delegation of prominent people from her district to meet with Mr. Coolidge and add their own weight to the campaign.

In due course, the delegation was ushered into the Oval Office. Coolidge greeted them with an icy stare and said not a single word.

The visitors shuffled uncomfortably. One by one they dropped their eyes to the presidential carpet.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, the laconic Mr. Coolidge spoke: "That's a mighty fine rug you're looking at."

Relieved to have the suspense broken, the visitors one and all agreed heartily with the President that it was indeed a mighty fine rug.

"Cost a lot of money," Coolidge continued. Another pause. "It's brand new."

And then: "She wore out the old one trying to get you a judge."

Now that, Mr. Bush, is using the Oval Office rug to tell people what your presidency is about!

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported a curious incident that took place late last year in the village of Saint-Genis-Pouilly in France. A local cultural center had organized a reading of a 265-year-old play by Voltaire called, Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet. When local Muslim groups demanded that the performance be cancelled, the mayor replied by calling in police reinforcements to protect the theatre. Minor disturbances broke out on the night of the reading, but the gendarmes quickly restored order and the play was performed.

Despite the title, it is difficult to understand Muslim objections. The play really isn’t about Islam at all. Rather, it is an attack on all forms of religious tyranny – particularly the kind exercised by the Catholic Church in 18th Century France.

It was common for writers of the period, who were liable to be jailed if they made direct attacks on church and crown, to mask their criticisms by pretending to write about Islam. A favorite device was to contrast Muslims and the Muslim religion favorably to the bigoted brand of Christianity then in force.

Thus, ten years before his play about Mahomet, Voltaire wrote a play called Zaire, about a young woman who was abducted by the Turks when she was a baby and raised as a Muslim. When the play opens, she and a handsome Turkish noble have fallen in love. They are about to marry, when Zaire’s father and brother inconveniently pop up and demand that she embrace Christianity. Their insistence on her conversion ultimately brings about the girl’s death. (Get it? Who are the real fanatics in this play?)

Similarly, the French philosopher Montesquieu wrote a book called The Persian Letters, which concealed social satire under what purported to be the letters home of a Persian visitor to France.

Yet another example is Mozart’s opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio. At the end of this opera, the Turkish pasha shows himself to be a more enlightened and humane ruler than some Christians in authority.

Therefore, properly understood, there is nothing in Voltaire’s play intended to disparage Islam. But even if there were, should militant Muslims be permitted to censor the work?

For anyone who believes in the freedoms that brave spirits like Voltaire struggled to secure for us today, the answer, clearly, is no. Under our Western system of values, people have the right to express viewpoints that others find objectionable, or even blasphemous.

It is no good saying, as some so-called liberals have said in the wake of the Danish cartoon controversy, that freedom of the press requires the media to be “responsible” and “sensitive” to other people’s deeply-held religious beliefs. No. Freedom of the press, if the right means anything at all, includes the right to deliberately shock and offend.

Take away the right to publish what some consider to be offensive, and where do you stop?

In Voltaire’s time, a silly noble who refused to doff his hat to a religious procession was broken on the wheel – a particularly barbarous form of capital punishment. In some Muslim countries today, vicious anti-semitic propaganda is commonplace; Christians are forbidden to practice their faith, even in private; and Muslims who change their religion can be executed for “apostasy.”

And yet there are Muslims who insist that they have the right to prohibit anything that they regard as demeaning to Islam, and commit violence if their wishes are not acceded to.

If we give in to that kind of blackmail, we make ourselves unwitting pawns in a conspiracy to repeal the modern world.

Vive Voltaire!

This morning, Andrew Sullivan dotted the "i"s and crossed the "t"s of my last posting. http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish.

Not since the Moors invaded Spain has the Western World been so menaced by Islam. Andrew's comment is reprinted below.

The Islamist intimidation of free expression in Europe, and the craven response of Europe's and America's elites, is already yielding results. A festival in Valencia, which has always been known for its anti-clerical satire, is now pulling its punches. Money quote from a Spanish artist:

And so the silence spreads. The genius of using the threat of violence against writers and artists is that it can work quietly. We will never know what might have been said or written without the threat. That's how they keep their doctrines intact. By silencing the questions. By killing the questioners.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, this posting salutes one of Ireland’s most eminent and enigmatic national figures.

Roger Casement (1864-1916) was an unlikely Irish patriot. Baptized a Catholic, but bred an Ulster Protestant, he was a loyal subject of the British crown for most of his life. He entered the British consular service in 1895. Posted to remote locations in Africa and South America, he won international fame for exposing the brutal exploitation of native peoples in the Belgian Congo and the Putumayo basin between Peru and Columbia.

His humanitarian work earned him a knighthood in 1911. But it gave him little satisfaction. Gradually, he came to realize that beneath the braid of a British consul, there beat an Irish heart. Abandoning his career, he joined the radical wing of the Irish nationalists -- those who wanted complete independence for Ireland, rather than just home rule within the United Kingdom.

When World War I broke out, he went to Germany to negotiate an alliance between the Irish ultra-nationalists and the German government. The alliance promised German help for a projected Irish rebellion. The date was set for April 23, 1916 – Easter Sunday. But when Casement realized that the Germans were not prepared to offer more than token support, he knew that the rising was foredoomed. In a desperate effort to prevent useless bloodshed, he secretly returned to Ireland, where he was apprehended just hours after being put ashore.

Not only had Casement failed to stop the rising, he had put his own neck in an English noose. Transported to London, he was tried for treason and condemned to death.

Even then, his life might have been saved.

Casement was still world-famous for his humanitarian work in the Congo and the Putumayo. “Save Casement” drives were mounted as far away as South America. The Vatican made an appeal. In the United States (then the most important neutral country in the war), Irish-American voters took advantage of the fact that 1916 was an election year to pressure President Wilson and Congress to intervene on Casement’s behalf. Even in England, Casement did not lack sympathizers, particularly among churchmen and intellectuals. He had, after all, returned to Ireland to prevent a rebellion, not to foment one.

In the face of all this pressure, the British government might have had no choice but to accept the sensible suggestion of George Bernard Shaw that Casement be treated not as a traitor, but as a prisoner of war.

Instead, the government played a squalid trump card. British intelligence had managed to get hold of Casement’s diaries, in which his life as a covert homosexual was laid bare. By leaking the graphic details of his sex life, British officialdom got exactly what it wanted: Casement not only dead, but damned.

Bitter Irishmen insisted for years that the diaries had been forged -- a belief reinforced by the British government’s obstinate refusal to declassify them. Finally, in 1959, the diaries were released and authenticated by impartial experts.

Were the Irish a less warm-hearted people, Casement’s story might have ended there. But it did not. Straight or gay, Casement had died a martyr to Ireland, and his countrymen remembered his sacrifice.

It took nearly 50 years to obtain grudging consent from London but finally, in 1965, Casement’s remains were brought home. For four days, his coffin lay in state in Dublin’s Garrison Church of the Sacred Heart as 165,000 mourners filed past to pay their respects. On March 1, Casement was given a state funeral.

Casement’s speech to the court that condemned him to death ranks as one of the noblest and most moving of all patriotic apologia. In his concluding words, he spoke as much for gays and lesbians as for the long-suffering people of his beloved Ireland:

“Where all your rights have become only an accumulated wrong, where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to gather the fruits of their own labors, and, even while they beg, to see things inexorably withdrawn from them – then, surely, it is a braver, a saner and a truer thing to be a rebel, in act and deed, against such circumstances as these, than to tamely accept it, as the natural lot of men.”

The current issue of Speechwriter's Newsletter asks the old question, Is ghostwriting ethical?

I haven't seen the reposnses yet, but I'm betting that the consensus is the same old answer: It depends.

I've been a speechwriter for over twenty years, and I don't think I have ever written a speech for anyone that wasn't a collaborative effort. By that, I mean that the speechwriter does the grunt work and the speaker adapts the draft to suit his personal style. Very often, other people -- lawyers, policy experts, PR/political operatives, etc. -- get involved in the process as well.

I remember one night during the Reagan Administration, I was watching President Reagan deliver the State of the Union address, in the company of the whole White House domestic policy staff. We were gathered around a TV set in the West Wing. As the President ticked off his priorities, their heads began to nod one by one like a row of spring-necked figurines: "That's my sentence ... that's my sentence ... that's my -- wait! He ad-libbed that one!"

I don't think there's anything unethical about that kind of speechwriting process. I certainly don't feel dirty every time I write a speech.

People these days take speechwriters for granted. But they don't really believe that speechwriters rule the world.

I mean, could you imagine Mike Gerson handing a speech draft to President Bush and saying, "Here are your lines, George -- don't muff them"?

Hmmmm. Maybe some people could. If it ever happened that way, I suppose it would be unethical, but then it almost never does.

That's why, even though he had substantial help from Alexander Hamilton, we still call it, "Washington's Farewell Address." And so it has been with every President since.

And so it should be.

My last post was on the old question, Is ghostwriting ethical?

I decided it is, at least most of the time.

People today take the existence of speechwriters for granted. Furthermore, speechwriting is usually a collaborative effort between the speechwriter and the speaker -- to say nothing of lawyers, PR operatives, policy experts and all the other cooks who end up adding their own secret ingredients to the soup.

It is a rare occasion when a speaker simply reads a speech that has been prepared for him. And, when it happens, people can usually sense it.

There's a story about a member of the House of Commons -- where debate is a blood sport -- who once surprised the whole chamber by delivering an uncommonly good speech.

His colleagues cheered him to the echo while, from the benches of the opposition, came derisive cries of "Author, author!"

There really is an ethics committee that sits in judgement on speakers and speechwriters. It's called the Audience.

Lyn Nofziger, who died Monday at the age of 81, never really got the credit he deserved for helping Ronald Reagan become President. And, as a modest man, he never tried to inflate his own importance.

But he did claim credit for teaching Ronald Reagan what he called the three rules of presidential politics:

1. That right doesn't always win out in the end.

2. That the U.S. cavalry will not always come riding to the rescue at the last minute.

And

3. That God really doesn't care who is President of the United States.

Reagan listened to this good advice, and was a better leader because of it. It's too bad that Lyn won't be around any more to whisper the same advice into the ear of our current President -- not that W would ever listen to anything he didn't want to hear.