How do you diplomatise yourself out of a sticky situation?
Richard Engels, United States undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, tactfully defended his country yesterday when a fellow-panelist at the East Asia Summit Symposium on Religious Rehabilitation and Social Integration asked why America won’t clamp down on radical websites and social media messages hosted on its servers.
“Unless you address this, everyday there will be sympathisers and supporters of terrorist groups,” Singapore-based professor Rohan Gunaratna reportedly asked, to applause from the audience, according to a Channel NewsAsia report.
Engels replied: “The great Justice (Louis) Brandeis once said that the idea of free speech is not to protect the speech that we love, but the speech that we hate.”
That, dear Coconaut, is democracy American style.
