And, With This Nonsense, I Just Quit an Organization to Which I've Belonged Since 1979

Sunday brought the story of six members of PEN America, citing impressively asinine and ill-informed arguments, protesting that a free-speech organization was giving a courage-in-free-speech award to Charlie Hebdo, the French cartoon newspaper that was massacred for its courageous free speech. Now comes the chaser: A full 145 members of PEN, including some of the original refuseniks (and some other names you might recognize, such as Joyce Carol Oates), have attached their name to a remarkable document that encapsulates as well as anything I have seen the sick cloud that hangs over the Enlightenment idea of free speech.