Thursday, June 19, 2008

Freedom of Speech--Within Reason and as Allowed By Law

I can understand Canadians going after Mark Steyn for speaking candidly about the effects of radical Islamist influences in his native land. It's a Chinatown thing:

Forget it, Jake. It's Canada.
But naturally, there are domestic enemies in this country who think we need to be more like our neighbors to the north (south, east and west).
“It is not clear to me that the Europeans are mistaken,” Jeremy Waldron, a legal philosopher, wrote in The New York Review of Books last month, “when they say that a liberal democracy must take affirmative responsibility for protecting the atmosphere of mutual respect against certain forms of vicious attack.”
This guy's a professor. Why does that not surprise me?

And then you have the idiot former New York Times columnist arguing against "the imminence requirement."
“I think we should be able to punish speech that urges terrorist violence to an audience, some of whose members are ready to act on the urging,” Mr. Lewis wrote. “That is imminence enough.”
Think this would qualify, especially when the government gets to be the ones to decide just who qualifies as a "Homegrown Terrorist"?
Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them...

With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
What about this?
"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."
Careful there, neo-Marxist eggheads. You're getting awfully close to a tripwire.

I guess these guys think they'll end up with cushy jobs and privileges at the Ministry of Truth, instead of, you know, being tortured and executed?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The news 2004: Actress and activist Brigitte Bardot was convicted in France of "inciting hatred" for claiming in a book that Muslims could be called "cruel, barbaric invaders."

The news today: Most of Europe -- including France -- is ready to impose severe immigration laws after escalating violence in majority-immigrant communities.

A young Muslim man in Pakistan has been sentenced to death for insulting the prophet Mohammed. By a government court. Also, those who call Islam a primitive and violent religion are sentenced to death.
It all depends on what the definition of "vicious attack" is. Constructive criticism or an AK-47 bullet to the back of the neck?
But remember, in liberal-land all cultures are equally valid.

Jay.Mac said...

The UN is doing its very best to squelch the freedom of speech too- in the preposterously named Human Rights Council. In effect they have banned all criticism of human rights abuses in the Muslim world.

The UN Human Rights Council is not allowed to judge religions, according to president Doru Romulus Costea of Romania. Criticism of Sharia or fatwas in particular is now forbidden.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/021461.php

Anonymous said...

The Human Rights Council doesn't need to be forbidden. They don't judge a LOT of things, like ethnic cleansing/genocide, modern slavery, disappearances of political opponents of member governments.
I could write a funny comedy routine. Someone says something that's misconstrued as anti-Islam. "Fatwa!" screams the imam. "I never!" says the first guy. "Ah. You lie! ANOTHER fatwa!"
"No, no, no!"
"Fatwa, fatwa, fatwa!"
"Blast! He has as many `fatwas' as I have `noes.' "

When I said "Europe -- including France -- ", that was oldthink. Of course France cannot decide for itself. It's the EuropeAN UNION that's deciding.