Thursday, May 7, 2015

Naughty Words

     Have you noticed how many persons – how many supposed Americans – have come out against freedom of speech lately? The media are almost unanimous against it. The following example is typical:

     Looks like Pamela Geller will get her wish: More dead Americans at the hands of radical Muslims. Hell, the hatemonger finally even got ISIS to pay attention to her.

     Last week Geller — whose repulsive anti-Muslim ad campaign caused the MTA to ban all religious, opinion and political ads — held a $10,000 contest in Texas. The aim? To draw caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, which she knows is forbidden by most Muslims and frowned upon by the rest.

     The result? Two violent radical Muslims opened fire on the group, and the shooters ended up dead at the hands of the police. Yesterday ISIS claimed credit and vowed to kill more Americans.

     Violence and its ugly brother, violent protest, is the lowest form of human expression and runs counter to what most of the great religious and philosophical prophets, from Jesus to Muhammad to Martin Luther King to Mahatma Gandhi, preached.

     But so is hate-filled propaganda against any one religion. Geller, like ISIS and al Qaeda, revel in hate and nothing would make any of them happier than to be the catalyst for the killing of hundreds of innocent Americans to prove a point. Geller would be a hero to the hateful. Damn the cost in innocent lives, damn the heartache.

     So if Muslim savages run amok murdering innocent Americans, it will be Pamela Geller’s fault for offending them! Amazing! Does this principle apply to domestic violence? If she says something that offends him, and he strikes – or kills – her for it, is her injury or death “her fault?” Or is that different somehow?

     But perhaps that’s a bridge we shouldn’t cross, being civilized and all. (I omit any Muslims that happen to be in the audience.) If memory serves, the First Amendment was enacted with a particular purpose: to protect the freedom of speech of the press. It looks to your humble commentator as if a lot of “journalists” feel they don’t need it any longer. (Let’s pass in silence over the inclusion of Muhammad, seventh-century fantasist, poseur, warlord, slaver, multiple adulterer, and pedophile, in the ranks of “great religious and philosophical prophets.”)

     Even Fox News, supposedly a media bastion of American principles, is giving space to such sentiments:

     Pseudo-conservative Bill O’Reilly opined as follows:

     O’Reilly burnished his own anti-jihadist credentials as he said, “Insulting the entire Muslim world is stupid… It does not advance the cause of liberty or get us any closer to defeating the savage jihad.”

     In fact, O’Reilly argued that it actually “hurts the cause” to fight jihad, and Laura Ingraham agreed with him that it isn’t “beneficial.” Neither of them discounted the importance of the free speech, but as far as O’Reilly’s concerned, that’s “not in play” here.

     Oh? Why isn’t freedom of speech “in play” here? Does O’Reilly even understand the concept?

     (Apropos of nothing much, apparently holding a celebration of the death of a would-be murderer is quite all right. But then, the standards are lowered for camel-raping, goat-fellating savages.)

     Pamela Geller has demonstrated her own dedication to freedom of expression, and has backed it with her personal safety. Let no one be in any doubt about what Muslims would do to her if they had the opportunity:

     Sean [Hannity] had Pamela Geller on with the infamous Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary to discuss whether Geller should be put to death for organizing a cartoon contest.

     Yes, you read that correctly. ISIS has of course, vowed to slaughter Geller and “everyone who houses her events,” and “gives her a platform to spill her filth.” The New York Daily News reported Wednesday night that ISIS said in a posting on a message board that it was sending “all our Lions to achieve her slaughter.”

     “Our aim was the khanzeer (swine) Pamela Geller and to show her that we don’t care what land she hides in or what sky shields her,” it said.

     Interestingly, Geller told Hannity, the FBI and Homeland Security have not been in touch with her in the wake of these threats.

     Choudary, who has been on Hannity’s show many times before, was asked point-blank, “Do you support this death threat against Pam Geller because she ran a free speech contest?” Via Mediaite:

     Choudary argued there’s a difference between cartoons of Mickey Mouse and cartoons of Muhammad, and said Geller went in “knowing full well” many Muslims consider blasphemy an issue worthy of the death penalty. Hannity went off and shouted, “You want her to die!”

     Choudary said Geller should be put before a court and tried, and she would end up punished. Geller shot back, “To blame me and say that my cartoons are controversial… murdering cartoonists is controversial.”

     Not surprisingly, they ended up getting in a huge shouting match...

     (Geller told him to stop interrupting and at one point said “I know you’re used to stepping over women”), and Choudary told her she “knew the consequences.”

     I have no knowledge of whether anyone, in any public, recorded forum, has asked Choudary whether he regards HAMAS and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, whether Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs, or whether shari’a is the only correct law for Mankind (or whether he himself has ever raped a camel or fellated a goat). Such inquiries are generally considered “inappropriate”...meaning risky.

     It is vital that Islam’s proponents be compelled to expose themselves and their beliefs. It takes both determination and skill; neither alone is sufficient. Consider how shifty were the Muslim participants in this interview:

Rod Dreher: Do you believe that homosexuals convicted in a sharia court should be killed, or otherwise punished physically?

Mohamed Elmougy: I don’t condone homosexuality. I have a lot of friends, a lot of people who work for me, just so you know. I don’t go kill them. But, you know, I don’t condone what they do outside of work, so long as it’s something not in front of me. So do I condone the sharia? We don’t apologize for our religion. If that is what our religion says, we certainly accept it open-heartedly.

Rod Dreher: But what do you think *should* be the authority. That’s what I’m asking. In an ideal situation, would you like to see sharia law be the basis for law in this country, and how would you reconcile that –

Tod Robberson: Or put it another way. In this country, the law of man takes precedence over the law of God. In your opinion, is that the way it should be?

[garbled answer by heavily accented man, saying something to effect that the law is flexible from country to country, but there are some things that we don’t have the authority to change.]

[Ghassan – did not get his last name]: President George Bush feels that he is inspired by God, and based on that he makes his policies. He made that known to us. [crosstalk] President Bush told us that law made by man is not good enough law, that we should be following God’s law.

Rod Dreher: Just describe to me your view, the Islamic view, of sharia. What role should sharia play in this society?

Mohamed Elmougy: [garbled] I don’t sit up all night thinking what the role of sharia needs to be. All I can tell you is that we as American Muslims, living in a non-Muslim country, are ordered to follow the rules of the country that we live in, no matter how much we agree or disagree with. So do I go after you if you’re homosexual, to try to kill you today? No. We haven’t seen that.

So I think to go focus on that and to leave all the other good things that American Muslims are part of, and that the religion is talking about, and only focus on things that to you sound or feel strange is just not the correct approach. Forget paranoid, it’s just not the correct approach. And it does nothing, as I said, but alienate our children from the society that they’re going to be living in, and die in.

     By contrast, consider the following exchange – posted once before – between a young Muslim college student and conservative speaker David Horowitz:

     When compelled, whether incidentally or by their own foolishness, to expose themselves and their vile creed to the world, Muslims show us the true face of evil – and it has nothing to do with Pamela Geller or anyone else staging a “Draw Muhammad” contest. If Islam were not styled a “religion,” it would be regarded as no better than Nazism, with which it shares many specific tenets. (Nota Bene: This is also true of left-liberalism. As Jonah Goldberg once asked an audience of left-liberal college students, “Apart from the genocide, what don’t you like about Nazism?” Of course, many on the Left would endorse genocide on the basis of one’s political leanings. After all, “re-education” isn’t guaranteed to work.)

     But media luminaries such as Bill O’Reilly proclaim that "Just because you can say it doesn't mean you should say it…It is stupid. It accomplishes nothing." His face decorates millions of television screens nightly. Surely we “should” defer to his wisdom, only say what he thinks we “should” say...or think.

     There is a word in all discussions of this matter whose significance is critical: the word should.

     Should is routinely used about consequences: If we do this, then this should happen, or inversely, this other thing should not happen. When we’re discussing a physical process – say, the operation of a machine – should expresses our confidence in our knowledge of the applicable physical laws.

     Machines, of course, are non-sentient. They lack free will. But what of men? Men assumed to possess free will and a knowledge of the law? Men who, feeling that something of importance to them has been “insulted,” decide to take up weapons and commit murder? How does should apply to them?

     Megyn Kelly has a few thoughts for you:

    

     In discussions of individuals’ rights, including their right of free expression, there’s no naughtier word than should. It’s time to banish it from all discussions about Islam. Should never applies to whether speech is free. It never applies to any individual’s exercise of his rights, for the consequences, as long as they involve no violation of anyone’s rights, are irrelevant. I’ll allow should in one specific context: What should civilized people do to expunge this seventh-century madness from our societies before it spills still more blood?

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

some one of no great consequence said "we are a cowards' I believe he may have been correct. I don't want to believe this but i find that we can't or wont stand up for our freedoms

Anonymous said...

Let us be blunt about why the left – the people supposedly imbued with Liberty {Liberals} – are siding with the enemies of freedom: They would LOVE to suppress free-speech themselves.

The saying ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend applies in this case’ applies in this case.

The left would love to get their foot ( or AK-47) in the door and stop speech that THEY find offensive.

They don’t care that the same people are at odds with them on other issues, they only care that they can use this issue to shut down their opposition.

That is the bottom line.

agraves said...

You will notice that this issue is really occurring in the white world. Just like the mother who slapped her son in Baltimore who became a hero to white conservatives. Blacks didn't see her as a hero, slapping upside the head is accepted behavior in the hood. Just so when blacks are offended they go violent and start shooting if guns are handy, so jihadis do the same thing, insult mohammed and they start shooting, that's what they do and blacks are not complaining since that is what they do all day long. White people need to get violent when they don't like stuff, that would help stop the destruction of the republic. Whites need to become jihadis themselves.

Anonymous said...

"free speech" requires defense of the right of people to speak in offensive ways. It does not require your subsidy of "piss Christ" or encouragement of a political ideology masquerading as a genuine religion, but Government cannot prohibit (especially) political speech. Government can not allow force or threat-of-force to be applied to speech, or the government becomes a partisan actor. Consider armed large verbally menacing Black Panther soldiers marching back and forth in front of White voters waiting outside a polling place, Mr. Holder.

Inoffensive speech has never needed any protections.

Got enough ammo to wear the rifling out of your barrels? That's almost enough.

pdxr13

Groman said...

Let's see, we can't draw a picture of Mohammed, we can't serve bacon in a restaurant in case a musloid walks in, we can't have ham & swiss sandwiches in schools in case a musloid is in attendance. What's next ? Are we going to enact laws prohibiting any negative comments about islam ? When did this cease to be America ? That's actually a rhetorical question as the America I grew up in died years ago. We're halfway down the proverbial slope and picking up speed.

Anonymous said...

"So if Muslim savages run amok murdering innocent Americans, it will be Pamela Geller’s fault for offending them!"

Well, we could ask Ron Paul.

Pascal said...

Damned Prog Linda Stasi (any connections to East Germany when you see her name may provide a clue here) seems to be projecting her own views (East Germany again).

So let's insert her own name into the opening line with which you opened your exposé.

"Looks like Linda Stasi will get her wish: More dead Americans at the hands of radical Muslims."

Properly comprehending the rest of Ms Stasi's projection isn't hard either.
'Hell, this hatemonger didn't even get ISIS to pay to me. I did in accord with my the agenda of us Progressives.'

Dear Fran,

Now that your old "Conversion of the Death Cults" series has been dropped from the Wayback Machine archive, maybe this is time to bring it up to date?

Why bother? First off, you once suggested that when you found the time you might weigh the Death Cult moral code against the Judeo-Christian one with which it is at war. More importantly, maybe there is still some conscience remaining in some of the older Progs and they feel the need to repent before they meet their maker. Maybe it's too late for them to turn this downward spiral they helped engineer, and so in earthly terms they are not worthy of being provided insights which might save their rotting souls. But there is always the chance that your tearing into the death cult propaganda once more might save both the lives and the souls of many more worthies.

I say this as a mortal who has nearly given up on the urge himself. Not entirely though.

Yours,
Pascal

bob r said...

"I have no knowledge of whether anyone, in any public, recorded forum, has asked Choudary ... or whether shari’a is the only correct law for Mankind ..."

In the very video you referenced: embedded at Neo's at the bottom of the post. At about 35 seconds. (I don't know how to get a direct link :-( )

Anonymous said...

crusaders, agraves... The cure for jihad and jihadis are crusaders. And we're out here, watching... because we know that when it goes hot, we will have to kill every single one of them. When the shooting starts going both ways, it will be very vicious and very fast.

David DeGerolamo said...

Maybe the correlation should be between religious freedom vs. free speech. But that would not be correct: it is a matter of the rights of Muslims over the rights of Judeo-Christians. So if the government and media are defending the rights of Muslims (otherwise known as Islamic terrorists) over Americans' right to free speech:

1. Has the government been usurped by Muslims and Muslim sympathizers?
2. Is this a means by the government to diminish or extinguish our rights and natural laws?
3. When the war does become a global conflagration, will we be fighting a foreign or a domestic enemy?