Quickies: The Gandhi Strategy

     So many people have railed against contemporary, politically correct censorship as engineered by the “social justice warriors” – three lies for the price of one, there – that the video embedded below constitutes mandatory viewing:

     Gavin McInnes has the courage of his convictions. He says what he thinks and does it under his right name. This is the indispensable characteristic, the sine qua non of a truly free society. Mark Steyn explains why:

     As Kathy Shaidle notes, many of the commenters to the McInnes video are talking past each other. There are always rational reasons for not flying under your flag. But cumulatively and objectively they have a corrosive effect. McInnes cites the stand-up mommy who, in response to the arrest of a parent who let her children walk home from the park unaccompanied, organized a "Leave Your Kids At The Park" day - to demonstrate to the statist control freaks that they can't arrest us all. Her name is Lenore Skenazy, not "WarriorPrincess437".

     The trouble is the opposite also applies: the more people who sit it out under handles like "Freedom Crusader" the easier it is to arrest the few who do put their names to it.

     ~I think of this, especially this month, in the context of the Mohammed cartoons. This weekend I shall be speaking in the Danish Parliament on the tenth anniversary of their publication. (See here for ticket details.) For the last few weeks Douglas Murray and I have been doing a mordant back-and-forth on how the only reason we're top of the bill is because everyone else is dead, or in hiding under 24-hour police protection. So there's no one but us to invite.

     Steyn’s concluding punch goes straight to the gut:

     If you don't stand up, you make it easier to silence the few who do.

     So: We now have Gavin McInnes, Kathy Shaidle, Mark Steyn, and an obscure Web commentator who’s hardly worth mentioning on the side of outspokenness under one’s right name. Anyone else?