Friday, September 25, 2015

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?

6 comments:

Adrienne said...

I not only fly under my real name, I'm also painfully easy to find due to our online business. You can't "drive down" our private road on MapQuest, but the satellite view is available making it easy to drop a bomb accurately.

I hardly know who this guy is, but he's been popping up every few days lately. I could do with a few less F-words.

Bruce said...

I am

Mark said...

I'm with you... in fact, I'm trying my hand at blogging because of you.

furball said...

Agreed, though ever since replies here are via our google account I've been tagged as furball. I don't know why this is, since the name in my google, gamil and hotmail accounts is Tim Turner. Ah well.

Tim Turner

Roy Lofquist said...

"Never answer an anonymous letter" - Yogi Berra

I have been posting for a number of years under my own name. As far as I have been able to determine there are only two "Roy Lofquist"s in the world so I am real easy to find. I remain in good health, for a septuagenarian, so I haven't triggered any real crazies yet.

Course I do have a plaque on my keyboard that says "Gin is the ruin of many a poor girl".

Unknown said...

I comment under the name Andy Texan and sometimes I occasionally give opinions that a leftist might call inflammatory.

Andy Pryzant