The prices of free speech
: The irony is painful: Theo Van Gogh is murdered because of his speech. Now the Dutch government is looking to shut down radical websites. Free speech begets murder begets controlled speech. What’s wrong with this picture?
5 responses to “The prices of free speech”
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We need to learn to tolerate even those who aren’t capable of tolerance.
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The September 11 attacks could have been prevented if American and European security services had been more alert and less PC. Officials with politically correct attitudes reasoned that most migrants from non-Western societies could only have the best intentions. Spying on them would leave the smell of “discrimination” — a very sensitive issue. Terrorists can flourish in cities where traditional Christian beliefs are under attack by secularism and liberal lifestyles. The ACLU will always rescue a terrorist and punish the Christian. In America we gave them free reign to practice, prepare, and put their plan into action. After all the first amendment guaranteed them their rights. They made good use of the internet to kill 3000 innocents as they fine tuned their plans. Democracy can only offer freedom as long as it is not used against others with equal rights. A democratic society should give us all freedom but at the same time protect us from those who abuse it. Most democracies are reluctant to address in a political or legal sense, muslim terrorists in their midst, simply because their freedom is guaranteed by its very constitution.As soon as this group’s behaviour becomes politically destabilising or a clear and proven danger to others (like a terrorist threat)….then that should change. I’m not willing to die to protect the free speech of my killers.
Said the preacher at the Mevlana Mosque in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, “Hell lives for the infidels! Down with all democracies and all democrats!”
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=13950&name=Dutch%20religious%20violence%20alarms%20Germany
But yes, I know only a small handful are extremists. How many more innocents will die as we find excuses to excuse terror and blame ourselves. -
Michael, while that may sound nice, many of those people who can not tolerate you or me find glory and joy in my/your death. I will simply not give them my death with out a fight. Your tolerance has deadly consequences.
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The famed “Phoenix memo”, which an FBI field agent sent to HQ worrying about Muslims taking flight training was spiked. When asked later why no follow-up was done, Mueller said there were something like 20,000 people in flight training at any given time and there was no way to check them out.
The obvious solution, considering the content of the memo from Phoenix was to look at guys named Mohammed, or Ahmed–as Mark Steyn observed–but then nobody in FBI HQ wanted to write what Steyn described as the “career-detonating” memo in reply telling the field guys to check on the Arabs.
It appears that Europe has been restricting speech already, through hate-speech codes and social pressure (Fortuyn, a hedonist-libertarian was labled a fascist by the chatterers and politicians of Holland when he mentioned Muslims are not nice to women and gays), which causes a festering resentment. Such resentment, obviously a project of the establishment, blows up into the violence we’ve seen since van Gogh was murdered.
That this gets JJ’s attention is because those whose speech is restricted are members of an accredited victims’ group (Muslims). Earlier restrictions by virtue of hate speech codes and so forth went right by him. Strange. -
Dutch Ponder Old blasphemy Law
From the International Herald Tribune:
Dutch leaders have debated about invoking a rarely used law banning blasphemy in response to a wave of ethnic tension and violence. Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner told Parliament that he wanted to revive a 1932 law to isolate radicals and curb “hateful comments.” Vague on how it would be applied, which he said would be up to the courts. Under the law, violators could face jail terms of up to three months and a fine for insulting a person’s religious faith, either orally or in writing. It was last invoked in 1968. Mr Donner did not respond when asked whether the law was intended to restrict mosque sermons that could be considered inciting, or whether it could target provocative films like van Gogh’s. “If the opinions have a potentially damaging effect on society, the government must act,” he said. “It is not about religion specifically, but any harmful comments in general,” he said in a parliamentary debate.
