07 March 2006 Blog Home : March 2006 : Permalink
Western governments who do not want to have their embassies burned down, or their trade with Islamic countries boycotted and ruined, or the lives of their nationals in Muslim countries placed in jeopardy, had better make themselves enforcers for the rules of a religion which their citizens do not accept. That is the demand.
They must curb free speech and free expression. Curb the freedom to criticism and mock and outspokenly denounce religion - the freedom from which over centuries most of our freedoms have been spun and consolidated.
And how have the bourgeois-democratic governments and liberal newspapers and TV systems responded? In the face of an outcry which - whatever energies other than religious feelings have fuelled it - has been a vast outpouring of religious zealotry and bigotry, they have apologised!
They have scurried and run.
They have accepted the diktat of Muslim priests and of religious politicians whose goal and ideal is to establish everywhere authoritarian-theocratic states whose nearest equivalents in 20th century European history were the mid-century fascist states (including Nazi Germany before World War Two).
However to my surprise I find myself in agreement with a number of other articles at the same site. For example they have an excellent refutation of the human-hating bunny-huggers (which I want to comment on separately) and some interesting commentary on Iraq which is considerably better than that which appears in the mainstream Invertebrate Liberal press. As I read more I suspect I shall find more goodness as well as, no doubt, some things that I disagree with.Update: This article reads very well together with one found by Joe Kaztman at Winds of Change and published in RealClearPolitics and at The Intellectual Activist. I find it fascinating that the two can arrive at the same end viewpoint from totally different starting locations
Update 2: Needless to say the EU is packed with "Invertebrate Liberals" according to this Reuter's article from last month (H/T Eugene Volokh)
The European Union may try to draw up a media code of conduct to avoid a repeat of the furor caused by the publication across Europe of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, an EU commissioner said on Thursday.
..."The press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression," he told the newspaper. "We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right." ...
Frattini, a former Italian foreign minister, said millions of Muslims in Europe felt "humiliated" by the cartoons.
His proposed voluntary code would urge the media to respect all religious sensibilities but would not offer privileged status to any one faith.
Full Telegraph interview here