Bad news for freedom: An Austrian court today convicted Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff for speaking out against Islam. Key quote:
It seems the case turned on the judge’s reasoning that her statement that Islam’s prophet Mohammed was a “pedophile” was defamatory since his child bride Aisha (age six at the time of marriage and nine at the time it was consummated) remained his wife when she turned 18.
Understand that I do not consider this action by LA to be an attack on free speech, since the prosecutions all focus on illegal disruptive protests, such as blocking traffic for hours. Protest in a free society must be encouraged, as long as it doesn’t impinge on the rights of others. These protests did.
The NBC employee who distributed the “What is the internet?” video was fired this week for doing so. First, if you haven’t seen it, here’s the video:
Though this video is hilarious, and does illustrate how completely contemptuous TV news anchors can be about new things they haven’t bothered to do any research about, it is also unfair to laugh at them with 20-20 hindsight. At one point or another we were all as ignorant as they are. Note also that we do not know the whole story about why NBC fired this employee.
The liberal way of toning down the rhetoric: A speech by Sarah Palin honoring soldiers and their families has been canceled due to “an onslaught of personal attacks against Governor Palin and others associated with her appearance.”
So, this is how the left tones down the rhetoric: These leftwing protesters think it is a good idea to lynch and torture those with whom they disagree. Watch the video, it is horrifyingly priceless:
“We were profoundly shocked when we viewed the videotape,” Phyllis Kinsler, chief executive of the agency’s central New Jersey branch, said in a statement. Ms. Kinsler said the tape “depicted an employee of one of our health centers behaving in a repugnant manner that is inconsistent with our standards of care and is completely unacceptable.”
What crap. The only person whose privacy was invaded was the manager who was breaking the law. Such behavior does not deserve protection, and youtube should know better.
God damn it, that is not what they were sent there to do. We have an out-of-control federal budget issuing out-of-control regulations, and these turkeys want to expand their ability to pry into our private lives?
On Dec. 17, in Sidi Bouzid, deep in the interior, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself aflame in front of a government building, in protest after police confiscated his produce stand. Horrible images of his act circulated lightning-fast on the Internet. Protests followed.
“Thanks to Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, images of those first protests went around the world instantly, and everyone knew about it,” says Tlili. “Even 20 years ago, you could have had those uprisings in the interior and few would have known.”
Freedom wins! A man who was arrested for refusing to give his ID to TSA agents and videotaping his arrest has been acquitted of all charges. You can watch the videotape at the link. Also, more here.
Verizon filed a legal challenge on Thursday of the FCC’s attempt to establish net neutrality rules, taking their suit to the same federal court that last year ruled the FCC did not have the legal authority to do so.
The truth is Greenpeace and I had divergent evolutions. I became a sensible environmentalist; Greenpeace became increasingly senseless as it adopted an agenda that is anti-science, anti-business, and downright anti-human.
Other quotes of interest:
The collapse of world communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall during the 1980s added to the trend toward extremism. The Cold War was over and the peace movement was largely disbanded. The peace movement had been mainly Western-based and anti-American in its leanings. Many of its members moved into the environmental movement, bringing with them their neo-Marxist, far-left agendas. To a considerable extent the environmental movement was hijacked by political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anti-capitalism and anti-globalization than with science or ecology.
And:
There is no cause for alarm about climate change. The climate is always changing. Some of the proposed “solutions” would be far worse than any imaginable consequence of global warming, which will likely be mostly positive. Cooling is what we should fear.
“ What’s really at root in this case is whether travel is a right that we have under the Constitution – an ability to move about the country without having to show papers – which has been one of the defining characteristics of American freedom, “ Hasbrouck said.
How the hell is this toning down the rhetoric? One of the Tucson shooting victims today accused Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Sharron Angle, of causing the shootings on Saturday.
And why isn’t the press criticizing this Democrat campaign official for this blatant slander?
Look, I agree that we’ve got to tone down the rhetoric. And I also agree that conservatives bear as much responsibility to do this as anyone. Free debate in a civilized society requires reasoned discussion of the issues, and a willingness to tolerate disagreement. It should not include ad hominen attacks, or the wishful desire to murder your opponents.
However, it is not the tone of rightwing discourse that worries me much these days. You would be hard pressed to find any examples of any Republicans or Tea Party activists suggesting it would a good thing to kill Democrats. Such suggestions are not only considered unacceptable, everyone on the right knows that to say such a thing would probably destroy your career in the public arena. Thus, it just doesn’t happen.
Instead, it is the left, the press, and the Democratic Party’s efforts to whip up anger at the right that scares me. Nor did this ugly behavior begin on Saturday after the Tucson murders. In the past decade there have been the numerous examples (which I have been documenting these past few days) of leftwing activists, Hollywood movies, talk radio hosts, and Democratic officials advocating violence against the right. (For a talk radio host example, see this new list of liberals calling for the murder of conservatives.) Worse, such behavior has almost become routine in recent years. It seems that every random violent act has become a vehicle for the left and the press to attack and slander conservatives, despite the fact that there is no evidence that any of these accusations are true.
This behavior must stop. Violent and angry rhetoric can and will cause violence. And it probably has, considering the fact that a large number of the random violent acts in recent years have actually been committed by deranged individuals with liberal, not conservative, leanings. This is not to say that I blame the left for this violence, but that the left has as much of a responsibility as the right to think carefully about what it says, before it says it. Otherwise, they might find that they have made their less rational followers more angry than they ever imagined, or can control.
Or as Michael York says to his NAZI friend at the end of this scene from the 1972 movie, Cabaret. “You still think you can control them?”
Is this an example of toning down the rhetoric? The Facebook Group “I Hate It When I Wake Up & Sarah Palin Is Still Alive” has more than 2,000 members.
So you have no doubt about the ugly tone of this Facebook group, here is a screen capture from the page. Note the desire to kill Palin (and Bush) in several images.
