Thought for the day.

If you say you believe in free speech but are routinely demanding "consequences" for speech you disagree with...you really don't believe in free speech.

America, at age 237.

"I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death my right to ruin you for having offended me with it."

The notion that we are one people--fellow citizens--is shriveling by the day.

God help us.

The Michigan Mutaween.

Give me a second to check the First Amendment....

...still checking...

...almost...done...

Nope. No exceptions for the hypersensitivities of the perpetually aggrieved.

Dearborn's slow-learner Virtue Police need another lesson-by-lawsuit, it seems.

Watching the wheels come off.

I often wonder if the ordinary folks who lived through building crises ever sensed the sweep of events--the sheer scope of what was happening--as it happened. Or did they just process it in a way to fit it into a framework of "it was ever thus", because facing the awfulness of it was too much?

Three signposts for our times:

1. Activists investigating factory farms are terrorists as far as the FBI is concerned. The "Thou Shalt Not Annoy Agribusiness" commandment in action.

That's the same provision that keeps subsidizing ethanol production during a crippling drought, also helping to send your food costs through the roof. USDA approved!

2. Islamist vandal arrested for breach of the peace rewarded with ad policy change prohibiting political speech which threatens a breach of the peace.

Orwell wept.

[Wait...we seem to have questions for the blog readership from a self-identified Salafi reader, a Mr. "Abu Hamza":

"While suppressing Jew propaganda is fine, why is this whore Eltahawy not wearing a headscarf? And where is her male relative escort?"

Those are toughies. Anyone?]

3. An Inconvenient Filmmaker arrested on unspecified "probation violation" by the Justice Department.

As in the Federal government. Anyone got any other examples of flying squads of feds arresting people for misuse of a computer while on probation?

So, we can see it happening. Now what?

"Equally condemn..."

Or, "an object lesson in how not to reassure."

“There is a need for deterrent legal measures against those individuals or groups that want to damage relations between people, spread hate and incite violence,”  Osama Siblani, Publisher of The Arab American News said in a statement. “It is a need that Americans should seriously consider.”

Sibliani is one of the organizers of a rally in Dearborn, Mich., that will denounce both the video and the deadly terrorist attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Libya. “While we condemn violence against innocent Americans abroad, we equally condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims,” he said in the statement.

I don't know...how about seriously considering growing a thicker skin instead?

Or seriously considering violence to be worse than insult? Apparently that's too much to ask.

Nah. Better to run the Bill of Rights through the shredder, then nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

When we want your opinion, we'll hand you some talking points.

Or, from the "That's Awfully White of You" Files, the Administration explains that it's not interested in dialogue on the Sebelius Mandate:

 After a bruising week for health officials on the issue, the White House arranged a conference call with reporters to address what it called “confusion” over the policy. It also put up a blog post by Cecilia Munoz, director of the House Domestic Policy Council, pointing out that “no individual health care provider will be forced to prescribe contraception” and “no individual will be forced to buy or use contraception.”

And White House press secretary Jay Carney said at Thursday’s afternoon briefing that there was “not a debate” over reversing the decision. “The decision has been made, and it was made after careful consideration,” he said.

"Message: We don't care."

Thanks, ObamaCaths. They couldn't have done it without you.

Free speech isn't free.

Former Canadian "Human Rights Commission" employee and noted



Richard Warman continues his war against free speech and has filed
yet another lawsuit-for-intimidation-purposes-only against the Canadian free speech blog, Blazing Cat Fur.

Any financial help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Can't say as I care for what you're breeding up there, Canada.

Thank God for grown-ups.

A Muslim writer protests the Williams firing.

And in even better news, a group of American and Canadian Muslims stand up for free speech. I especially appreciate this part:

We are concerned and saddened by the recent wave of vitriolic anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic sentiment that is being expressed across our nation.

We are even more concerned and saddened by threats that have been made against individual writers, cartoonists, and others by a minority of Muslims. We see these as a greater offense against Islam than any cartoon, Qur’an burning, or other speech could ever be deemed.

Bravo, ladies and gentlemen! Thanks for standing up and being counted.

Finally--a silver medal!

Thanks to all who voted for my slogan in the Be Mean To Jennifer Lynch Contest!

I took second, so I'll be getting a pair of T-shirts to wear on my excursions across the Free Speech DMZ (a/k/a the Detroit River).

Big thanks also to Blazing Cat Fur for coming up with and hosting the contest.

Nevertheless, the fact that something like the CHRC could exist a stone's throw away makes me ever so glad for the following 45 words:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It's like American Idol, only not at all.

You can legitimately vote more than once in the great Canadian t-shirt contest. I'm currently in third, hint, hint.

And thanks for the votes, not so BTW.

I contributed a bon mot and all I got was this cool t-shirt.

Devoted readers:

You can win me at least one, and possibly three, t-shirts by going over to Blazing Cat Fur to vote in the "Be Mean to Jennifer Lynch" contest. Ms. Lynch is Big Sister, the head of the Canadian Human Rights [sic] Commission, which has been tasked by the solons of the Dominion with salving the imagined and potential hurts of politically approved groups. Here's the problem with Ms. Lynch and the CHRC, in a fisky nutshell from Ezra Levant, her indefatigable foe and one of the great free speech heroes of our time, right up there with Nat Hentoff.

I've been following the battle reasonably closely and thought I'd offer my own contribution, which has the extra advantage of being a double entendre appropriate to the control-freak nature of the entire enterprise:

The CHRC: Only Jennifer Lynch Knows The Safe Words.

To my delight, it made the top 10 finalists. Come on--you can picture Mark Steyn using that one in a column, can't you? It has to be worth something. So, get on over there and win me a t-shirt or three.

"The Free World Fatwas Itself."

Mark Steyn also goes yard:

Andrew's post from this morning on Geert Wilders has stayed with me all day — especially this line from Edmund Standing:

How is [British Foreign Secretary] Miliband any better than Muslims who screamed about The Satanic Verses without bothering to read it?

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the Ayatollah's fatwa against Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses. Two decades on, who needs the mullahs? These days western nations are happy to fatwa their own. It's now a familiar pattern.

If you threaten violence, the authorities cave in, and do the mob's bidding in the interests of "public order" — as they did in Toronto on Wednesday, when thugs attacked a Jewish center:

The police demanded that the center itself close down — punishing the innocent and achieving the goal of the mob.

If you're a "moderate Muslim" who gets death threats and complains to the authorities,

The police will dispatch two burly Muslim police officers. These gentlemen will warn the complainer to button it, lest he rile up restive Muslims.

If young Muslim girls are being kidnapped and forced into marriage with their first cousins, the British Home Office minister will suggest that these matters are best handled discreetly and informally. If young Muslim girls are being murdered in "honor killings", the Chief Commissar of the Ontario "Human Rights" Commission will explain that they're a "small commission" and they have to be able to prioritize and that Mark Steyn is a far greater threat to the Queen's peace than killers of Muslim women.

But, if you don't threaten violence, if you don't issue death threats, if you don't kill anyone, if you just make a movie or write a book or try to give a speech, the state will prosecute you, ban you or (in the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali) force you to flee your own country.

In their appeasement of thugs, buffoons like Miliband and the Tory squishes across the House of Commons on the Opposition benches are making it very clear that the state accords more respect to violence than to debate. As I said to my interrogators in Ontario this week:

When you go down that road, all you do is lead to the situation that you have in, say, Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, you can't start a newspaper and print what you think, so if you object to the House of Saud, the only thing you can do is blow stuff up.

In Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and elsewhere (as the Instaprof has often noted) the state is teaching a very dangerous lesson.

As Mark Steyn notes, Happy Fatwa 20th Anniversary. Marvel at how much worse things have gotten since.

Kathy Shaidle knocks one out of the park.

Or pulls a Darryl Sittler, given her nation of birth.

Free Speech--for me and thee:

During WW2, we spoke of "the Germans" and "the Japanese".

No "not all" to be seen.

It was understood by normal, sane, patriotic and intelligent ordinary people that not every single solitary German was a Nazi. Even before we learned the story of Oskar Schindler and other "righteous gentiles," U.S. citizens spoke of "good Germans" whose existence they were certain of. There were indeed angry Americans who beat up their German neighbors. Interestingly, there was no similar backlash against Muslims after 9/11.

We knew there were "good Japanese" too -- at least on our shores. Despite real (as opposed to imaginary persecution), Japanese Americans volunteered to serve their adopted country and became the most decorated unit, not just during WW2, but in the entire history of the US armed forces. (Alas, a similar parallel does not exist in our current conflict for some reason.)

It was common knowledge that, yes, the Germans had invented all kinds of wonderful things and created lovely music and so forth, in a (real) glorious past (as opposed to the sometimes imaginary glorious past frequently cited by Muslim apologists.)

Likewise the Japanese.

However, at that particular moment in time, the Japanese were mutilating American G.Is and running slave brothels, while the Germans were embarked on a mission to wipe out Europe's Jews and other "undesirables."

In response, Dr. Suess and Chuck Jones made some nasty cartoons, as every college kid knows.

(Oh, and we actually killed our enemies back in those days, instead of interrogating them in Laz-E-Boy chairs and feeding them 3000 calorie a day halal meals.)

But as far as your average leftist/Muslim apologist/Canadian MP is concerned, those cartoons of Dr. Suess are worse than, say, this. (Something few university students learn about, because, hey, those cartoons are so much cooler to bash.)


Read. It. All. I don't always agree with every jot and tittle she writes, and that's entirely the point--she should be able to keep writing what she wants anyway. And--here's the kicker--she's far, far more right than wrong--especially here.