“Be A Man”
The New York Post describes a farcical cat and mouse game between activist Mona Eltahawy and a woman called Pamela Hall as Eltahawy tried to paint over a poster like the one depicted below. Hall was blocking the spray paint and Eltahawy scooted around finding an opening to continue her over-painting.
One Man's Speech Is Another Man's Hate Crime
“Mona, do you think you have the right to do this?” said Pamela Hall, holding a mounted camera as she tried to block the barrage of spray paint.
“I do actually,” Eltahawy calmly responded. “I think this is freedom of expression, just as this is freedom of expression.”
Hall then thrusts herself between Eltahawy’s spray paint and the poster.
Eltahawy — an activist who has appeared on MSNBC and CNN — engaged her in an odd cat-and-mouse dance, spraying pink every time she had an opening.
“What right do you have to violate free speech,” Hall pleaded.
“I’m not violating it. I’m making an expression on free speech,” an increasingly agitated Eltahawy shot back.
“You do not have the right!” Hall said.
Eltahawy continued spraying around Hall until the Transit police arrived to arrest Eltahawy.
The episode recalls another incident recounted in the Wall Street Journal involving a Republican man who left an absentee ballot to be mailed by his Democratic wife.
As Isaac Pollak, an ardent Republican, kissed his wife goodbye before heading out on a business trip to Asia several years ago, he handed her his absentee ballot for the coming presidential election and asked her to mail it.
Bonnie Pollak, a Democrat, weighed her options. Should she be loyal to her spouse, respect his legal right and mail the ballot? Or remain faithful to her deeply held beliefs and suppress his vote?
“It was a real dilemma,” says Ms. Pollak, 58 years old, a student in a doctoral program in social welfare who lives in Manhattan. “I decided to do the right thing.”
Ms. Pollak threw the ballot away.
That was a tough moral dilemma.
Both Eltahawy and Ms. Pollack were doing what each was convinced was “the right thing”. In the case of the Egyptian activist the right thing was to paint over a hateful poster in order to foster peace and harmony. In Ms. Pollack’s case the equivalent action was to cast Mr. Pollack’s ballot into the garbage can before it could help install a Republican.
What is the right and manful thing to do? These seem like questions out of an earlier age.
The striking thing about our modern and supposedly secular politically correct culture is just how religious it is. The concepts of piety and the sense of the sacred are still very much in evidence although other terms are used to describe them. In place of “blasphemy” we have the newfangled term “hate speech”. In place of “sin” we have “bigotry”. Where the word “Satan” was formerly applied we have “Romney”. In place of well … Madonna says “like a prayer”. But it is the same dog with a different collar. Whereas in the past intellectuals complained that society was afflicted by pious women, today the intellectuals have themselves become the pious women.
There is apparently nothing that can be done to stem or suppress the religious instincts in man. They are as strong as ever. But perhaps some purpose can be served by recognizing it for what it is. There is no benefit in the self-deceptive act of pretending that Jesus and Moses are one thing, but somehow Xenu, Gaia and the Prophet Mohammed are another.
They are either similar intellectual entities or nothing at all. For a mind divided against itself cannot stand. This society cannot endure, permanently, half bigoted and half fanatical. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of hate speech will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till we all hate each other.
The benefit to recognizing religion for what is that one can exercise it openly as faith. The disadvantage to disguising it as politics, or worse, advancing a political and supremacist movement as a religion is that we confuse everybody, most especially ourselves. There’s a reason why the First Amendment exists though it only works if everyone sees things for what they are.
But since no one pays heed any more to a 100 year old document that nobody reads then perhaps we should all listen to Russell Peters for guidance on how to ‘do the right thing’ in our difficult and problematic age.
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Interesting how many leftists think they have the absolute right to run roughshod over the free speech rights of anyone who dares to disagree with their worldview. It’s almost like all of that “I don’t agree with you but I’ll die to defend your right to say it” was a cynical lie. Hence the talking points memo which has had it’s latest manifestation in the UChicago prof declaring “the U.S. overvalues free speech”.
EDIT: I also gotta say, you freaking nailed it about our new secular religion. And even though I’m pretty much an agnostic, I can’t stand militant secular atheists, who easily rival the most fire-breathing preacher or sputtering, blustering imam in their righteous certainty of their frameworks.
The human mind hasn’t changed, it’s just been re-harnessed in a novel way.
Beautiful essay.
When one’s faith and beliefs are fragile and easily shattered by the wrong words, one must live in fear of other people’s words. When one’s faith and beliefs are solid as a boulder, one does not care what other people say about one’s beliefs.
Hyper-sensitivity is a sign of weakness, not of strength.
Hillary apparently attended the play Book of Mormon and laughed in all the right places with great gusto. But one wonders whether her laughter would have been as hearty if the jokes were at Prophet Mohammed’s expense.
The Prophet Mohammed. It fairly rolls off the tongue.
Ask yourself: why should the Prophet Joseph Smith be less reverenced than the Prophet Mohammed? Probably because of the name “Joseph Smith”. What politically correct person can put much store by the revelations of someone named Joseph Smith?
Much of the aura of reverence stems directly from the exotic. Put a man in flowing robes surmounted by a silken turban ornamented by a hypnotic ruby and give an unpronounceable name and the world will fall at his feet. Ordinary clothing inspires no awe. One commenter put it this way some posts ago. He said that the British orientalists preferred the Arab simply because it was easier to look up to a man in wind-blown garments than it was to credit a Jew in a cheap suit.
Joseph Smith. Uh-uh. Try Zoombah or Xanthor.
One person who understood this intuitively was Barack Obama. He was originally called Barry Soetoro. But face it, how far can a man with his modest talents go with that kind of name?
“Hi, my name is Barry and I’m going to make the oceans fall”. Nope, doesn’t work.
So he made the change from “Barry” to Barack (emphasis on the second syllable until friends told him it sounded ‘too British’. It then became Barack (emphasis on the first syllable) and the rest was history.
jms/3
Good words and true. I rearranged some of the words. Hope you don’t mind.
When faith is thin and fragile
And shatters by a word
One lives in fear of hearing
A thought that can’t be heard
But when one’s faith is solid
As boulders by the Way
One cares not in the slightest
What others have to say
The lady with the spray paint was not violating the others Free Speech rights. She was engaging in vandalism, or maybe criminal damaging, or maybe a slew of other things. The First Amendment rights of the poster of the poster were upheld by the arresting officer. Had the officer refused to make the arrest because he thought the poster was hateful, then he would have violated the womans rights. The First Amendment guarantees us freedom from governmental interference, not from those who disagree with us.
I love that play and it is a truly great example. You don’t see Donny & Marie issuing Fatwahs on Broadway. That alone should tell us something.
Wretchard makes a good point that I noticed in the last few days as well. When was the last time you heard the President acting in official capacity use the term “Lord Jesus Christ”? Yet he and the enemedia have been practically tripping over themselves with the honorific “Prophet Mohammed” lately. Isn’t that language only used by believers? And no, I don’t think Obama is a crypto-Muslim. I think he only worships himself. My point is that they are using linguistic war to mold compliant minds (see the school kids taken to mosque and required to recite the shahada).
6 @Mark_B
On the most basic level, you are of course correct. But I never mentioned the 1st Amendment, merely a person’s natural free speech rights. Destroying one’s printed speech without permission is a violation of free speech rights, even if it is not specifically enumerated in the 1st Amendment. Yes, we call it “vandalism” in this case, but the effect is an infringement of rights.
The price of pork in Asia and the price of grain world wide will be the dominant factor in 2013.
Let them eat cake-said the red queen-well there aint no cheap cake in 2013-there is no grain to make it.
KSA and China have been buying up the fertile lands of Africa in the last 10 years-good move
As you cannot eat oil, ideology nor hope and change
The major weapon of Stalin, Hitler and Mao was starvation.
Here we go again
Wretchard’s reflections today remind me of Carl L. Becker’s very fine The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophes (1932), where he argues that, while the French philosophes thought they were eradicating themselves of all the trappings of religion, they were, in fact, simply rebuilding another version of the old system. I have a cousin who follows the evening Democratic political talk shows with enough passion — judging by his constant tweets — to drive a crowd of about the size that trampled grassy fields in the dark and pelting rain in Fellini’s 8 1/2. As Wretchard suggests, there is nothing secular in his hatred of Republicans. His hatred comes from somewhere deep inside him (in all of us), a force — mostly irrational — that Becker saw even in the leaders of the Age of Reason.
“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.”
- A. Lincoln
If I find your opinions or actions repugnant then I would decline to associate with you. Frankly I am surprised at how many people have “mixed marriages” with a Leftist. Anyone who threw away my vote would be cut off from my sense of family. If I can not prevent your speech then you cannot force me to listen to you, as you can neither prevent my speech nor be forced to listen to it.
For people like Eltahawy the subway poster is like a monkey trap. Perhaps we can use this to identify jihadi sympathizers or possible supporters for further surveillance. Perhaps one day the science will advance to where we can screen people seeking to enter the country be wiring them to an improved lie detector/brain NRI and flashing images like the poster before them. If the reaction indicates a danger then keep them out.
If she wanted to make a statement of her own, to exercise her right to free speech, then she could have obtained copies of the poster and destroyed them in a public setting in a manner that would not have injured the rights of anyone else. Similarly the Florida Pastor who burned a koran did not invade a mosque or prevent it from performing its role for the muslim community. He destroyed his own private property as a public statement.
The offense is not in the speech or the act of destruction as speech. The offense is in preventing others from speaking or hearing a message. The wife can vote but not throw away her husband’s vote. Eltahawy cannot be allowed to prevent me from seeing a poster. Pinch Sulzberger cannot be allowed to prevent me from eating a chicken sandwich. Secondary boycotts are illegal for that reason.
The Chinese bag merchant is attempting to create an artificial monopoly by restricting the customers ability to comparison shop. Adolescent girls do the same thing to control insecure boys. A grown man knows the answer is, “Watch me, goodbye.” Eltahawy wants to define what it is to be a man or even a human being. If your definition does not support her desire to have monopoly power then she wants to keep you out of the marketplace. Her need for control is immature and destructive. There is no clear stop line on how dangerous people like her are. She can begin by censoring a subway poster but end up eliminating people.
“Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.”
- H. Heine
Tolerance is a delusion, a dream. It does not exist in my opinion. What exists is delayed gratification. Former Yugoslavia broke apart and began removing Muslims, some 600+ years after Muslims captured the area. Slobodan Milošević was just echoing the long simmering hatred of Albanian Muslims. Not tolerance, but rather it is delayed gratification.
Kind of like putting up with Obama: it’s not tolerance
https://www.youtube.com/analytics?vmv=2#fi=v-a4nvhAZ0vr0
It’s the latest version of “You can’t say that about the gospel!”
Only the dialect changes, the Herd remains the same.
However, herds compete. Give it enough time, and the Left will be a different ethnicity.
The French, Japanese, or Apache didn’t start out French, Japanese, or Apache
Morlock- or Eloi?.
The true benefit of free speech is the ability of others to HEAR someone’s speech. By spray painting the poster, the vandal was violating the right of everyone else who would like to READ the poster. Hateful or otherwise, the content of the poster is irrelevant.
Recently a friend showed me a sample of the “dreadful writing” she had received from a rather famous academic in the Philippines. It went something like this:
My first reaction was “this person has almost certainly raised millions of dollars in projects for whatever institution she works for”.
“How did you know? It’s true, she raises millions. But I can’t even understand why. It is impossible to even know what it says.”
“That is the whole point. The fact that it can’t be understood is taken to mean that it must surpassingly brilliant The people who process these proposals do it by the word count of buzz words per paragraph. The more drivel you can pack into a sentence, the better it is accounted.”
This is the project proposal equivalent of the Prophet Joseph Smith problem. No prophet who says something plain is given much credence in his home town. People want magic. They want mystery. They want a guy with a mesmeric stare and twitching eyebrows. They don’t want something they can understand. A guy named Joe Smith is too ordinary. How can he be a prophet?
One reason why the reputation of Moses has fallen so low is because his prescriptions are too plain. Don’t murder. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. Don’t cheat on your wife. It almost sounds like the Bill of Rights. The danged thing is too simple. It can’t be real. He must be a bigot.
Joseph Smith would have gone a whole lot further with the PC crowd if he adopted the name Xanthor.
If you really want to know to what level the thought processes of the modern intellectual elite have descended just read the project proposals that are passed around in the universities. Most of them seem authored in the madhouse. And it is shocking — yet illuminating at the same time — to see people accounted as intelligent reading this absolute twaddle as if it meant something.
So to the question: can the modern intellectual be taken in by the carney grifter? I wouldn’t discount the possibility entirely.
Wretch, the carney grifter owns the intellectual’s body in fee simple and has a claim to first lien on his soul.
It is the Man of Letters who manages to do his own thinking, express his thoughts coherently—-and correct his mistakes.
For those who have not done so, I heartily recommend Paul Johnsons’ “Intellectuals” for a good look at the difference between the two and why the intellectual dooms himself to promoting unholy notions that if ever fully implemented would result in H Sapiens becoming extinct.
When I was little I loved puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles especially. Though some of the pieces can be quite convoluted in shape, it’s not unintentional that a good puzzle has many pieces that are bizarre in the same way, yet not any one fits into the position of any other. The task is to fit them all together in their proper place so that you can see the whole picture. (Were there a picture on the cover of the Obamacare bill, there could be another
jokeNancy Pelosi here. But let’s not digress.)Your post, Wretchard, requires only a bit of deeper thought to see the contrast you have set up between Judeo-Christian religions and what the Left and Statists are trying to replace them with. (G. K. Chesterton was most certainly right.)
I believe you are implying, and I inferred it especially after viewing the comedian’s video clip from which you borrowed your title, that our would-be masters are adamant that none of us is being manly (responsible) unless we each cave into their demands no matter how bizarre and rights-stealing and just plainly not in the true interests of anyone of us. Knowing you as I do, I don’t expect that you will agree directly. Why be direct when the oblique works?
In order to scare us into believing that we will not like it when we don’t let them have their way, but being cowards themselves, they are quite content to incite radical Jihadis to show us what we should fear. (They don’t make union thugs like they used to; too well-to-do and living high off of government teets.)
Dave at 15: “that if ever fully implemented would result in H Sapiens becoming extinct.”
For the deep Sustainability true believers — and the nihilists of course — that is not a bug, but a feature.
Pam Geller is absolutely right: Jihadis ARE savages.
Next?
Anyway, she put up a half-dozen posters in the subway system, after the MTA lost a court case when they Refused to allow a quote from Ayn Rand to be put on the walls to denounce JIHAD. Not “all Muslims,” but their religious wars against the rest of the world. If you go on her website, Atlas Shrugged, you’ll see the story of the whole poster contretemps, in NYC and in San Francisco (wait till you see what the SF bus fleet did about that poster!)
What parallel looney-tunes nutworld are we living in, anyway? That saying, IN NEW YORK CITY where the World Trade Center massacre went down, that jihadis are savages is Controversial? opposed by the MTA?? Cowards and poltroons, the lot of them.
Well: listen to this lady if you need a high wind to blow out the cobwebs! the great Barbara from Harlem — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFEqT4rHNZo&feature=related
Intrepid patriot, and a real firebrand! She’s been out in the country doing TEA Party work, and she says the Tea Parties are “on FIRE.”
The pundits are trying to laugh off Madonna’s “black Muslim in the White House” endorsement but ironically its staying power is probably due to its very thoughtlessness. People under the influence of confusion, drugs or decrepitude are bound to blurt out what they subconsciously think, like drunk talk. On a couple of occasions I have been with guys so drunk they’ve pointed loaded hanguns in my face and threatened to pull trigger.
The gun to the head incident was not mentioned the next day, but nobody forgets stuff like that because you’ve momentarily looked into some unguarded aspect of a persons mind. You’d be an idiot to pretend you saw nothing there. Madonna may be wrong. She is probably addled. But one part of her foggy brain may dimly regard Barack Obama as exactly that: a black Muslim in the White House.
The only thing that could be worse is babbling out some other woman’s name while in the throes of romantic passion with your girlfriend. Even when it’s a mistake it confirms the worst and most stereotypical fears. ‘So this is what white liberals really think of the president.’
The danger in that stage outburst is that it may trigger a subconscious preference cascade, which occurs when people realize others are thinking what they’re thinking. This loosens the dam behind which the doubts have been penned and makes it just that much easier to give the suppressed idea voice.
That doesn’t mean Madonna is right. But it does mean that another one of the PC no-go zones has been violated.
I find this story particularly interesting because I have twice been tempted to deface posters I disagreed with.
Once I actually tried. Near my house, someone put up stickers on stop-sign poles saying “9/11 was an inside job.” I stopped my car, got out, and tried to pull off one of the stickers, but it wouldn’t come off. A few days later I noticed they were gone. It didn’t really occur to me at the time that the action would be wrong, although afterwards I asked myself the question. Still not entirely sure….
The other time was when I learned about the advertisements for Islam going up on buses in San Francisco. I was on my way to SF and seriously considered having some stickers made saying “I will not submit” to plaster on those ads (Since I figured it would take too long to spray paint that and it wouldn’t look right.)
That one I thought about, because it is clearly vandalism to deface an ad someone has paid for. (Perhaps it is also vandalism to remove someone’s sticker on a stop-sign-pole, I don’t know; seems more like removing litter.)
I figured the only thing to do was look up the penalties and be prepared to pay them; seemed like a good case for civil disobedience. In the end I decided not to go through with it but it still seems like a good idea.
Do people think this would be an appropriate example of civil disobedience, were one prepared to pay the fines etc., or would it be inappropriate curtailment of free speech?
“Either the opponents of hate speech will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till we all hate each other.”
In reality what we have is that pretty soon the idea that hate speech is a bad concept itself becomes defined as hate speech. It’s like the Salem witch trials. Anyone who says that the accused is not a witch must be a witch. Then anyone who says that there are no witches must be a witch. And so on. Pretty soon everybody is a witch except the chief accuser, who then finds out there is no one to run the dunking device.
Thus, the people who supposedly oppose hate speech become advocates of it.
“Joseph Smith would have gone a whole lot further with the PC crowd if he adopted the name Xanthor.”
Actually, he would have gone a whole lot further with them if his analysis of ancient writings from Jesus using crystals had led him to conclude that rather than hard work, thrift, saving for the future and focus on your family that doing the exact opposite was the way to go. If he had come up with the Black Ghetto Culture a couple of centuries earlier he would today be regarded as “sort of a god.”
Sara #20:
I have thought that rather than to pass a law forbidding the burning of the American Flag we should pass a law making it legal to beat the stuffing out of anyone in the act of burning the American Flag.
If burning the American Flag is protected free speech, how can one oppose that with more free speech? Not burning an American Flag hardly is an example of a counter action; it’s inaction. So the only way I can make an opposing statement is to cave in the burner’s skull with a hunk of angle iron. Don’t see any other way to do it, sorry. But I can use a gun to do much the same thing if you would prefer and there are no local laws against discharging a firearm within the city limits.
Admittedly it would be far more poetic to douse the burner with gasoline and light him up simultaneously, but that would be an act of murder rather than a simple cranial realignment activity.
Dear Sarah,
What don’t you understand about free speech…Quite a lot I would suspect.
Unless I’m missing something, Wretchard, I think you have set up a false choice when you divide faiths into bigotry and fanaticism. I can’t help but interpret this essay as very much in line with the essential trap of liberalism, that all beliefs and perspectives are matters of personal opinion and therefore equally valid or invalid, depending on who is calling the shots at the time.
If religions are all the same dog with different collars, there is really no dog there, just something we make up to comfort ourselves. If that’s true, then nothing is true, as such, just a different shade of grey, or at least we can’t know what the truth is. Which would mean you can’t have something of value or a point to your essay. You wouldn’t be able to claim to be getting at some truth, only to be stringing together thoughts and words in a way that pleases some of us.
Maybe what you are getting at has more to do religious fundamentalism, in which case I think it could be argued that some dogs are much better than others. Islam seems to me to be essentially fundamentalism and not much else, or at least to be much more vulnerable to fundamentalism than Christianity.
Paradoxically, liberalism (and its close cousin, Scientism)looks to be just another name for fundamentalism. When you begin by disregarding or denying the existence of absolute truth, then there is nowhere to go other than into your own mind, which means that what you believe has to pervade your entire view of reality.
Christianity, on the other hand, embodies a freedom to pursue what is true while also acknowledging our human inability to fully know absolute truth, or God, in this world. Christians can obviously be fundamentalists, but the religion actually mitigates against such tendencies. One of the reasons why so many of us have come to think of it as the best dog.
“Put a man in flowing robes surmounted by a silken turban ornamented by a hypnotic ruby and give an unpronounceable name and the world will fall at his feet. ”
Yes, another avenue for suppressed Orientalism. The soft bigotry must find its outlet to coo for the exotic and noble savages.
Dear programmr,
Your comment is unhelpful. Please be specific if you are going to weigh in.
5. Walt: Beautiful. I feel honored.
Good Bye is from the original “God Bless You” said at partings..If today in leaving a Drs. waiting room I state “God Bless You” & the response is “Stuff it up your ass”…That is an exchange of free speech….No offense given or taken…So be it..
All religions are religions, but because we are confused on this point some are more equal than others. Marxism is actually a religion, but it is presented as a political endeavor. In that capacity it is enshrining its doctrine under the thin veneer of public interest. Their dogma, known to most as political correctness, is a form of religious establishment.
Islam on the other hand, represents another strategy. It is politics masquerading as religion. Many types of Islam, I will not say all, are if stripped of their religious coloration, nothing but the Nazi party, complete with anti-Semitism.
Both Marxism and Islam benefit from this ambiguity by dodging under whatever term gives them the best cover. This is unsustainable and carried to its conclusion will destroy both politics and religion, as well the distinction between the two.
Unchecked, these two ideologies are on a course to destroy everything in between. Carried to the limit there will be two choices of politics/religion remaining when the rest are destroyed. The Left or Islam. After that there will be one, the choice being determined by whoever can kill off the other.
Walt at 5, can you set that to music? It sounds like a middle verse in a hymn- the verse that reminds us about what we are doing in the middle passage of our faith.
St Herman of Alaska. An Orthodox holy man. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
W #14 says “So to the question: can the modern intellectual be taken in by the carney grifter? I wouldn’t discount the possibility entirely.”
Well…. Duh…… The answer is pretty obvious. Can you spell OBAMA??
Back in the Bad Old Days, before Martin Luther declared himself the smartest man in the history of the world, Enlightenment philosophers starting telling us that reality was a brain fart, and Queen Elizabeth’s historians pulled off a preposterous propaganda job exceeded only by Yassar Arafat, people actually thought about what might happen to their immortal souls.
Of course, walking the dark streets of Rome with your purse hanging out would likely quickly consummate your thought, as it would today.
Perhaps it was still a better time after all. At least there was no doubt that Islam was harmful to all living things, and probably most dead things too.
If your immortal soul is but a silly superstition then it hardly deserves a single moment’s concern. What then could make you happier than getting off and getting over as many times as you can? If the only difference between a human being and a dog turd is a few clumps of cells why should I care what happens to you?
What a wonderful world we leave to our children. Maybe it will be less confusing. France is eliminating the words “father” and “mother” from all official documents. We would not want little surrogate Pierre confusing that buckaroo living with his other parent with a real mother. On the next go round they can go after the words “obligation” and “responsibility” lest they also get in the way of all this wonderfulness.
Sarah,
To deface a poster would be to act just like Eltahawy.
Better to put your poster/sticker right next to theirs. Don’t cede them the marketplace.
Dear Sarah,
Weight of words do not increase the value. I have found that I would rather read BC and it’s comments than comment myself. But since you asked so nicely, I will elaborate.
Blocking the free speech of others in any form does not change the truth value of what has been freely spoken, but does reflect on the blockers knee jerk personal desire to block speech they personally do not want to hear, or more to the point, prevent others from hearing.
If you advocate blocking others freedom of speech, you need to ask yourself why do you fear this particular speech so much.
And as a somewhat related concept, tearing down or painting over posters, for example, just call more attention to the original speech. Free advertising, if you will. Probably not what you had in mind, or is it?
There, I’ve used up my “word weight” allotment for the day.
Edit: Sand Aquid at 33 – One of the reasons I seldom write long responses is that someone always thinks and types faster than I can. Well said!
“Please be specific if you are going to weigh in.”
I can get specific Sarah. You tried to get me booted off of this forum because I stated one of the uncontested beliefs of Islam, albeit sarcastically. Although I argued from a narrow point of view, narrow in that I cited a sentence in the article using the phrase some gays, I did not cite my right to annoy posters here nor exercise free speech rights that are counter to those enumerated in the preamble following the post, you on the other hand have demonstrated your personal anti-first amendment beliefs here. That is my opinion.
That said, I welcome your input and believe that this forum is the best and most responsible place to air opinion, pro and con within the context of the authors essays… leaving a little leeway to take a tangent or two off of the core topic.
Your first act on the comments section of this blog was to request the censorship of one its participants. You might have bothered to introduce yourself first.
Beverly 18,
Thank you for introducing me to Barbara from Harlem. Only a black person can say what she said to the black community. I have tried to explain to black folks I converse with and they will not believe it. Maybe they will if Barbara explains it to them. I still believe she has a tough row to hoe but like her I will not give up!
The schism between Blacks and Whites in USA became so apparent with the OJ verdict. It makes me fear for this country I love.
RWE and Programmer, Thank you for presenting a strategy for effective and lawful use of free speech. Let’s use it at every opportunity.
RWE, you gave a good description of what is taught in Mormonism regarding how to live. Latter Day Saints are very practical. Since you live in Brevard, you may be aware of the HUGE cattle and farming operation along Nova Road. The Mormons have a nationwide food bank where anyone can come and can their own food. They provide food banks nationwide with their product. look for signs and labels with a bee hive on them and the word Desseret. Never saw that in the Ummah!
The irony will be delicious with a believer in a Latter Day Prophet in the White House! Mormons have a special connection with the Jews. How is this going to play out on the World Stage?
Wretchard, unnerving to look down a barrel ain’t it? My experience is still fresh in my mind too! Your comparison between Christianity and Islam is perfect!
m out.
And then there is the French tradition of fraternity and egalitarian communication rituals. Although not the same as off with their heads during the French Revolution, the terms mother and father are to be removed from all future official French state marriage documents recording marriages–unclear if this applies to birth documents too:maybe the little French buggers are going to happen by immaculate conception?–Apparently this is to better facilitate the transition to gay marriage from civil union. I don’t know, but it seems to me biology is not completely irrelevant and they could have substituted bitch and butch?
29. wretchard: “Carried to the limit there will be two choices of politics/religion remaining when the rest are destroyed. The Left or Islam. After that there will be one, the choice being determined by whoever can kill off the other.”
Similarly, a wise man said: “While Islam is projected today as inimical and hostile to Christianity, Judaism and other Religions, the truth is that the Prophet was the great educator, teaching people the meaning and explanation of their own Religion, correcting and assisting them in following the right path, as taught by previous Prophets and messengers.” ~Yusuf Islam
“…teaching them the meaning of their own religion,” how thoughtful. And if they don’t ‘learn’ it the way they should? Well, there is always death. Sounds like another quote: “Death solves all problems- no man, no problem.” ~ Joseph Stalin
To your point, the above quote would not have held much weight attributed to Cat Stevens. ( but maybe as Stephen Georgiou?)
1. Dworkin
And even though I’m pretty much an agnostic, I can’t stand militant secular atheists, who easily rival the most fire-breathing preacher or sputtering, blustering imam in their righteous certainty of their frameworks.
Likewise. You’ve heard of “Red Diaper Babies?” (Obama was definitely one) I was a “Pink Diaper Baby,” (although that term would now apply to kids raised by gay couples
, mine comes from the old term “Pinko”). My father was a militant atheist, and a social democrat before that term was widely used. It was like living in a Baptist preacher’s household, but with the total absence of God.
“At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one’s mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty– and thus a good unto itself– but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole. We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions.”
[Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988)]
ari/30
Sorry, I reached the limits of my musical potential when I played a three chord country song on my ukelele.
“Put a man in flowing robes surmounted by a silken turban ornamented by a hypnotic ruby and give an unpronounceable name and the world will fall at his feet. ”
I assume this is a reference to Johnny Carson masquerading as “Carnac the Magnificent”.
The aura of reverence does not usually stem from the physical object, it is generated from the mind of the onlooker who wants to revere. What may be a bunch of wailing spotty yoots to some is the greatest musical group ever to others. Here in British Columbia we once had a Premier whose name was Bill Smith. Before, during or after his election he changed his name to “Amor de Cosmos” – beloved by the world – but it did not increase his score on the reverence scale in the minds of the electorate.
To my mind reverence is not often commanded; it is usually volunteered and that is exactly the reason for many modern spasms of misguided (to me but not to them) reverence. It’s simply a case of “I yearn to revere so I’ll pick some PC thing as my object of reverence to satisfy my longing.”
For example, truckloads of people spelt reverence O B A M A in 2008.
40. Ganesha ackar,
Flint and Falwell are both… something. I’d call them actors or cultists, but whatever they are doesn’t add up.
Atheism is a religion.
The constitution says the state cannot establish a religion.
Therefore atheism cannot be taught in school as anything but an unproved theory.
Wretchard @14 and Hangtown Bob @13
“So to the question: can the modern intellectual be taken in by the carney grifter? I wouldn’t discount the possibility entirely.”
Modern intellectuals ARE the carnie grifters. This is painfully evident to anyone who has worked in academia or with academics.
Dense, indecipherable drivel is the primary medium of exchange, meant to disguise the fact that much of what they both “buy” and “sell” is a thick layer of hooey spread over a pile of manure.
Few seem willing (able?) to ask the obvious question: What the heck does that gobbledygook mean? To do so requires a spine and the willingness to point out the obvious: The “intellectual” often lacks both sense and intellect.
Over at Instapundit:
BOMBSHELL? OBAMA’S POSSIBLE TIES TO ARAB WORLD DEEPENS?
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/151671/
Alzaebo @12: “Give it enough time, and the Left will be a different ethnicity.”
No, give it enough time, and the Left will be an extinct species — just another failed twig on one of the lesser limbs of the great Tree of Life. Put non-reproductive homosexual sex on a pedestal; abort most of your young from icky old heterosexual sex; fail to educate the ones that survive; always look backwards to 19th Century railroads and 15th Century windmills — and someday you will find out just how perceptive Mr. Darwin really was.
Madonna may be wrong. She is probably addled. But one part of her foggy brain may dimly regard Barack Obama as exactly that: a black Muslim in the White House.
From the mouths of ex-babes….
Whereas in the past intellectuals complained that society was afflicted by pious women, today the intellectuals have themselves become the pious women.
So true. The current term of choice is “Nice white women” (Whiskey approved). Mind you, one needn’t be white or a woman to be among the “nice white women.” Like the scolding old high-society dowager Countess one might find in a Trollope novel, they exert the same kind of tut-tutting social authority (I wouldn’t deign to call it “moral authority”), and their disapproval can kill. It can kill careers, reputations, and certainly get you invited off the Island (the Island of Manhattan, of course, as well as any desirable location where the better sort hobnob).
“Islam on the other hand, represents another strategy. It is politics masquerading as religion. Many types of Islam, I will not say all, are if stripped of their religious coloration, nothing but the Nazi party, complete with anti-Semitism.”
Question: What’s the difference between Islam and National Socialism?
Answer: Well, nothing really except the Nazis had better fashion sensibility and Hugo Boss designed their uniforms.
Speaking of free speech and stickers, a friend of mine once had some decals made up. They were pictures of a screw.
He then went to the mall and used that sticker to cover up the heart on every bumper sticker he saw that read: “I (Heart) My Dog”.
Jesus Christ did show anger and did do violence before departing, the bible is full of God’s direction on what is and is not acceptable to his children! The fact that there is barely a sound from Republicans that 0bama has broken laws, 0bama appointee’s have broken laws leading to unprecedented loss of stock holder secured stock, the direct loss of retirement savings for tens of thousands and has in the case of Fast and Furious directly caused a Death of an American Law enforcement Official on American soil and then the Deaths of 4 Americans in a terrorist attack speaks volumes on why we are where we (America) is and why there will be little if not only cosmetic change even if Romney is Elected! The Political process is completely corrupt, there is no Political means to change the Federal Government!!!
If burning the American Flag is protected free speech, how can one oppose that with more free speech? Not burning an American Flag hardly is an example of a counter action; it’s inaction.
The process of burning a flag is part of an elaborate game designed to incite a violent reaction from somebody else, which the other side gets blamed for. Think of it as a form of siege warfare where the first side to become openly violent loses. During such a siege, it is important to remember that almost any person inclined to burn an American flag will idolize some symbol that is sacred to the flag burner. Burning their symbol is not merely “more speech”, but also becomes a form of psychological retaliation. If someone who burns the American flag then gets violent after seeing his symbol burned, he then gets arrested and then laughed at as an utterly immature fool.
If the flag burner is an Obama supporter, one could burn either a flag with Obama’s “rising sun” emblem on it or one with thirteen stripes with the “rising sun” emblem replacing the usual fifty stars. If the flag burner is a Communist, one could burn a red flag or a Soviet flag. If the flag burner is Islamist, one could burn an al-Qaeda flag, which is a black flag with white Arabic lettering spelling out the Islamic “shahada”. Or burn Osama bin Laden in effigy. Or burn Qurans. If the flag burner is an Occupy protester, one could burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes. If the flag burner supports Ayn Rand, one could burn a picture of her. One could even take a photograph of the flag burner, make a print of that man’s face, and then burn that print as a symbolic means to express disapproval of the flag burner.
Or, one could hold up a sign saying, “Burning the American flag is wrong”.
Flag burners may love to dish out insults, but they usually have a very low tolerance for speech they disagree with. If they lash out, they not only get arrested and go to jail, but they also lose the brownie points they would have received had they kept their cool and lived up to their professed ideals of nonviolent provocation. My point is that it ought to be possible to turn the tables on flag burners and show them up as the thin skinned nutcases they really are.
Any international ban on “insulting the Rasool”, as demanded by Muslim states at the United Nations, would be – and is probably intended to be – the equivalent of trying to force all non-Muslims to salute Mohammed’s shoes.
I must be having a senior day. I did not figure out where Wretcherd was/is going with that post and there was absolutely nothing funny about that comedian.
Sorry.
OT: http://battlegroundwatch.com/2012/09/26/the-reality-of-2012-voter-turnout-the-white-voter/
Trend line is going the wrong way. The (R)’s are getting desperate. Really a shame that the Republican elites think they can win without conservatives. At least after Romney gets humiliated, conservatives can clean house in the Republican Party, what there is left of it. Might be time to start a new Party. GOP still should have Congress, thanks to conservatives.
Rick Perry and Sara Palin would be ahead by double digits now and looking forward to the debates.
The national polls show the presidential race to be very tight, while the “battleground state” polls are trending in the direction of Barack Obama. This points to a possibility of a hobbled presidency where the winner in the Electoral College doesn’t get the popular vote. President George W. Bush’s ability to lead during his first term was undermined by the closeness of the 2000 election. There is a good chance that Barack Obama may face a similar situation.
This means that every vote matters even if Barack Obama does win in the Electoral College!
One of the problems that the Founders tried to solve was how to create an environment in which creeds could coexist without the most the ruthless and militant wiping out the others. Can you design a society where Coptic Christianity can live side by side with Islam and where Buddhism can rub elbows with Marxism.
The tentative solution it seems to me is that a mutual coexistence can only be possible if two things are prevented. No creed can wage Lawfare against another; and no creed can wage physical warfare against another.
The separation of church and state should guarantee that lawfare is not waged by the system on behalf of one creed vs another. The existence of the People’s justice means that private warfare, the second danger, is similarly prevented.
By fudging the line between political and religious activities or co-mingling them both these protections are failing. The Left is waging Lawfare against Christianity. Islam is waging actual intimidation against other creeds (witness the demand to censor videos) and is sheltering behind its status as a faith.
This cannot long continue. Carried on indefinitely it must mean the systematic extinction of the nonmilitant and nonviolent creeds. You can’t bring a knife to a gunfight.
The confusion is most apparent among the disciples of these militant creeds. Eltahawy, for example, actually believes she is exercising free speech when she spray paints a poster. That is intimidation on behalf of a religion and so she dodges behind the First Amendment to destroy the First Amendment.
The President himself is the prime example of lawfare against the less militant creeds. If your’re a Copt, you get picked up at midnight to answer a ridiculous charge. If you are someone who threatens fire and mayhem, you get an apology in the UN. If you are nonviolent Catholic, you get a peremptory requirement to support abortions. But if you might fight back then there’s a special exemption for you.
Carried on far enough what you will have left are Churches of Thuggery, Mosques of Mayhem, and the supposedly atheist cathedral of Marxism. What has been lost in the meantime is the rational space. For having curbed Lawfare and Mayhem, the founders intended that people debate the issues in a political process, none ever to control the State. But their vision has failed. If Jefferson could return, like Hari Seldon, we should hear his predictions for the first time gone all wrong.
The Mule has unexpectedly come on the scene and he is within an Ace of sending things back to before the Constitution. Back to a time when the ruthless dominated the weak; when cant overpowered reason.
Put it this way. Suppose the Necromonger cult invaded the earth. Could they claim to be a political party? Could they claim ‘religious freedom’. How do you deal with the Necromongers?
So we have to “do the right thing”. Find a way to curb Lawfare; to curb intimidation. And we have to do so by going outside ourselves; beyond our identities as Christians, Atheists, Jews or whatnot and start thinking as the Founders thought. How can you live with people you can never agree with?
The only answer it seemed to them, was never to let anyone — not even yourself — get control of the state to do what seemed to be the moral imperative.
This points to a possibility of a hobbled presidency where the winner in the Electoral College doesn’t get the popular vote. President George W. Bush’s ability to lead during his first term was undermined by the closeness of the 2000 election. There is a good chance that Barack Obama may face a similar situation.
That only mattered to Bush because the media kept bringing it up: “selected not elected.” There will be no similar fan-fare with Obama and if this scenario plays out we will not hear about it even once after election night. In fact, even ON election night it will barely be a topic of conversation. “The Electoral College is the tried and true way we elect our leaders! Don’t you know? We at Media Central have always supported the Electoral College.” They will say it with a straight and sombre face.
For all the talk of “alternative media” the majority of people still get their news entirely filtered and packaged for them, when they get it at all.
Howard Stern is not exactly Belmont material, but some interviews he did recently with Obama supporters were up on RealPolitics. It is stunning how ignorant people are. Truly stunning. You can google for it if interested.
@57 I’d assign a lot of blame to Bush as well, because as far as I know, he refused to defend himself. He could have pointed to the vote recount by the NY Times, Miami Star and other newspapers which showed he had won. He could have pushed for a recount with strict scrutiny of votes in New Mexico, where he had lost by only 366 votes.
Bush’s passivity in the face of mendacious criticism is one of the reasons I think “No!” when I see his silly smirk on those “Miss me yet?” posters.
Neither Sharia Law nor the kind of Fascist paradise the Left envisions, are compatible with our Constitution.
Therefor, we must clearly choose one of the following:
A. the Constitution and our Constitutional Republic as our founders envisioned it
B. Submission to Allah with Sharia Law
C. Submission to the Leftist Elites with Progressive/Fascism/Marxism
We can’t go all smorgasborg and pick a little bit of this and little bit of that to mix and match. That won’t work. A,B,&C are each incompatible with each other in the end. They don’t mix well, in fact not at all.
The problem is that those on the right side of things ( the Constitutional side), often don’t want to be confrontational and clearly say what needs to be said.
And oh btw, isn’t that Constitution thing a clear slander on Sharia Law on its face. Why, O my merciful allah, the Constitution doesn’t allow Honor Killings and Jihad, and allows a whole bunch of other blasphemies like free speech. Those duties of Islam come directly from Allah’s messenger, Mohammad. Not allowing such sacred duties is a very big dis, a pure, intentional slander on sacred Islam, no doubt about it.
When you watch the whole video of the confontation between Mona and Pamela, you see that when the police are arresting Mona, Mona (while resisting arrest) has one hand cuffed and is rummaging around in her purse with the other while the officer tries to restrain her. All the while she’s decrying bullying by the police, but really they are being far, far too leniant with her. Had I tried this, there’s a good chance I’d have been knocked off my feet, tased, or even shot. I suggest you do not try reaching into bags, pockets, etc. while being arrested. The clueless woman was still going on about how shabbily they were treating her, when in reality they violated procedure being leniant in her favor.
It gets even better. Eltahway is Egyptian born, a former Reuters correspondent, who frequents CNN & MSNBC as a talking head. She is one of the insiders; one of the intelligentsia; one of the chosen; and in her mind one of our betters. She is the enemy. TWANLOC indeed. Cheers –
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2012/09/26/cnn-and-msnbc-pundit-arrested-vandalizing-anti-muslim-ad-ny-subway-syste
h/t: Ace of Ace of Spades
Annoy Mouse @35,
That’s incorrect. I never suggested you be censored or blocked. I asked wretchard to weigh in on the discussion because I was so shocked by what you wrote. You seemed to suggest gays be put to death and that’s not something I would expect wretchard to tolerate being said here. (It may be that I am incorrect about that–the subtopic here is, after all, my own confusion about the limits, if any, of free speech.)
As I recall at least one other person here interpreted your comment in the same way, as being over the line, and said that. Based on what you say here, it sounds like perhaps the whole thing was a misunderstanding.
But I never suggested you be censored. That is a conclusion you jumped to. I was only asking wretchard to comment. Because his response was to ask us to de-escalate, I said nothing further at the time.
programmr @34, actually I did think about that, the free advertising angle. That would be part of the point–get arrested, tell the reporter why you wrote “I will not submit,” explain that Islam means submission, etc. But of course it could work out differently, so you may be right.
I remember when the Nazis marched on Skokie and I was so in favor of the decision that allowed that. I thought it made us such a great country that we care so much about free speech. I don’t feel the same about it today, though. Today I would not want them to march. Am I just being emotional? Or is there a line there? Maybe Nazis marching in Skokie should be considered more than speech. I don’t consider it any easy question.
America has spent the last 45 years or so being culturally tasered. Repeatedly.
The taser is an overload shock to the system designed to immobilize the recipient by rendering effective response impossible.
Consider Larry Flynt, since he got mentioned above.
Aside from Jabba the Hut, the nearest comparison I can come up with for Flynt is rabid dog. Guy doesn’t care, won’t stop, and infects everything he comes into contact with. If you will recall, earlier this year his peeps photoshopped a real pic (not a cartoon) of a certain male appendage in the mouth of female conservative commenter S.E. Cupp in a real pic of her. With a disclaimer caption, “This is a fabrication blah blah blah.”
Do you recognize the cultural sleight of hand that has been pulled?
Larry Flynt’s particular brand of trash-in-trade has customarily been defended on the grounds that the people being depicted are consenting adults. No matter how disgusting or shocking — they were voluntarily engaging in those acts and consenting to be photographed. Don’t like it, don’t look. So nyah.
Now we have an instance of pseudo-realistic trash with a NON-consenting adult (Ms. Cupp) specifically designed to shock, degrade & humiliate her. And, make no mistake, to discourage les autres, i.e. political opponents of Jabba who also happen to be conservative and female.
When that incident happened, the first thought that crossed my mind was what my late dad, the Marine, would have done had some t3rd pulled a stunt like that on one of my sisters. I’m pretty sure it would have involved something physically painful to the t3rd.
Then again, Dad was WWII generation. In his world, in his America, there were a lot more rigid standards of public behavior and far harsher & swifter repercussions for transgressing them. What was done to Ms. Cupp was, I’m pretty sure, unfathomable to Dad, as was the non-response of the rest of us. Why, Dad would ask, would someone ever do that? And why is it tolerated?
How did we get from there to here?
Tased.
I’m not trying to make this post about Flynt’s particular line of, ahh, work. Merely to say that stunning & immobilizing with extreme behavior — being so outrageous & shameless that decent, civilized people who never saw THAT coming because they could not conceive of anyone doing THAT, ever, and are rendered incapable of a coherent response as a result — is a favorite tactic of the left. And jihadis. No, really. Fly passenger airliners full of unarmed civilians into the World Trade Center? What, are you nucking futs???
And here’s the rub. I don’t believe in censorship. I don’t think Flynt should be prohibited by the government from publishing his vomitous material. But perpetrators of social outrage need to be held accountable somehow, by someone. If not by law, then by society.
I’m thinking a return to private duels, maybe?
Shame culture. Honor culture.
Right now we seem to have a shameless culture without much honor, either. IOW, civilization disappearing fast.
Be a man?
Civilization requires standards. Standards require enforcement. Enforcement requires courage. Courage requires honor.
They get away with it, all of it, because we let them.
Bottom line.
That would be part of the point–get arrested, tell the reporter why you wrote “I will not submit,” explain that Islam means submission, etc.
Sarah, the dhimmis in the media would never allow your quotes to be broadcast.
Please re-think your strategy.
First, as others have pointed out above: The answer to bad speech is not suppression. The answer to bad speech is more speech.
Second: DO NOT rely on the LSM to transmit anything whatsoever that would be helpful to you or your message, in any way, shape, or form. If you want “publicity” then you have to make your own video & put it up on YouTube. You control the camera, the mic, the edit. No guarantee that anyone will watch but at least you have bypassed the goatherders’ gatekeepers. Baby steps.
“You seemed to suggest gays be put to death”
Not at first. Round them up and study them. Find out exactly what is wrong and work on a cure. After a cure is found, then the ones that are incurable should be put down. Meanwhile, having a few million out of circulation should cut down on recruitment. The indirect approach would to be eliminating condom sales. Then they could kill themselves off with AIDS. Save a fortune in ammo.
Some of us don’t see human life as any more sacred then a chicken’s life. I see nothing wrong with killing people as long as there is a reason. I think killing for amusement is sick. Yet it seems to be politically correct in modern society.
Sara, Richard grew up in a police state. Where saying the wrong words at the wrong time to the wrong people got you executed. How many dead bodies have you walked by on your way to elementary school? After a few days they get ripe. If the dogs haven’t got at them.
Homework assignment for you. Tally up the number of Americans that have given their life so you could be a rich. pampered American.
#66
I’m sorry, but that’s gone too far.
Given the topic of this thread, Wretchard surely can’t delete such a comment that is out of bounds for those with a traditional sense of decency. How does the club penalize someone whose words go beyond decency?
I have searched to see how I could excuse Stoicheions’s words as avuncular: meaning he was sending a word of warning to those who’s lives are endangered by their very lifestyles. But such an approach smacks of apologetics, and in any case, some of the words are beyond avuncular were even that his intent.
To remain silent on it for any number of reasons big and small all give the appearance of acceptance. Silence IS acceptance in far too many things. As stated here and many times before, the response to speech that is abhorrent is not banning the speech, but more good, corrective, retortive speech. Silence is out.
However, to comment on it too much will derail the thread. That is the aim of trolls. Who wants to invite more trolls who can figure out how well it worked this time? So I don’t think that’s the answer either.
I’ve one suggestion. Who’d be in favor of strike-out editing of the offending sentences? They are not removed or made illegible, simply a note is added [voted unacceptable by majority of Belmont Club members].
As for my own feelings about the words. I’ve noted a few times here before that we have misanthropic members. Blessedly few, but they are here, some more, some less. Seeing that such ones in political power are almost never as honest about their radical intentions for the population of the human race, the good thing about Stoicheion is that he is open about his. It is very hard to battle with people who will not admit that they have thoughts and plans in need of being fought openly. Too many potential allies don’t see the danger because of the subterfuge.
64. bogie wheel “Consider Larry Flynt, since he got mentioned above. Aside from Jabba the Hut, the nearest comparison I can come up with for Flynt is rabid dog. Guy doesn’t care, won’t stop, and infects everything he comes into contact with.”
If you dislike Mr. Flint, you are supposed to. Same goes for Mr. Falwell. When he says “Watch out for Spongebob!” the world is supposed to laugh at him, and he knows it.
Both men are smear agents. There are very few real personalities in the news.
Wrechard 67, Pascal 68, That was beautiful!
It looked briefly like W closed this thread. Can’t say I blame him. That old Stoch needs to go back to watching videos of his balaclva clad freak heroes stunts in Moscow.