French President Emmanuel Macron told an audience gathered to witness a naturalization ceremony that “To be French is to defend the right to laugh, jest, mock and caricature, of which Voltaire maintained that it is the source of all other rights.”
There is not an American politician on the left who would dare utter such apostasy. There are many young people who think they should have the right not to allow anyone to hurt their feelings — First Amendment be damned. Some believe it should be illegal to mock anyone’s race or ethnic heritage, their sexual orientation, or the sex they’ve chosen for themselves. White males? Well, no one much cares if their feelings are hurt or not.
Macron was speaking at the Pantheon, where, 150 years ago, the Third Republic was founded. Today, he used the occasion to blast Islamic extremism. The trial of more than a dozen accused accomplices in the bloody 2015 Charlie Hebo massacre began on Friday, so the contrast with a fundamentalist religion that will kill you for mocking the prophet was clear.
French President Emmanuel Macron criticized Friday what he called “Islamic separatism” in his country and those who seek French citizenship without accepting France’s “right to commit blasphemy.”
Macron defended satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that helped inspire two French-born Islamic extremists to mount a deadly January 2015 attack on the paper’s newsroom.
The weekly republished the images this week as the trial began of 14 people over the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and on a kosher supermarket.
Macron told the new citizens, “You don’t choose one part of France. You choose France….The Republic will never allow any separatist adventure.” I wish an American politician would say that — and mean it.
Freedom in France, Macron said, includes “the freedom to believe or not to believe. But this is inseparable from the freedom of expression up to the right to blasphemy.”
As expected, some Muslims didn’t care for the magazine to rerun the Mohammed cartoons. All across Pakistan, tens of thousands of people demonstrated against France and the “blasphemous” cartoons.
Friday’s protests were organized by the hardline Islamist Tehreek-e-Laibak Pakistan (TLP) party with rallies held in Karachi, the country’s largest city, as well as in Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Lahore and Dera Ismail Khan.
Protesters paralysed traffic in Karachi, Pakistan’s financial and business capital.
“It (re-printing of cartoons) amounts to big terrorism; they repeat such acts of blasphemy against Prophet Mohammad every few years. It should be stopped,” said Razi Hussani, TLP district leader in Karachi.
What else can you say about a country that will execute you for mocking the prophet?
I can remember when American politicians used to speak like Macron — fervently in support of the Bill of Rights. But since the Constitution has been deemed “racist” by some, we should throw it out and make up our own rules. “Hate speech” will be punishable by prison time someday soon. Criticism of Black Lives Matter will get you fired. Mocking women’s groups or the #MeToo movement will brand you as a misogynist.
The new Woke America won’t be a very enlightened place. But I can guarantee it will be very, very, quiet.
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