As I Was Saying

Religion Of Submission 78 Comments

They could have, at the least, kept their mouths shut;

But this portrayal missed key considerations. In the extent and scope of their criticism of Jones’ aims, senior U.S. officials, including Clinton and Gen. Petraeus, exceeded their constitutional remit in ways that could undermine future security and liberal-democratic ways. The same can be said of Harper and his defence minister.
Their warnings and beseechings raised immeasurably the stakes in this matter. Politicians risked the possibility that a government failure to apparently force Jones to stop — a constitutional impossibility, in any event — would produce more blowback than ever. Now that this pressure has forced Jones to climb down on his own, liberal-democracy’s enemies at home and abroad will be emboldened. The outcome doubtless confirms their doctrinal belief in a soft West that is vulnerable to ever-increasing levels of terrorism and stealth-jihadic demands for endlessly-Islamizing “accommodation.”
There is more to the political overreach problem. The package of freedoms for which the U.S. and Canada sacrifice in South Asia presumably includes the “first freedom” — freedom of expression — in Canada’s Charter and the even more expansive U.S. First Amendment provision. As U.S. Supreme Court decisions remind us, this freedom even protects those wishing to burn the U.S. flag. It is unlikely any ostensibly sacred text could have outranked the flag for such constitutional purposes.
Brief government statements-of-position would have sufficed in the Jones case. Unfortunately, the extremes to which politicians went might encourage future officials to pressure for expanded crisis-driven, religion-based censorship, out of fear of “offending Islam.” Worse, the recent hysteria requires that we ask whether posturing politicians and media are internalizing the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s international objective at the UN of imposing Sharia blasphemy norms on Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide.

Read it all.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall Who?

Freespeechers 141 Comments

defend_jones.jpg*
Also, today’s required reading.
Update: Looks like everyone got what they wanted – submission! Sure glad that’s over, so that moderate Islam can get back to its regular enforcement schedule.
I hope you all enjoyed the spectacle of western world leaders stepping up to display their sharia compliance bona fides as much as I did. “Don’t do it or they’ll hurt us.”
We’re all so much safer for it, yes?
Following is my (slightly edited) emailed response to a friend in media, who remarked privately, “like i said kate..the whole so called principled stand was a hoax”…
I don’t care if Mickey Mouse had sparked the controversy. The issue is the reaction of our political and media betters.
Shameful and frankly, frightening. As one of my commentors just remarked, “Islam has now been officially sanctioned as the most powerful religion on earth and if we offend it they can kill us and we deserve to be killed.”
They should have kept their mouths shut, at the very least. They have an obligation to defend our constitutionally protected rights to freedom of expression.
Instead, they have telegraphed to barbarians – some of whom have the arsenals to do real damage – that they will cow into submission the acts of even the most lowly and unimportant of our citizens to avoid confrontation.
Indeed, the fact that it WAS this fringey pastor who set this international incident off is the most disturbing aspect of all. Unlike the flag burners and bible burners and crucifix defilers that number in the tens of thousands, he did nothing but state an intention. And look at the force they brought down on him to prevent it.

Bin Laden, Come Back!

Radioactive 51 Comments

You missed a spot.

After a year of humiliating setbacks, United Nations Secretary General Ban ki-Moon and about 60 of his top lieutenants — the top brass of the entire U.N. system — spent their Labor Day weekend at a remote Austrian Alpine retreat, discussing ways to put their sprawling organization in charge of the world’s agenda.
[…]
As one underlying theme of the sessions, the top U.N. bosses seemed to be grappling often with how to cope with the pesky issue of national sovereignty, which — according to the position papers, anyway — continued to thwart many of their most ambitious schemes, especially when it comes to many different kinds of “global governance.”
Not coincidentally, the conclave of bureaucrats also saw in “global governance” a greater role for themselves.
As a position paper intended for their first group session put it, in the customary glutinous prose of the organization’s internal documents: “the U.N. should be able to take the lead in setting the global agenda, engage effectively with other multinational and regional organizations as well as civil society and non-state stakeholders, and transform itself into a tool to help implement the globally agreed objectives.”
And for that to happen, the paper continues, “it will be necessary to deeply reflect on the substance of sovereignty, and accept that changes in our perceptions are a good indication of the direction we are going.”

Oddly related.

Free Richard Moon

Freespeechers 34 Comments

I can only aspire to becoming as good and generous a person as Ezra Levant;

Gentle reader, do not gloat. It might be tempting to smile at the fact that Moon, who has tried so hard to defend the legitimacy of human rights commissions, is now getting the kangaroo treatment himself, and at the hands of Barbara Hall, no less. But schadenfreude is unbecoming. Just because Moon believes politically correct hunter-killer bureaucrats should be sicced on you and me, doesn’t mean we should descend to that level and cheer that they are now being sicced on him.

No, it doesn’t.
But we will.

Y2Kyoto: A Thousand Points Of Dark

Baiting The Left 29 Comments

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Washington Post, Sept. 8, 2010;

The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison’s innovations in the 1870s. […] What made the plant here vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014. The law will force millions of American households to switch to more efficient bulbs.

United States Unemployment rate, Aug. 2010;

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