A Cornucopia of Cravenness
It’s hard to know where to begin : The French socialists want to make denying the Armenian genocide not only stupid but criminal, susceptible to fines and jail. An innocent British citizen of Pakistani origin is going to be hanged because the ever mendacious Pervez Musharrif has apparently not read the Pakistani Constitution giving him the authority to stop it. Bush, in spite of the estimate of his own intelligence agencies, still insists that everything is peachy in Iraq, or will be if we just “stay the course”. The news that he receives Henry Kissinger regularly should surprise no one. And Mark Foley, crusading against internet pedophiles has been caught in his own trap and could be prosecuted under a law he helped to write. Oh Justice!!
In Libération, once a leftist paper, now respectably globalist, begun by Serge July and Jean Paul Sartre, a swarm of readers hurried to justify the Vatican’s command of silence, under threat of excommunication, of the victims of predatory priests, as well as of all church personal, including bishops. The Libé article in question was on a BBC documentary that highlighted a 1962 document, and one contributor to the forum was anxious to characterize it as the work of anti-catholic British protestants, the final defeat of English Jacobites apparently still a wound on his one, holy, catholic and apostolic Gallic (and perhaps monarchist??) soul. Not long ago a production of Idomeneo was cancelled in Berlin for fear that the gratuitous modernization that included a basket full of heads of religious leaders –Buddha, Christ, Mohammed among them--- would provoke Islamic violence when the prophet’s rolls across the stage. Given the recent orgy of Muslim violence after the pope’s stupid but not really “islamophobic” remarks in Germany one can’t honestly blame the direction of the opera company, even if it is craven to give in to the fits of extremists. Their effectiveness in mobilizing Muslim demonstrations world-wide is giving people pause, which is just what it is meant to do: to force Western citizens to live by the standards of Islamic reactionaries by forcing the issue through violence. We really must not stand for it. This is in many ways fundamentally more important than Bush’s mendacious “war on terror”, as it really is a direct assault on Western political values. Such values must not be changed by force of religious reaction, whether of the Pope, insisting on the Christianity that must be enshrined in the Constitution of post-Christian Europe, or of Muslims wishing to restore blasphemy to the list of official crimes. And they are many – listen to them interviewed during the next Islamic ruckus in Europe -- who do not believe that freedom of speech applies to religion.
If it doesn’t, it’s not worth a damn.
So the times are bringing us to this: You can say anything you want that the government has not outlawed being said. In France (and much of Europe) you can have any notions of history you want except those that the government has outlawed. What kind of freedom of expression is that?? As long as one accepts official history and doesn’t offend any self-constituted group, he can say what he wants. Oh goody.
In Libération, once a leftist paper, now respectably globalist, begun by Serge July and Jean Paul Sartre, a swarm of readers hurried to justify the Vatican’s command of silence, under threat of excommunication, of the victims of predatory priests, as well as of all church personal, including bishops. The Libé article in question was on a BBC documentary that highlighted a 1962 document, and one contributor to the forum was anxious to characterize it as the work of anti-catholic British protestants, the final defeat of English Jacobites apparently still a wound on his one, holy, catholic and apostolic Gallic (and perhaps monarchist??) soul. Not long ago a production of Idomeneo was cancelled in Berlin for fear that the gratuitous modernization that included a basket full of heads of religious leaders –Buddha, Christ, Mohammed among them--- would provoke Islamic violence when the prophet’s rolls across the stage. Given the recent orgy of Muslim violence after the pope’s stupid but not really “islamophobic” remarks in Germany one can’t honestly blame the direction of the opera company, even if it is craven to give in to the fits of extremists. Their effectiveness in mobilizing Muslim demonstrations world-wide is giving people pause, which is just what it is meant to do: to force Western citizens to live by the standards of Islamic reactionaries by forcing the issue through violence. We really must not stand for it. This is in many ways fundamentally more important than Bush’s mendacious “war on terror”, as it really is a direct assault on Western political values. Such values must not be changed by force of religious reaction, whether of the Pope, insisting on the Christianity that must be enshrined in the Constitution of post-Christian Europe, or of Muslims wishing to restore blasphemy to the list of official crimes. And they are many – listen to them interviewed during the next Islamic ruckus in Europe -- who do not believe that freedom of speech applies to religion.
If it doesn’t, it’s not worth a damn.
So the times are bringing us to this: You can say anything you want that the government has not outlawed being said. In France (and much of Europe) you can have any notions of history you want except those that the government has outlawed. What kind of freedom of expression is that?? As long as one accepts official history and doesn’t offend any self-constituted group, he can say what he wants. Oh goody.
posted by Lawrence Austin at 8:02 PM
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