England continues to use criminal laws and travel bans to punish individuals for controversial speech. One such controversial writer, Dutch politician Geert Wilders, now says that he is going to try to get into the country despite a ban to contest the use of such laws to punish free speech. He was invited to visit the country by a member of Parliament.
Wilders was invited by a member of Parliament to show his anti-Islam movie “Fitna,” which attacks Islam by calling the Koran a “fascist” book and accuses Islam of being a violent religion.
Regardless of how offensive such comments might be, this is ultimately a question of free speech. The government insists that it “opposes extremism in all its forms” and would work to “stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country.” Yet, that is the very justification used for centuries by government to suppress free speech “in any form.” We have learned that the greatest danger is not wingnuts like WIlders, but the suppression of free thought and free speech.
This story comes in the same week as the arrest of journalists in India for publishing an article deemed insulting to religion.
For the full story, click here.
David:
“The result has produced so many misguided, corrupt, dishonest and dangerous teachers, professors, journalists and politicians who cannot differentiate between right and wrong.”
**********
Despite centuries of thought and debate on the topic of right and wrong from some of the greatest minds known to the species, we now have in our midst one with no trepidation at all about distinguishing one from the other. I say hail David! Educate we feeble left-wingers: Start by explaining to us how your version is more than the collective opinion of your brand of religionists, corporatists, or tribalists. We, the corrupt, misguided, dishonest and dangerous, await the erudition that will be so self-evident that none will disagree. Let’s start with denying condoms to Aids victims in sub-Saharan Africa. Which is the right path there — the one charted by God’s church on earth or those seeking to keep as many people around as possible, religious dogma be damned?
Yes, intelligence is such a threat to Western civilization.
The West, rightfully, dehumanized Nazism, but, unfortunately, left Communism free to contaminate our schools, universities, mainstream media and politics. The result has produced so many misguided, corrupt, dishonest and dangerous teachers, professors, journalists and politicians who cannot differentiate between right and wrong. How can an honest and sane human being smear one who fights for our freedom and defend those who want to destroy it?
Stalin was about as leftist as Hitler.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin
If you’re going to troll here, get an education first. Oh, that’s right, you’re a Neocon Republican. Ignorance is your badge of honor.
You call Geert Wilders “Right-Wing Dutch Politician” and “wingnut”, but I wonder if you have ever used the term “hard-left”, “Stalinist”, “extreme left”, “anti-American” or “Marxist” to describe a professor who is on the side of the most dangerous enemies of freedom or Obama and the people who bought him the presidency. America is in trouble when her professor (and there are many) attacks a freedom fighter and defends her enemies.
My friend, liberalism is a mental disorder and you’ve proved it once again.
Hey everybody Geert here. I am trying to protect the west from Islamofacism. Please see my movie Fitna. When they come to chop your heads off, who will have the last laugh?
You will all think Bush was a genius to waterboard. And anyway wasnt waterboarding as practiced at the time of the Genva Conventions signing much different than it is today? We here in Denmark would gladly put a towel over a towel head to get information necessary to protect our citizens and we certainly would not prosecute the person that did that. We would probably give them a medal or a 50% off coupon to our red light district in Amsterdam.
Before the election, here in Toledo and several other cities, newspapers carried a DVD full of fearmongering against Muslims. Everyone lived through that quite well. Toledo rallied in support of the local Muslim community and many editorials critical of the material came in to our newspaper. Not only did this DVD fail to elicit violence against Muslims, it had the opposite effect.
A govt. can be a danger to religious minorities as ours was when we started rounding up Muslims after 9/11. But this wasn’t speech, it was illegal action by the state.
Amadinajhad spoke at Columbia and got the response he richly deserved. I just don’t think people are so stupid that they cannot sift out facts from fiction–valid criticism from hate speech (or even discern the mixture of the two).
I heard people on the BBC saying they were ready to come forward and counter inaccuracies is this man’s speech. That seems like a very good plan.
Liberal fascist?
ROFLMAO
My but you are a stupid one, ashrel.
One cannot be, by definition, a liberal fascist.
Liberalism is at it’s simplest the pursuit of liberty. This includes the FREEDOM to say what you want about Islam or any other religion that is acting AUTHORITARIAN. Fascism on the other hand is the AUTHORITARIAN PURSUIT OF PROFITS AT THE COST OF LIBERTY.
How in the Hell did you figure out how to log on to a computer when you can’t even understand basic definitions like “on” and “off”?
Yeah, you Neocons may have kool-aid and guns, but you’ll ultimately loose because you employ people this IGNORANT to do your bidding. Garbage in? Garbage out. That’s a fact. A simple visit to Wikipedia or Webster’s would have shown anyone how COMPLETELY STUPID this comment is. Your base is the ignorant, the stupid, the evil and the greedy. You might want to think about that whole “feet of clay” issue. Building a building on the backs of morons like ashrel is likely counter-productive.
you go Geert Wilders. seems to be all the liberal fascist dont have the balls to expostulate radical islam which is operating with impunity in europe,so they have a new idea appeasing muslims, but persecuting free speech!”peace in our time”