We have been discussing the erosion of free speech in England with an ever expanding range of criminalized speech. Individuals and groups now regularly call police to charge people who say anything deemed offensive or insulting to a race, religion, or group. It appears suicide bomber Salman Abedi was among the outraged insulted and filed a complaint with his school over an “Islamaphobic” statement of his teacher in class about . . . you guessed it . . . suicide bombers.
Provocative post. I also have some thoughts on this topic here: https://andrew-freedman.com/2017/05/31/chaos-and-love/
The gullible punk had no idea what “phobia” means. It is an irrational fear. We have enough experience by now to drop the “irrational” nonsense.
This was merely an effort to shut down speech that would require critical thinking on his part to defend his own beliefs. Some people will exert a great deal of effort to avoid challenging their own views. The use of blasphemy laws and exploitation of hate speech accusations are tools used by extremists.
Irony on a truly tragic level.
Out of all the young folks I know – parents are liberal / conservative / libertarian I know of only one who is a snowflake (Stanford student FWIW). I think it depends on what zip code one lives in =)
We are raising a generation of hypersensitive and victimized youth, teaching them that the world is full of microagressions and offensives.
Which ‘we’ kemosabe? Very few people are doing this. Those who are doing this are employed in the educational apparat, the social services apparat, the legal profession, the media, and corporate HR. In short, people you socialize with perfesser, not those normal people socialize with.
The desire of Abedi to claim of victimization from offensive speech is not the reason he became a terrorist. It took extremist religious orthodoxy to do that.
The smart money says the most consequential catalyst was failure with women.
You sound like you’re projecting.
You sound like you want attention you’re not getting chidkadee.
I wonder how many Abedis have already entered the US or are entering the US? Thank you 9th circuit, I’m sure the victims will Thank you as well.
Jack Ruby – I think bringing back the Klan is a bit harsh. However, we could stop being dorks and letting them get away with it.
I don’t believe that the Klan was all that effective. It was mostly a bunch of rednecks dressed up in sheets and drinking beer. They did occasionally lynch someone who was accused of a heinous crime, or burn a cross, but that was pretty rare. I would be far more fearful of the Russian Mob, or the Sicilian Mob, in that order, than the Klan.
They were effective in the 1920s when they had millions of members. They mainly acted as vigilante Prohibition enforcers and anti-Catholic immigration activists . They were big in places like Chicago and Oregon.
Back?
CV Brown – right now half the Klan are FBI agents and the other half are informants. You really need new blood.
We need a Klan. The Klan could go round up the dork’s family and kill them all. Then the next dork in line would think twice.
🔫
An FBI informant dressed up in Klan regalia is infinitely worse than a thousand Muslim terrorist incidents. That’s what our dominant religion (a secularized non-theistic form of Christianity) keeps telling us.
curri – could I get a cite on your comment please?
Islamaphobia is a made up concept. In order for something to be a phobia it must be irrational. I see nothing irrational about concerns about the growing power of theocratic Muslim regimes or those they fund and or encourage to disrupt the West.
However, there are plenty of non Muslims who are ready to kill or act out violently to intimidate or punish those with whom they disagree. Theocrats of all stripes are to be feared.
However, there are plenty of non Muslims who are ready to kill or act out violently to intimidate or punish those with whom they disagree.
If only we had something by which we could separate negotiable disagreements from extreme (non-negotiable) disagreements. I would suggest natural rights would be a good place to start, but those have given way to moral relativism. Yes, theocrats should be feared. But don’t stop there. We should fear every worldview that doesn’t hold the equal security of natural rights for all to be a line that shall not crossed…absolutely. If moral decisions have no principled foundation, then there really is no way to measure what is extreme, at least not with any absolute clarity.
Theocrats of all stripes are to be feared.
‘Theocrats of all stripes’ do not exist outside the space between your ears.
From Juan Cole I have it that suicide is prohibited in Islam.
So all these suicide bombers who have been told they will go straight to heaven have been lied to? Um. Karma.
Yup.
If you’re engaging in Jihad it’s not considered suicide. Islamic authorities differ on this.
Again, Abedi, his family never should have been in England, along with thousands of others from several countries who never, never should be there..
Agreed, but the mentality of kids here isn’t any better. They are a stone’s throw away from crossing the line into violence. We had better start collectively paying attention to what is happening in our own societies.
which kids here? born here of the incoming certainly present problems, no question… and loads of rhetoric over recent years has affected others, thinking they can do anything in retribution. Dallas, Baton Rouge, just for two big ones. Free shooting massacres. Big problems, no question..
The domestic population has almost no interest in political violence and rates of violent street crime are considerably lower than they were a generation ago.
I had thought that drinking was prohibited under Islam.
Drinking is prohibited in Islam. But that’s the ‘beauty’ of the religion of peace, is that you can grow up a party animal ‘moderate muslim’ and then when you dig deeper into its writing including Sharia law, you realize you are in deep dodo. So you can get a
‘Free pass’ into paradise for you and your family even if you were bad and didn’t bother to ‘keep’ the 5 pillars of Islam. And guess what you need to do to get the ‘free pass’? Can you guess?
I bet you can! It is beautifully explained in this short video by Dr. David Wood:
https://youtu.be/k6ePVxRLDM0
The left has taken a half-baked construct and taught it to children who neither possess or are encouraged to have any critical thinking skills, by same. It’s remarkable that Western Civilization can have a phenomenon like this occur when it enjoys such a high living standard, literacy within the reach of every citizen and be built on such an elegant ethos. It really took work to produce these monsters within our very gates.
That is so right. Children DON’T possess those skills. They believe what we teach them. Many Lib parents are notorious for treating toddlers to adolescents like fully-formed adults while simultaneously coddling the like infants. I don’t see political correctness as being any different than teaching your kids they are sinners by nature and that they will burn in hell. It is insanity. What are we going to do with these kids?