In wake of Arizona tragedy, leftist pundits spew hate

In the wake of the monstrous crime perpetrated in Arizona, one of the few sane voices in the ensuing media firestorm has been that of nine-year-old victim Christina Taylor Green's grief-stricken father.

Our thoughts and prayers are with him and all the families that have been affected by this horror.

Watch and listen:

Via Big Hollywood:

"Anyone who’s studied the left for any period of time knew that before the blood had even dried on the sidewalks of Arizona Saturday, that the mainstream media would force us into a terrible choice. After the assassin’s monstrous attack, the decent thing to do would’ve been to come together as a nation to mourn the dead and pray for the survivors. Politics, and most especially political opportunism, should be the last thing on anyone’s mind. But the left, unfortunately, isn’t just anyone. They are who they are and that they would feast on the fresh corpses of the innocent in order to win a couple of political news cycles was obvious. And so those of us who would’ve preferred to go nowhere near the arena of politics when it came to this appalling attack on our country and our democracy, were forced to make sure 1995 didn’t repeat itself, the year President Clinton used the Oklahoma City bombing for partisan gain against his own political enemies.

"Joining in on this feast with the likes of Andrew Sullivan, Salon’s Joan Walsh, George Soros’ Eric Boehlert, the very Sheriff charged with protecting Rep. Giffords, Paul Krugman, Markos Moulitsas, and their allies in the media were, naturally, the dregs of the entertainment industry’s humanity barrel, who could barely contain their excitement over an opportunity to to attack the right, Sarah Palin, and call for – as they always do when given the opportunity – restrictions on speech."

- Big Hollywood's John Nolte

Via City Journal:

"...the Left’s sudden talk about incendiary political rhetoric in the wake of the Arizona shooting isn’t really about political rhetoric at all. It’s about the real-world failure of leftist policies everywhere—the bankrupting of nations and states by greedy unions and unfundable social programs, the destruction of inner cities by identity politics, and the appeasement of Muslim extremists in the face of worldwide jihad, not to mention the frequently fatal effects of delirious environmentalism. Europe is in debt and on fire. American citizens are in political revolt. Even the most left-wing president ever is making desperate overtures to his right.

"But all that might be tolerable to leftists if they weren’t starting to lose control of the one weapon in which they have the most faith: the narrative. The narrative is what leftists believe in instead of the truth. If they can blame George W. Bush for the economic crisis, if they can make Sarah Palin out to be an idiot, if they can call the Tea Party racist until you think it must be true, they might yet retain power in spite of the international disgrace of their ideas. And though they still mostly dominate the narrative on the three broadcast networks, most cable stations, most newspapers, and much of Hollywood, nonetheless Fox News, talk radio, the Internet, and the Wall Street Journal have begun to respond in ways they can’t ignore.

"That’s the hateful rhetoric they’re talking about: conservatives interrupting the stream of leftist invective in order to dismantle their arguments with the facts. As for leftists’ reaction to the Arizona shooting, call it Narrative Hysteria: a frantic attempt to capitalize on calamity by casting their opponents, not merely as racist or sexist or Islamophobic this time, but as somehow responsible for an act of madness and evil. Shame on them."

- Andrew Klavan

The War Against Free Speech

What do comedian Vince Vaughn, Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders, and journalist Juan Williams (pictured above) all have in common?

In the past few weeks, each of these men has become a participant in the ongoing struggle against the symptom of cultural decay that has until recently held Western society in an unshakable stranglehold. I say “recently” for the obvious reason that the recent experiences of each of these men- Juan Williams in particular- have had a mildly deleterious effect on this not-so-silent killer of free speech, a morally relativistic sentiment more commonly referred to as “Political Correctness”- which Dictionary.com defines as “adhering to a typically progressive orthodoxy on issues involving esp. race, gender, sexual affinity, or ecology,” and which the Urban Dictionary defines as “people who try so hard to say the right thing they end up just looking like twats.” I’m partial to the second definition, myself.

In case you don’t spend much free time watching the news, skimming political blogs, or listening to Whoopi Goldberg politely converse with Bill O’Reilly (NOT!) on ‘The View’ (the who?), here are a few headlines you might have missed, in no particular order:

1. Dutch politician Geert Wilders faces trial in his home country for expressing his negative feelings concerning Islam

2. (Former) Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris- whose brain-child “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” caused her to receive numerous death threats- goes into hiding without so much as a murmur from most major news outlets

3. Gay rights organization GLAAD causes an uproar over a movie trailer in which Vince Vaughn makes a supposedly offensive joke concerning the masculinity (or lack thereof) of electric cars, but remains silent when Islamists demand that gay performer Adam Lambert cancel his Malaysian performance (which he did not, while agreeing to tone down certain aspects)

4. NPR fires reporter Juan Williams for making a statement about Muslims that the network found bigoted (but that clearly wasn't)

5. The Obama administration joins the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) in attempting to pass a resolution in the U.N. barring the “negative stereotyping of religions.”

If you can decipher the true intentions behind news item #5, you can see a clear pattern here. Despite the protections of the First Amendment, we are observing a trend in government and media to suppress speech linking terrorism to Islam. Which makes sense, because clearly there isn’t any link between Islamic fundamentalism and Jihadist violence. What, you mean you don’t think Islam is the “religion of peace?” Well, aren’t you just the stereotypical right-wing loony bird!

That the movement to criminalize any individual in a Western nation raising valid complaints against the basic tenets of the Islamic faith has gained so much traction is cause for concern, to say the least. Thanks to his legal team, Geert Wilders managed to evade his charges, but would he have had the same good fortune in any other European court? This is altogether unclear, and that fact alone should frighten us all- including truly moderate Muslims who still see the West as a beacon of hope.

Ask yourself this: What could be a more Western value than freedom of expression? Is this capacity for free discussion and debate not the cornerstone of our entire societal history? Is it not the source of reason with which good ideas flourish and bad ideas are banished to the ash heap of history? With what other underlying value in mind could we have possibly turned back the tides of the numerous communisms and fascisms of the twentieth century?

And yet, as the news items above have shown, our quaint little Freedom of Speech is not a liberty we ought take for granted.

Since I don’t have the resources with which to properly inform anybody adequately about these cases, here are a few links to follow for the best summaries (which all just happen to be from the National Review):

· What Wilder’s Trial Means: A column by the editors of National Review Online

· Context of the Wilders Case: Just as the title indicates

· Obstructed View: Concerning the effect of some of these recent events on free speech

· The Closing of NPR’s Mind: The plight of Juan Williams (pictured at top) and modern political discourse

· Islam And Totalitarianism: By Andrew C. McCarthy

Now, I wouldn’t want anyone to think that my source material is cut from singularly conservative cloth, so here’s my version of a curveball: A speech by the vocal British atheist Christopher Hitchens, concerning free speech in general. I’ve found myself watching snippets of this talk on Youtube quite often as of late, and I encourage everyone to take a look. Sadly, there are few public figures capable of arguing so passionately in defense of free speech, thought, and writing. Were it not for his positions regarding Biblical scripture, he’d make a great NRO columnist as well.

But since Mr. Hitchens tends to (sloppily) link his critique of extremist Islam to other Abrahamic faith systems, be sure to take a look at Word On Fire’s counterargument concerning organized religion here. Gotta love that Father Barron.

Stand up for Molly Norris, Freedom of Speech

When Molly Norris announced the first annual celebration of ‘Everybody Draw Muhammad Day’, she knew that her activism wouldn’t come risk-free. Following the self-censorship by Comedy Central of a now-famous South Park episode detailing the controversy surrounding the representation of the “prophet” in question, everyone from the entertaiment blogosphere to Fox's Bill O'Reilly took notice. Of course, the fact that a mainstream television station had censored itself following threats from radical Muslim factions was, regrettably, not all that surprising.

But the station whose creative teams have made a fortune lampooning religions and ideologies of all shapes, sizes, colors, creeds? The same Comedy Central whose next project is an irreverent cartoon concerning the life of Christ and his relationship with his "oppressive father"? The plot thickens…

In any case, Norris and other artists disgusted by this self-censorship took their outrage and channeled it creatively, hence the birth of ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day’, which Wikipedia describes as “an annual protest in support of free speech, specifically in opposition to those who threaten violence against artists who draw representations of the prophet Muhammad.” Those interested in participating should mark May 20 on their 2011 calendar, but keep in mind the phrase “No guts, no glory,” because if the followers of American-born radical Islamic terrorist (yes, it DOES happen) Anwar al-Awlaki has his way, it’ll be the last doodle you ever… doodled?

Thanks to al-Awlaki- who is said to have had a hand in the near-miss attack on Times Square, as well as the shooting at Ft. Hood, Texas (read more HERE: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/07/11/2010-07-11_cleric_anwar_alawlaki_puts_everybody_draw_mohammed_cartoonist_molly_norris_on_ex.html) - Molly Norris has good reason to fear for her life. At this point, Norris has publicly apologized for her project, stating in an interview that “I regret that I made my cartoon the way I did.” In an ideal United States, no artist- activist or otherwise- would ever have to make such an apology.

The point here is this: Artists ought not to be commended for mocking any religion, but nor should they be prohibited from doing so. Comedy Central has become synonymous over the years with irreverence, mostly to followers of the Christian faith. But last I checked, Christian factions aren't gathering in angry mobs demanding punishment for misguided entertainers. For whatever reason, practitioners of the Muslim faith today are much more likely than their Judeo-Christian brothers and sisters to take serious offense at whatever rhetoric they view as blasphemous .

Returning to the case of Molly Norris, al-Awlaki had this to say about her in a recent web document: "A soul that is so debased, as to enjoy the ridicule of the Messenger of Allah, the mercy to mankind; a soul that is so ungrateful towards its lord that it defames the Prophet of the religion Allah has chosen for his creation does not deserve life, does not deserve to breathe the air." In other words, those who offend God ought to be killed by the faithful.

As Fr. Robert Barron of Word On Fire Catholic Ministries put it in a recent video commentary on blasphemy, God cannot be harmed by a verbal attack by a mere mortal. While we who worship and love God understand that blaspheming is harmful to the blasphemer, it helps NO ONE if the supposed “faithful” in the community respond with acts of violence, or even the threat of such action. If God is Love, and therefore we who live are created, sustained, and intended for that Love, then to respond to blasphemers with anything but compassionate and firm disagreement is utterly counterproductive.

Nothing is gained by cowering in the presence of bigots, especially when said bigot is out to eliminate our freedom of speech.

PS For more information on the Catholic view of blasphemy, look no further than Fr. Robert Barron.