Where free speech once thrived

At Oxford University, too, the Holocaust deniers become the Holocaust cheerleaders.


Oxford demonstration from Jewish Chronicle on Vimeo.

How brittle are the Piers

Emily Dickinson:

How brittle are the Piers
On which our Faith doth tread --
No Bridge below doth totter so --
Yet none hath such a Crowd.

It is as old as God --
Indeed -- 'twas built by him --
He sent his Son to test the Plank,
And he pronounced it firm.

Free Speech Sharia Style

A lecture by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at the University of California at Irvine.

René Girard and Charles Darwin - Part 8

Source: Imitatio

Reactionary Progressism

Here is Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal:

. . . excluding the extremes, most contemporary Western conservatives are far closer to liberalism than those seeking to hijack that doctrine today. Nothing could be more reactionary from the standpoint of three centuries of democratic liberalism than "progressive," Politically Correct ideology and practice.  

I have reservations about classical liberalism. Ever since the war between social liberals and market liberals turned into a war by the former on the unborn, natural marriage, and common decency, I have tended to throw in with the market liberals. The latter tend to favor equality of opportunity -- and therefore individual freedom and initiative -- rather than the impossible dream of equality of outcome. I have serious reservations about the cultural impact of the market, however, but I am convinced that the "liberal" itch to control it will lead to even greater political and cultural damage.

Which is apropos of nothing in particular. But I do agree with Rubin about the illiberal nature of contemporary liberalism, which, by the way, is perfectly illustrated in the two blog post immediately below this one.

Rubin's whole piece is here.

A Lifelong Movement is Born Again . . .

A beautiful tribute by the students from the Franciscan University of Steubenville to the countless thousands of (largely) young people who made the March for Life such a heartwarming and hope-inspiring event:



Gratitude: Catholics United for the Faith

Can you imagine?

Union Bosses Target 86-Year Old Volunteer

This from Big Government:

First, they came for the Babysitter.  Then, they came for the Eagle Scout.   Now, they’ve come for the Crossing Guard.  (Don't miss those either.)

Warren Eschenbach, an 86-year-old a retired Wausau Water Works employee volunteers his time as a crossing guard at the Riverview Elementary School in Wausau, Wisconsin.  After the Wausau School District built an area just outside an intersection at the school’s location for parents to pickup their kids from the school, the intersection became busier than usual for a short time every day.  So, Eschenbach did a noble thing.  He went over to the school and spoke with parents, kids and administrators, and he volunteered to patrol the area at pickup time to make sure kids got to their parents’ cars and that others crossed the streets safely.  After all, he worked for five years as a crossing guard at the Franklin Elementary School up until three years ago.  He lives two doors down and it’s for a half hour every day.  Who could take issue with that?

Well, apparently union bosses can.

John Spiegelhoff, a local union rep for American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 1287 (AFSCME) wants to know if the 86-year-old retiree has undergone a background check.  And if he has liability insurance.   AFSCME insists that Eschenbach is “undermining the union” and has demanded that the city get rid of him and replace him with a paid union worker at $12.65 an hour.  The city has been cutting back crossing guard hours from 15 hours a week to 10 a week.  Of course, the elderly volunteer isn’t a volunteer with the city, he volunteers with the school.  Since the pickup location is newly restructured, there hadn’t ever been the need to have a crossing guard there.   There was no prior job this gentleman has taken away from the union.   Really, the guy just lives right there and thought he’d help out.

Riverside Elementary School Principal Steve Miller was shocked.

“Here we have a community member who’s giving back to the community and offering something to the children to keep them safe and so I just view it as a good thing and I’m not sure why someone would find fault with that but obviously somebody has.”

After AFSCME filed a grievance regarding the matter last October, it was recently denied by the Police Department, the Human Resources Department and the Human Resources Committee.  Next step:  arbitration, if the union so chooses.
If this keeps up, if I were Mr. Eschenbach, I’d simply take off the vest and put down the stop sign (both lent out by the city), and I’d just cross the street back and forth with those kids just as any neighbor living on that corner or any public citizen might very well do.  Last I checked, you don’t need liability insurance to cross the street as a public citizen.  Or is that against the law now too?
I don’t think this is the America that Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about in 1835.

Read the full story from my friend Peter List over at LaborUnionReport.com.

 Source




 

René Girard and Charles Darwin - Part 7

Source: Imitatio

Planned Parenthood: Haunted by Its History

Margaret Sanger: “We Want To Exterminate The Negro Population”

Source: American Catholic

More on the real counter culture

In one of the Emmaus Road Initiative talks I gave from 2007 to 2009, I quoted a stunning and extraordinarily important remark by Philip Rieff, and this morning I happened upon an echo of it in a book by Hans Urs von Balthasar. So I thought I was pass them along.

Philip Rieff writes:

Here we now see, with startling clarity, how little our established political distinctions between left and right, conservative and radical, revolutionary and reactionary, matter nowadays. Rather, any remaking of political distinctions will have to ask, first, whether there is in fact a discipline of inwardness, a mobilization for fresh renunciations of instinct; or whether there is only the discipline of outwardness, a mobilizing for fresh satisfactions of instinct. Such a distinction will divide contemporary men and movements more accurately; then we shall find fashionable liberals and fascists on the same side, where they really belong.

And from von Balthasar this: “The road to authenticity demands the renunciation of immediacy -- that is, it demands ascesis. No great life can reach maturity without ‘great sacrifice’.”

Be Prepared . . . for random coincidence . . .

OK, this is random . . . stream of consciousness almost . . . but here it is.

My daughter Aña and I spent the afternoon together, and then I accompanied her to her obstetrics appointment. (She is in the first trimester of her first pregnancy.) Aña and her husband Mike had seen (barely) the baby's heartbeat two weeks ago, but today it was very clear. And so it was exciting for both of us. Again, here's the refrigerator art I brought home to put up next to photos of my other grandchildren:

We don't have a name (or a sex) yet.

At lunch we had talked about some friends Aña knows who have succumbed to some of the less healthy cultural forces by which the young are today incessantly bombarded. On the way home, I pulled up behind a car with a "Proud to be the parent of an Eagle Scout" bumper sticker. It took me up short. When do you see bumper stickers like that anymore?

Thinking about the friends Aña had mentioned, and remembering how I, too, had been so duped in many ways by the cultural fashions of the late 60s and 70s, I felt great gratitude welling up in me for the ballast I had prior to the years of my ill-spent youth. I was no more prepared for the naive experiments of the 1960s than anyone else, but by the time I was being fully exposed to them I had been loved by a joyful and religiously devout family, I had received 12 years of Catholic education, I had been an Eagle Scout and a leader in the Scouting program, and I had a law degree.

It is no credit to me that even so weighty a ballast did not prevent me from being blown hither and yon on the currents of social contagion. But it was the memories and the formation that took place in those earlier years that eventually saved me and brought me (all too slowly perhaps) to my senses.

I hadn't thought about Boy Scouts or my Eagle Scout experience literally in years, but thanks to the bumper sticker I was reminded of it. And, wouldn't you know, when I got home I saw on the First Things website (here) Joe Carter's piece on the Boy Scouts.

Writes Carter:

Cultural critic Paul Fussell once wrote that the Boy Scout Handbook is "among the very few remaining popular repositories of something like classical ethics, deriving from Aristotle and Cicero." Indeed, it is literally a vade mecum on virtue ethics. Consider, for example, the Scout oath:

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

Sir Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts in Great Britain, wrote of his decision to make such a thing is lifework:

Thousands of boys and young men, pale, narrow-chested, hunched-up, miserable specimens, smoking endless cigarettes, numbers of them betting, all of them learning to be hysterical as they groan or cheer in panic unison with their neighbors — the worst sound of all being the hysterical scream of laughter that greets any little trip or fall of a player. One wonders whether this can be the same nation which had gained for itself the reputation of being a stolid, pipe-sucking manhood, unmoved by panic or excitement, and reliable in the tightest of places. Get the lads away from this — teach them to be manly.

This passage is strewn with things to make postmodern secularists wince, but I for one am deeply grateful for what Sir Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts did for me, and when I look around I see a world of young people who could benefit from something like it today. I can only hope that Aña and Mike's new baby will grow up in a world where such things are available.

René Girard and Charles Darwin - Part 6

Source: Imitatio

Europe on Trial for Its Life

Geert Wilders quoting the Qur'an and the jihadists who cite it
as a mandate for violence against "infidels."

The Islamic scholar Robert Spencer, himself pilloried by the politically correct for speaking inconvenient truths, has this to say about the Amsterdam trial of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders:

It is not exaggerating to say that the Geert Wilders trial is a defining moment in the history of Western civilization. One would have to go back centuries to find a court case with as much significance for the future course of the free world. If the farrago of “hate” charges against Wilders stick, and he is convicted, it will herald the end of the freedom of speech in the West, as a precedent will have been set that other Western nations (urged on by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which is the organization most responsible for the global assault on free speech) will be certain to follow. The era of enlightenment and the understanding that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights will be definitively drawing to a close, and a new darkness will descend over Europe and the free world in general. For once the precedent is established that a man can be jailed and destroyed for offending a privileged class, the idea that every human being has rights that cannot be infringed will be damaged beyond repair.

And even if Wilders prevails, enough damage has been done already. The Dutch law (and there are others like it in other Western countries) that stipulates that someone can actually be tried and jailed for offending another person will remain on the books. Other trials will follow. The law will be used by the governing elites who developed it in order to maintain their power and silence independent and dissenting voices.

Read Spencer's piece here.

René Girard and Charles Darwin - Part 5

Source: Imitatio

Like Dominos . . .

The stories of Westerners surrendering their freedoms -- the freedom of speech, of religion, of free association, and so on -- in the face of intimidation by ideologues of sundry sorts are now so prevalent that it is easy to get the feeling that, unless something is done to reverse the trend, in very short order we will cease to be the culture that gave these freedoms to the world.

Professor Barry Rubin is exercised, as he should be, by the cancellation of yet another scholarly address, rationalized by the fear that it might offend (in this case, as in many others) certain Muslims.

Jake Witzenfeld, president of Cambridge University's Israel Society, canceled a talk by Benny Morris, an Israeli scholar, apologizing for any "unintended offense." "I decided to cancel for fear of the Israel Society being portrayed as a mouthpiece of Islamophobia," he said. "We understand that whilst Professor Benny Morris' contribution to history is highly respectable and significant, his personal views are, regrettably, deeply offensive to many....”

Mr. Witzenfeld should resign his position immediately since by leading a pro-Israel group he will no doubt be portrayed as all sorts of slanderous things and give offense to people. After all, the existence of Israel itself is “offensive” to many Muslims and others, which is not a reason for wiping it out, presumably. As Witzenfeld might know, pro-Israel groups have been banned on British campuses before and perhaps this is what he fears.

As for giving offense, his cowardice offends me, if that's his criterion for making decisions. Hopefully, someone less fearful can be found to head the society.

How many of these stories will we have to read before we realize that the culture that raised before the world the banner of freedom is busily rolling it up out of pure, undisguised cowardice? Rubin continues:

But what is most shocking about this travesty is Witzenfield's phrase “being portrayed as.” In other words, the mere fear that someone might claim that you are racist or Islamophobic—even if you know you aren’t and even if you know the speaker isn’t--is now a cause to refuse to hear a speaker or discuss an idea in the United Kingdom. Following the Witzenfield rule, any serious discussion of Middle East politics, terrorism, religion, and lots of other subjects should be banned since there are definitely those who will portray opinions they don't like as hateful, offensive, and racist (even if they have nothing to do with race).

What does the kind of behavior evidenced at Cambridge--and many other recent examples can be cited-- do but turn slander into a very effective weapon, indeed an irresistible weapon. Now if Muslims or leftists or antisemites or anti-Americans don’t like someone or something they can just attack him or her or it—even proving the accusations have some basis in truth is not important—and destroy their ability to speak to an audience.

This began with the refusal to admit Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician, to the United Kingdom and it is spreading to the point where the basic rights taken for granted by people living in democratic societies are now in jeopardy, at least in Western Europe. Wilders himself is now on trial in the Netherlands for using his right of speech. . . .

Cliche though it is, Edmund Burke's admonition hasn't lost any of its pertinence: All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Today we have learned to rationalize our cowardice with rhetorically vacuous platitudes. Our children and grandchildren will pay the price for our timidity.

The Death of Free Speech

Apropos the post below and earlier posts, here and here, there is a National Review online symposium on the Dutch trial of Geert Wilders, which is worth reading in its entirety. It includes this quick overview by Clifford May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies:

Pretty much all you need to know about the prosecution of the controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders was summed up in a single (if run-on) sentence attributed to the ... prosecution service of the Dutch Ministry of Justice.

In response to Wilders’s request to bring in witnesses to establish the veracity of the opinions that got him in trouble with the law, that body issued this statement on January 17: “It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct, what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.”

In other words, the prosecutors believe that the truth is not a defense in the Netherlands, nor perhaps elsewhere in Europe — a continent that appears no longer to have the will to defend its values, culture, and civilization. Very sad.

As René Girard argues, the real struggle in our world is not between violence and peace; it is between violence and truth. All attempts to avoid the former by silencing the latter will end in catastrophe.

The Tolerance Vigilantes again . . .

Kathryn Jean Lopez has this in her National Review article today:

Pres. Barack Obama’s nominee for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a Georgetown University professor named Chai Feldblum, wrote in 2006 that “just as we do not tolerate private racial beliefs that adversely affect African-Americans in the commercial arena, even if such beliefs are based on religious views, we should similarly not tolerate private beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity that adversely affect LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] people.” Feldblum believes that there is a “zero-sum game” being played between religious freedom and the homosexual activists, in which “a gain for one side necessarily entails a corresponding loss for the other side.” Religious liberty, in Feldblum’s estimation, must give.

Feldblum is all-too-typical of the dogmatic leftists and intolerant homosexual activists that the current president has been so cavalierly appointing, people eager to use power to silence those who disagree with them.

Welcome to Nuremberg 2010

This from the Fars News Agency:

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei stressed that the Zionist regime is moving on a precipice towards demise and it will soon experience annihilation.

The word he used, and has so often used, is annihilation. It is a word that the Israelis know how to parse better than others.

"I am very optimistic about the future of Palestine and believe that Israel is moving on the precipice of wane and demise, and God willing its annihilation is for sure," Ayatollah Khamenei said in a meeting with Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement Ramadan Abdullah Shallah here in Tehran.

So how is the the president's soft diplomacy working out?

Thanks to Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit.

René Girard and Charles Darwin - Part 4

Source: Imitatio

"Populist Constitutionalism"

In an article that more or less echoes the concerns that Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn expressed in the video below, Larrey Anderson offers what he sees as the essential core principle at the heart of the Tea Party Movement. Anderson writes:

The tea parties are a unique populist movement and moment in American history. There is no charismatic leader of the movement. The tea parties have more grass roots movers, shakers, and members, than any populist movement ever seen in our country. So what makes it so different from previous populist political factions?

His answer:

So what makes the tea parties different? I have attended several local tea party gatherings (and addressed a couple of them). There is one document that is ubiquitous at these events: the Constitution for the United States of America. People hand out copies of the Constitution like hors d'oeuvres that are served at ... a de rigueur tea party.

As Dr. Arnn insisted, the return to constitutional principles is essential if the experiment in political freedom is to continue on a sound footing. Those who are quick to label the so-called Tea Party Movement as some kind of know-nothing right-wing lunatic fringe are missing the point. Again Anderson:

At one tea party, I helped a women lug a couple of cardboard boxes filled with pocket-sized copies of the Constitution into the hotel conference room. We sat the boxes on a folding table next to the dais for the speakers. "I only bought a thousand copies. You think that will be enough?" she asked me.

I smiled. "Enough for today..." I started to reply.

"Excuse me," a man interrupted us. He carried another box full of copies of the Constitution and set his box on the table next to her two boxes. He opened his box and began handing out the Constitution to the people who were filing into the meeting room. "Plenty," I told the woman and we laughed.

"Populist Constitutionalism" - that's what the tea parties are all about. Love and respect for the Constitution is driving the movement. Sharing the document, and then discussing the meaning, purpose, and the ideas of the Constitution, that is the process that is taking place as a result of this love and respect.

Anderson's article is here.