Wednesday, January 07, 2015

Freedom of speech

Here's Victor Davis Hanson back in 2012: "Please, no more apologies for free speech"
Apparently leaders of the Islamic world present a non-negotiable demand to the West that they be given a blank check for their governments to defame Jews, Christians, and Americans, but the United States must condemn any private individual who, quite apart from the knowledge of the U.S. government, does the same to Muslims. That is the issue, and anything less than an unapologetic defense of free speech is not only a betrayal of our Constitution, but a very dangerous concession that will only incite more violence in the near future. Unfortunately, Western hedging, appeasement, and apologies to theocrats and authoritarians have never won gratitude, but instead such magnanimity is seen as either weakness to be exploited or proof all along that the apologizer admits culpability and will do so again in the future — a fact well known to history’s thugs, big and small, whether Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Osama bin Laden, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
It's just coming over the wire just now that two of the three gunmen are in custody and the third is dead.

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