C2. I agree with that. But they omit to point out the hypocrisy of gaoling Irving for expressing his thoughts on what really happened during the Holocaust, which I suppose doesn't include all the other people who were imprisoned and enslaved and killed.
It is so richly ironical that the birthplace of Adolf Hitler conducted the latest suppression of freedom. They are obviously oblivious to the point. Or not embarrassed about it. That's because they are Germans, imbued with huge self-belief, ego and the intrinsic desire to crush those who disagree.
I liked this bit:
<Sir Charles Napier, the British Commander-in-chief in India from 1849 to 1851, signed an agreement with local Hindu leaders that he would respect all their customs, except for the practice of suttee. The Hindu leaders protested but Napier was unmoved:
You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours. >
Excellent. Islamic Jihad should be informed of similar cultural practises when they threaten the lives of people like Salman Rushdie, Van Gogh etc etc ad nauseum. Find out who they are and deliver a Hellfire missile from a Predator. That will make them think twice before issuing their fatwahs.
<The concepts of free enquiry and free expression and the right to criticise entrenched beliefs are things we take so much for granted they are almost part of the air we breathe. We need to recognise them as distinctly Western phenomena. They were never produced by Confucian or Hindu culture. Under Islam, the idea of objective inquiry had a brief life in the fourteenth century but was never heard of again. In the twentieth century, the first thing that every single communist government in the world did was suppress it.>
That's except in the Holocaust denial countries. It's believe, or shut up, or else the Inquisition will determine heresy and a burning at the stake - or incarceration in this case. I suppose Austria and the other "denial" countries, are borderline "western" and have limited concepts of freedom. NZ is the same. While my father was in the desert fighting Rommel, his cousin was in prison for daring to speak against the war. The judge should have been shot, being obviously a fifth column Nazi.
Freedom is a fragile flower, not existing anywhere in an absolute sense of voluntary interaction among adults. All states are highly suppressive, confiscatory and nothing more than a diluted form of chimpanzee tribal rules.
Mqurice |
