Monday, September 29, 2008

Obama Goes to War against Freedom of Speech

RIGHT SIDE NEWS: "See those Islamophobes, Barack? It's time to call out the Thought Police!"

By now a gazillion sites have posted this from the State of Missouri's site, "Gov. Blunt Statement on Obama Campaign's Abusive Use of Missouri Law Enforcement." What interests me most about it is the eerie parallel between the Obama camp's activity here and the Organization of the Islamic Conference's efforts to stifle all criticism of Islam and destroy the freedom of speech -- also by means of legal intimidation, at the UN and elsewhere

No, I am not saying that Obama is a closet Muslim Manchurian candidate. I am saying that if he values free speech so lightly, as this episodes suggests, it is not at all beyond the realm of possibility that once he becomes President he will acquiesce to the OIC attempts to criminalize criticism of Islam, and pressure the Supreme Court (to which he will probably appoint several key members) to declare a "hate speech" exemption to First Amendment protections. Then it will effectively become illegal to discuss the motives and goals of the jihadists, and to strategize about ways to resist them -- because the OIC and American Islamic groups assail all attempts to do that as "hate speech." "Hate speech" is in the eye of the beholder, and "hate speech" laws are tools by which the powerful can silence criticism from the powerless. In this case, the Islamic groups have already made themselves abundantly clear that any examination of the jihadists' use of Islamic texts and teachings to justify their actions is what they consider "hate speech." Thus if what is labeled "hate speech" about Islam becomes a criminal offense, so will resistance to Islamic supremacism.

But if this were to become an actual live possibility, Americans would rise up and fight for their freedoms, right? I hope so. Yet all too many Americans don't seem to understand or care about the importance of free speech nowadays, and of course no one supports "hate speech" in the first place -- so once the OIC frames the analysis of the jihad threat in terms of "hate," as American Muslim groups do endlessly, the ability to discuss, analyze, understand, and defend ourselves against the jihadist threat will be severely damaged if not utterly destroyed. Obama Goes to War against Freedom of Speech >>> By Robert Spencer | September 29, 2008

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