? The concrete is burning | Main | Potentia Animi: Domina ?
February 07, 2008
Kitty Genovese’s neighbours
Pursuing Holiness writes about secondary crime scenes and fighting for your life. Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn are not the first to be targeted and, unless we put a stop to it, will not be the last (via Five Feet of Fury).
We have the right to not obey Islamic law or customs. If we do not defend that right, we will certainly lose it.
That bears repeating:
We have the right to not obey Islamic law or customs. If we do not defend that right, we will certainly lose it.
This should be obvious. It is obvious. And yet in Canada, today, it is not true. Disobey Muslim proscriptions against representing their prophet and you will taken before a mock court, fined, even imprisoned. We are, right now, dhimmis. This is not acceptable and whatever happens we cannot allow ourselves to go without a fight.
The left in this country spent years arguing that evangelicals and the Catholic church did not have the moral authority to impose their religious views on marriage on the rest of society; they were right to do so. But now the same people - including every woman in every women's studies faculty in Canada - is clamoring for the state to impose stiff penalties for blasphemy. Find me ONE non-Muslim Canadian feminist who has defended Ezra Levant's decision right to publish the Mohammed cartoons, just one. They used to say "no means no". Apparently not. These days "no means yes" provided your attacker's religious beliefs are sufficiently exotic. This is an exact articulation of the "Orientalism" these same progressives claim to oppose. What a sickening spectacle.
Related: A comment I left to "Wide Stance", an excellent post by Jay Currie. It appears Warren Kinsella is concerned about racist graffiti in a bathroom stall:
The photo depicts a crime: Vandalism. Destruction of someone else’s property, violence and incitement to violence are all crimes. Freedom of speech should end when its medium of expression belongs to someone else. I may think Rush is a great band; this does not give me the right to tattoo a picture of Getty Lee on your forehead. Or to draw it on a bathroom wall.
Preventing someone from expressing an opinion - loathsome as it may be to somebody - is another story. Mr. Kinsella surely has the best intentions in opposing Nazism. What he may not have realized is that at the core of Nazism and all other totalitarian ideologies are bans on opposing speech, usually with some overtly stated philanthropic goal (creating the new man, restoring lost dignity, expressing the true faith, etc.).
And in every one of these despotisms a bureaucrat with a notepad forcing a journalist to defend himself from a charge of thought-crime. And you know what? That journalist is usually Jewish. Not Nazi Germany. Not Argentina in the ’70s. Canada. Right now.
We are fighting a new Nazism alright. But it is the state and its well-meaning apologists for censorship that worry me not some dolt with a marker pen in a bathroom stall.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at February 7, 2008 05:53 AM
Comments
Not to be pedantic....
The events surrounding the attack on Kitty Genovese were misconstrued by the NYT. The number of witnesses was exagerated, and there were only two attacks, not three. The second, fatal attack took place outside the view or hearing of the witnesses. Furthermore, the first attack prompted severel attempted calls to the police. In 1964, their emergency response telephone system was inefficient at best.
Posted by: agent bedhead ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ghostofaflea.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 7, 2008 02:34 PM
Kathy Shaidle also pointed it is a poor choice of metaphor for these reasons. I decided to let it stand because people know what it means as a morality tale. Fake but accurate?
Posted by: Ghost of a flea at February 7, 2008 02:42 PM
If you need a new morality tale involving a horrible, brutal crime and gawking bystanders I give you this tale from (Also from New York City which may give extra credibility to the fake but accurate hypothesis) http://rachellucas.com/?p=290
I'm sure you've seen it but it really does require two or three readings to totally sink in.
On the broader topic, I am not prone to chicken little doomsaying but I have to concede a marked decline in Western Civ's faith in itself and the likely result seems to be decades of decline and conflict before what I consider an inevitable turn around.
The reason I see this turnaround as unavoidable is that we are not in new territory. We have faced incredibly dark periods of self-doubt and loathing only to find that our beacon on the hill is still bright and alluring. God surely loves freedom and the United States and will always do so. It is us who sometimes forget the glory we are bathed in.
We will remember... sooner or later.
Posted by: Christopher Ross at February 7, 2008 03:12 PM
I don't know how accurate it is either . . . I've seen bystanders take action after a car accident and whatnot. It's pretty simple and relatively noninvasive to not pick up the phone and call the authorities. In fact, to not do so is more than just complacency -- more like an accessory to the crime. The NYT made a blanket and rather inhuman assumption, and they probably did it for the sensational headlines. Then the social psychologists got wind of these untruths and decided that bystanders are basically inhuman. Universities have schooled generations of liberal arts students based upon horrible we are as a society. Lovely.
Posted by: agent bedhead at February 7, 2008 06:28 PM
That second sentence should be missing the "not." Sigh.
Posted by: agent bedhead at February 7, 2008 06:29 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in. Now you can comment. (sign out)
(This comment system is not reliable. Half the time it won't let me comment on my own blog. Please don't take it personally if it does not work for you. Alternative suggestions would be welcome but best remember I am technologically incompetent. Thanks for your patience.)
