In Need of Consideration By Americans

[From article]

Prime Minister Manuel Vals lists four. “There is a fundamental difference between the freedom to be impertinent and anti-Semitism, racism, glorification of terrorist acts, and Holocaust denial, all of which are crimes, that justice should punish with the most severity.”
Vals’ list brings to mind another quote of Voltaire’s, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
Why did Vals not include slanders against Catholicism and Islam, the world’s largest religions, both of which have been repeatedly insulted by Charlie Hebdo? In the banlieues north of Paris, they wish to know.
Pope Francis himself said yesterday, “You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. … If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch.”

[. . .]

Who decides what is “anti-Semitism” and what is “racism”? In America, these terms are tossed around with abandon.
As for the “glorification of terrorist acts,” Israel’s Menachem Begin, the ANC’s Nelson Mandela, and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat were all credibly charged with acts of terrorism in their liberation struggles.
And all three won the Nobel Prize for Peace.

[. . .]

Who decides which historical events are off-limits for debate?

[. . .]

Across the Middle East, majorities favor the adoption of sharia law. Many support beheadings, stonings, the lash and amputations of limbs for lesser offenses.
What does these polls tell us?
First, if we insist that freedom of the press means standing behind the blasphemies of Charlie Hebdo, we should anticipate the hatred and hostility of majorities in the Islamic world to whom faith and family are everything — and our First Amendment is nothing.
Second, the idea that, by sending armies of Americans into that part of the world for a decade or two, we could convert these peoples, steeped in a 1,500-year-old faith, to share our embrace of religious, cultural and moral pluralism and secularism was utopian madness.
Third, as Islamic peoples grow in number and militancy, while the peoples of Europe age and pass on, and the migrants continue to come from the Maghreb and Middle East, Europe will have to adapt to Muslim demands or face endless civil and cultural conflict on the Old Continent.

[. . .]

President Hollande said, “You can murder men and women, but you can never kill their ideas.”
True. And anti-Islamism is an idea. As is the “radical Islam” against which France has declared war.
And which of the two ideas appears today to have more adherents willing not only to march for it on Sundays, but to die for it?

[Same as scene in  Godfather when Corleone and Hyman were stopped at a battle between police and Castro's revolutionaries. Hyman pointed out that Castro's men were willing to die for their cause. How many Americans are willing to die for anything? Many are unwilling to even talk about the issues.]

http://buchanan.org/blog/to-die-for-charlie-hebdo-15475

To Die for Charlie Hebdo?
Friday - January 16, 2015 at 1:17 am
By Patrick J. Buchanan