En Garde In The Bunker
The following in its entirety, is shared from Gerard Vanderleun and his great website, American Digest, and it is presented as such merely for the way Mr. Vanderleun assembles his items. It is downright near impossible to share one of his in-depth articles like this separately (on Facebook eg.,) without having to go directly to the front page and having to search for it throughout. As I opined in one of my own pieces about the Garland, Texas hypocrisy last week: “Ignorance is believing that tens of thousands of Christians in the Middle East being murdered, raped, and put into slavery by Muslims isn’t a heinous atrocity, but cartoons in a country with Freedom of Speech is. Indeed, some may say that the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. In that context, these two terrorists are now good Muslims. Don’t take the successful conversion of these two to indicate that such rapid conversion will always be possible, and thank God that no one else but the Muslims were killed. Thank God also that the security guard that was shot had a rapid recovery.”
And thus, the disclaimer having been attended-to, this following introduction is a compilation of comments from his “Have Your Say” feature…
The First Amendment primarily exists because we are all going to be both offensive and offended from time to time with regard to others’ thoughts, words, art and deeds. Trying to get all offense to go away, is the height of immaturity and unreality. I think we live in a time of great societal regression in which we mistake freedom for security and strident group think for truth….Or the one who screams and protests the loudest is the one who thinks they get and own the truth. What complete idiocy (Webutante)
It’s sad indeed to see Ingraham, O’Reilly, Trump etal, resort to the “you wouldn’t have been raped if you hadn’t dressed so provocatively” argument, but there you are. As Mark Levin says, the true issue is not freedom of speech, but the imposition of Shari’ah Law. It’s madness, cowardice and suicide to relinquish our civilization without a fight. Yes, this is the hill to die on. God Bless and protect Pamela Geller. She is the kind of human we are all called to be (ahem)
The real offense is the murdering religion. Pamela Geller is a hero and I pray for her safety. The world watches as ISIS slaughters, beheads, burns alive, abducts, rapes, sells children, etc., but Pam Geller has a cartoon show. Being from a background that experienced Islam firsthand (Armenian), the Armenians were defenseless and there was nothing to do to appease their murderers. I am offended by mass murder (andre)
What’s truly frightening is the absence of organized resistance to the accelerating encroachment and penetration of Islamism into our Congress, Executive, national security agencies, communities, and schools. Except for our military and police, we’ve had it too easy for too long. How surprised will we be when the next Black Swan makes 9/11 look like a mild massacre (Howard Nelson)
It’s so depressing that all of those American men who fought and died on battlefields all over this world truly believed they were fighting for liberty for the future of this country. It now seems to me they have died in vain. There’s nothing more pitiful on earth than a cowardly people who don’t even know who their enemies really are (Denny)
5-MINUTE ARGUMENTS
“I will continue to speak in defense of freedom until the day I die. It’s just that simple. It’s not even a choice. It’s a calling.”
How can any thinking and civilized person ever believe there is a wisp of truth to the proposition: “There are times when it is ‘understandable’ that people would slaughter others because of a cartoon”? Everyone who follows world events in the United States, regardless of their political leanings, has seen the unimaginably vile actions of ISIS against “unbelievers” and “those who defame the prophet.” How can anyone take their side? To do so even to the smallest extent renders the defender equally vile. And yet, of course, that is what we have come to in the cesspool that is the American left.
Over the past few days the denouncement and criticism of Pamela Geller for the Garland, Texas terrorist attack against Americans on American soil has reached unusually disgusting levels. The transexual poster pedophiles at the New York Times, in an item typical of the crack-smoking Marxist media and its acolytes, proclaims in an editorial: Pamela Geller, the anti-Islam campaigner behind the Texas event, has a long history of declarations and actions motivated purely by hatred for Muslims… To which the always measured Neoneocon responds:
So here’s my challenge to the Times editors: give us some quotes from Geller. Some, you know, evidence of her hatred. Surely there must be reams and reams and reams. What has Geller said that’s so venomous and bigoted? About whom did she say it, all Muslims or Muslim terrorists? What was so hateful about the cartoon that won the contest, and why is it so obvious it wasn’t about free speech? neo-neocon
Neoneocon is correct. You will search long and search deep for the evidence of such hatred for it is slim to scant to none.
The attitude of the American Left towards Geller is expected. But more disturbing and more to the point of the issue involving “Free Speech” are the Pecksniffian qualifying statements from a number of commentators on the Right.
These blighted souls are those I term the “Yes But Brigade.” These are the folks, Greta Van Susteren as just one notable example among many, who seem to feel that Geller “provoked” two Islamic insects to get in their car, drive to the event in Garland, Texas, and attempt to enter the venue with rifles in order to slaughter all, all, the Americans inside. That they failed is beside the point. If things had gone the other way we would have had an attack on American soil more dire than the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris.
And yet still there are those on the right (“Yes…. but…..”) that believe that Pamela Geller should just have been very, very quiet about cartoons that “defame the prophet;” that she should have just, like all these quiet cowards on the right, let the terrorists continue their winning streak when it comes to shutting down the right to make a drawing.
I’ve met Pamela Geller personally on a few occasions and in the past corresponded with her and consulted her by phone during the time I was the Editor-In-Chief of Pajamas Media. Geller is a person who, in the wake of 9/11, found her life changed, changed utterly, and who has followed the cause of resistance to terrorism without fear or favor since that time.
It has led her to lead the opposition to the insulting mosque near Ground Zero. And it has led her to be one of the most unlikely champions of free speech. Many say that Garland was just some sort of bizarre attention-getting device for Geller, but that is not true. It is a device for calling attention to the fact that many do not believe their own ardent proclamations of the 1st Amendment when the hammer comes down.
Just now on Fox News, playing in the background, a panel was discussing Geller and some pundit declared: Quote “I am a first amendment absolutist and there is no “but” after that, but….” Endquote
None of these pundits has, between them, five percent of the courage that Geller has displayed. Nor will they have her courage. Ever. Islam has cowed them all; cowed them into their cowardly appeasement signaled by their “Yes, but”.
In sharp contrast, Geller has effectively put her life in jeopardy now and for decades to come. For the rest of her life she will never again be able to move without guards and a care for her security. She has sacrificed the freedom found in anonymity for the 1st Amendment that enables so many of those who criticize her to make their living and live their life. She has not made herself a target for Islamic vermin out of a thirst for personal publicity. Nobody sane does that and Geller is more than sane. She has done this because she believes that it is evil to kill people for making drawings. She believes this with no “Buts” attached. Geller has more balls than all of the “Yes But Brigade” combined.
More than that she has principles by which she lives and which she has not compromised. She’s not some martyr in the making like Joan of Arc. She’s much more like, if you want a contemporary icon, Sylvester Stallone’s character in Cobra, Marion Cobretti: I don’t deal with psychos. I put them away.
If the Right in this country had a division of people with the balls and brains and insights of Geller, our sinking ship of state could be made to float and sail on again.
Those on the Right who condemn Geller are those who already “hold their manhoods cheap.” This is a war. A war that has come — again — to American soil, and one that will not go away. What happened in Garland was not a “provocative art show,” it was another armed skirmish of a long terror campaign. ISIS in the last few days has confirmed it. Geller knows what it was and speaks the truth about Islam’s aims in America. No “buts” about it.
Kudos and H/T to Gerard Vanderleun and American Digest…
