Mark Steyn — The “but” boys and submission to assaults on free speech

Post this to protect your freedom

Rising to the example and the challenge of Mark Steyn and others I post herein the cartoon that won the competition in Pam Geller’s May 3rd competition related to depiction of  Mohammed.*   The award took place in Garland, Texas which “inspired” two Islamic terrorists to attempt mass murder.  Fortunately they were dispatched instead by brave police action. Steyn posted the cartoon as part of a superb article titled “Stay Quiet and You’ll Be Okay.”

Geller’s project has brought criticism from the left and some on the right characterizing the purpose as intended to display “hate speech,”  and that the effort should be shunned, and according to some, banned. I wish knee-jerk liberals would take some time away from absorbing clumsy leftist talking points to read Steyn’s thoughtful analysis. They might realize how absurd criticisms of Pam Geller that liken her production of the event to  “yelling fire in a crowded theater” are, and what political free speech is all about, something conservatives have always championed.

Another cartoon from  the same artist, the caption to which provides the name to Steyn’s column, is posted below. In combination with some excerpts from Steyn’s commentary they are set forth to further political commentary but also to induce you to read the article in its entirety.  We also challenge other bloggers concerned with assaults on political speech to do similar.

“Stay Quiet and You’ll Be Okay” by Mark Steyn
The War on Free Speech  May 9, 2015 (excerpts)

As for the free-speech issues, some of us have been around this question for a long time. I wrote a whole book about it: Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West – well worth a read, and I’m happy to autograph it for you. On page 123 I write about Jyllands Posten and the original Motoons:

The twelve cartoonists are now in hiding. According to the chairman of the Danish Liberal Party, a group of Muslim men showed up at a local school looking for the daughter of one of the artists.

When that racket starts, no cartoonist or publisher or editor should have to stand alone. The minute there were multimillion-dollar bounties on those cartoonists’ heads, The Times of London and Le Monde and The Washington Post and all the rest should have said, “This Thursday we’re all publishing the cartoons. If you want to put bounties on all our heads, you’d better have a great credit line at the Bank of Jihad. If you want to kill us, you’ll have to kill us all…”

But it didn’t happen.

In Copenhagen, in Paris, in Garland, what’s more important than the cartoons and the attacks is the reaction of all the polite, respectable people in society, which for a decade now has told those who do not accept the messy, fractious liberties of free peoples that we don’t really believe in them, either, and we’re happy to give them up – quietly, furtively, incrementally, remorselessly – in hopes of a quiet life. Because a small Danish newspaper found itself abandoned and alone, Charlie Hebdo jumped in to support them. Because the Charlie Hebdo artists and writers died abandoned and alone, Pamela Geller jumped in to support them. By refusing to share the risk, we are increasing the risk. It’s not Pamela Geller who emboldens Islamic fanatics, it’s all the nice types – the ones Salman Rushdie calls the But Brigade. You’ve heard them a zillion times this last week: “Of course, I’m personally, passionately, absolutely committed to free speech. But…”

Alas, we have raised a generation of But boys.   . . .

Why would you expect people who see nothing wrong with destroying a mom’n’pop bakery over its antipathy to gay wedding cakes to have any philosophical commitment to diversity of opinion? And once you no longer have any philosophical commitment to it it’s easy to see it the way Miliband and Cotler do – as a rusty cog in the societal machinery that can be shaved and sliced millimeter by millimeter.

Do what the parochial hacks of the US media didn’t bother to do, and look at the winning entry in Pam Geller’s competition, which appears at the top of this page. It’s by Bosch Fawstin, an Eisner Award-winning cartoonist and an ex-Muslim of Albanian stock. Like many of the Danish and French cartoons, it’s less about Mohammed than about the prohibition against drawing Mohammed – and the willingness of a small number of Muslims to murder those who do, and a far larger number of Muslims both enthusiastic and quiescent to support those who kill. Mr Fawstin understands the remorseless logic of one-way multiculturalism – that it leads to the de facto universal acceptance of Islamic law. . . .

Can Islam be made to live with the norms of free societies in which it now nests? Can Islam learn – or be forced – to suck it up the way Mormons, Catholics, Jews and everyone else do? If not, free societies will no longer be free. Pam Geller understands that, and has come up with her response. By contrast, Ed Miliband, Irwin Cotler, Francine Prose, Garry Trudeau and the trendy hipster social-media But boys who just canceled Mr Fawstin’s Facebook account* are surrendering our civilization. They may be more sophisticated, more urbane, more amusing dinner-party guests …but in the end they are trading our liberties.

* This post is by the unilateral decision of the chairman and managing editor of veritaspac.com.,  Roger Mall.  No other person or entity had any say in the matter of publication.

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