Mark Steyn continues his free-speech crusade (and I use that word deliberately):
I don’t care for all this beyond-the-pale stuff, because the pale is already way too shrunk. And, aside from anything else, once you get into the habit of banning and proscribing, your critical thinking goes all to hell. Many of us have seen one or two of those ill-advised shows on al-Arabiya or al-Jazeera in which some fire-breathing imam invites on a despised, Westernized, apostate woman in order to crush her like a bug, only to have her run rings round him. The Syrian émigré Wafa Sultan famously did it to Faisal al-Qassem and Ibrahim al-Khouli. It’s hardly surprising that a culture that puts so much of life beyond discussion renders its inmates literally speechless — to the point where, faced with, say, a school teddy bear innocently named Mohammed, the default opening gambit at the local debating society is to shriek “Allahu Akbar!” and start killing.
We’re not at that point yet. But, raised in the cocoon of conformity that is American academe, the Left is increasingly showing all the critical-thinking skills of your average dimestore mullah. The other day, in between its ongoing complaints about Michael Douglas’s “homophobic” awards acceptance speeches, Salon ran a story by one of its many pajama boys headlined “Ted Nugent Writes Insanely Racist Op-Ed.” Apparently, Ted had written a “vile rant” at “the batshit insane right-wing fever swamp of a site known as WorldNetDaily.” “Even for Ted Nugent,” cautioned Elias Isquith in his opening sentence, “this is bad.” Alas, poor old Ted couldn’t quite live up to his batshit-insane billing: There followed a few unexceptional observations about black crime and broken families maybe a smidgeonette more heated than one might hear from, say, Bill Cosby or Juan Williams. More to the point, the hapless pajama boy didn’t even attempt to explain what was so objectionable about Nugent’s “rant.” As the Canadian blogger Kathy Shaidle put it, “Salon calls out Ted Nugent’s ‘racist’ MLK Day column — without refuting his points. Must be Friday.” All Mr. Isquith can do is reprise Ted Nugent’s words and then shriek “Batshit insane!” and “Insanely batshit!” over and over, like Lady Bracknell with Tourette’s.
Which brings us to Michael Mann, the fake Nobel laureate currently suing NATIONAL REVIEW for mocking his global-warming “hockey stick.” Of the recent congressional hearings, Dr. Mann tweeted that it was “#Science” — i.e., the guy who agrees with him — vs. “#AntiScience” — i.e., Dr. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. That’s to say, she is by profession a scientist, but because she has the impertinence to dissent from Dr. Mann’s view she is “#AntiScience.” Mann is the climatological equivalent of those bozo imams on al-Arabiya raging about infidel whores: He can’t refute Dr. Curry, he can only label her.
Read all.
When I think of the crusades,, I think of them of them in terms like “rehearsal for the Holocaust” and “foundation for the Holocaust”. How do you think of them?
http://blogs.jpost.com/content/foundations-holocaust-crusades-1096-1272
http://blogs.jpost.com/content/crusades-1096-1272-rehearsal-holocaust
I think of them as a natural reaction of Christendom to the brutal conquering of Christian lands in the Middle East by Islam, though there were other factors going on as well (a desire for adventure and plunder, and a way to deal with labor excesses). They were no more brutal or genocidal than any other warfare of the time. I think that how you think of them is nonsense.
The first link I provided refutes your position. I think you owe it to yourself to spend, say, four minutes, reading the first link.
The first link doesn’t refute Rand’s point. It does refute yours though. Notice the last bit where the author aknowledges the existence of antisemitism prior to the Crusades and more than killing Jews was cited as reasons for the Crusades.
Not sure what your comments have to do with free speech other than your continued efforts to turn every topic into a racial greivance seminar. Because Rand said crusade, you think he wants to kill all the Jews? Does this mean he can pull a Mann and sue you?
My people have been wronged many times over the past ten thousand years but you wont see me holding a grudge for a millennium. I wont hold someone accountable, today, for the actions of unrelated people thousnds of years ago. I don’t hate Muslims for what.they did during the Crusades, could you say the same for Chrisitans? Because a person wouldn’t know it by reading your comments.
You just had to throw out the word “link” didn’t you? Did you realize that “links” were what formed the chains that African slaves had to wear during their passage to the New World, a passage on which a very large number of them died? How can you be so insensitive?
Did you realize that a “bit” is a piece of metal we insert into the sensitive area of an horse’s mouth to enslave and control them?
Hey, I think I could get good at this. 😀
Oh Rand! Stop using History and Facts! It’s not fair to attack Myth with those pesky, racist thing!
Damn you George for beating me with my own theme!
Pretty much the same, but mainly when I read articles with titles like “Obama’s Crusade Against Israel”, as opposed to Mark Steyn’s crusade for free speech.
I won’t talk about current day US or Israeli politics in this thread. I’m making my comments as a Jew who believes that the impact of the Crusades on the Jews of Europe should be known and should should not be forgotten.
For those who won’t click on the links, I’m talking about this:
“During the first 700 years of Christendom, Jewish communities in Europe are rarely placed in direct physical danger. But the situation changes when, in 1095, Pope Urbanus calls for a crusade to liberate Jerusalem [Constantinople] from the hands of the Muslims… On their way to Jerusalem, the crusaders leave a track of death and destruction behind in the Jewish communities along the Rhine and Danube. “Because,” as they exclaim, “why should we attack the unbelievers in the Holy Land, and leave the infidels in our midst undisturbed?”
“As the soldiers passed through Europe on the way to the Holy Land, large numbers of Jews were challenged: “Christ-killers, embrace the Cross or die!” 12,000 Jews in the Rhine Valley alone were killed in the first Crusade. This [pattern of murder would continue] for 8 additional crusades until the 9th in 1272.”
On May 25, 1096, some 800 Jews were murdered in Wurms, Germany while many others chose suicide rather than subject their families to torture, rape and murder at the hands of the crusaders
The links make the connection between those murders and the Holocaust.
I’m making my comments as a Jew who believes that the impact of the Crusades on the Jews of Europe should be known and should should not be forgotten.
I’m not excusing all the atrocities associated with them. I’m simply pushing back against the current notion that the Crusades were some sort of Christian aggression against the innocent Muslims of the Middle East, for which they are now justified in their current Jihad.
The Arabs and Moors of that Era were sophisticated, educated , thinkers,
scholars and builders. Nothing like the arabs we see today.
Point taken.
Rand, when you and Mark Steyn are in court facing off against Michael Mann, remind Steyn not to accidentally cheer the slaughter of tens of thousands of Jews in the Middle Ages by sloppily using a word that dates back only to the 1700’s. Getting to the crux of the matter, I t….
Crap. I accidentally used the word describing the people who slaughtered tens of thousands of Jews in Europe and ransacked Israel at the behest of Pope Urban.
This isn’t about accidents and being sloppy. The word _is_ in common use, and I wouldn’t have said anything if Rand had used it casually, but instead Rand highlighted his use of the word (complementing Steyn’s use of the word in his own piece), and he used it with respect to Islamic fundamentalism. Once you’re talking about liberty, tolerance, and religion, what happened to the Jews in the Crusades becomes relevant.
As for the English word’s etymology and recent origin, the murdered are still murdered whether you use Latin, French, English, Yiddish, German, or Chinese to describe what happened.
“This isn’t about accidents…”
Do you know how many people die in accidents every year? How could you use that word so carelessly without any respect for the victims? You know the Hindenburg was operated by Germans and blew up in an accident so I am left no other choice than to assume you supported the Germans in WWII.
What threw me is that Mark Steyn defends the rights of Jews and frequenly warns of the creeping intolerance in Europe, especially regarding the way Europe could demographically and then culturally turn into Eurabia. He also strongly criticizes US policy, noting that our government has not only turned our back on Israel, but seems to be actively helping its enemies and working towards its nuclear annihilation. And of course the Obama’s launch a new crusade against something just about every month.
I think of them as religion run amok.
Though the links were irrelevant to this discussion, they were very interesting articles. Thanks.
my the gnashing of teeth over something that happen a 1000 years ago. does the word communism have the same impact?
You must mean communawesome.
Maybe if we just all sing the National Anthem we’ll stop digressing.
This rendition in the Louisville Hyatt had 17,000 views yesterday and 377,000 views today. At next year’s conference people will probably be lined up outside to witness it.
Getting back to the topic, even Judith Curry quoted from that one, and said this:
A commenter mentioned that this is now known as the Barbara Streisand effect, where an lawsuit causes vastly more publicity and comment than what it was trying to stop.
Mann against Steyn is like a Kitten willingly jumping into a running Woodchipper.
You wonder what the Kitten is thinking when it jumps…..
>the murdered are still murdered whether you use Latin, French, English, Yiddish, German, or Chinese to describe what happened.<
how many thousands of jews have been killed by muslims in the last 100 years clown?
>Once you’re talking about liberty, tolerance, and religion, what happened to the Jews in the Crusades becomes relevant.<
so muslims killing jews. hussein of jerusalem a effin' nazi only 70 years ago, is no concern of yours? idiot that is you.
Okay, one small question. I’m guessing you got a new router (probably years ago) and went with that name on a foray onto the Internet to see if the router was working properly. Is sticking with that name laziness or an ingenious way to avoid search engines, kind of like going under the name “test” or “ping”?
bob-1 hates christians. jews are just his intro
I’ve gotten lots of anonymous death threats as an uber-Zionist Jew, and greatly enjoyed David Ruderman‘s audio book on the history of Jewish intellectual thought, even though he has ended up at the same university as Jerry Sandusky and the Jerry Sandusky of climate science. But as someone whose cousin and doppelganger was executed in the Nuremberg trials (U-boat captain Heinz Eck) and whose brother makes Hitler or Ted Bundy seem like Gandhi, can we move on to discussing climate change?