Further On Steynsense
Yeah, yeah. Defend. Rights. Speech.
But here's the thing that I can't really square with making too strong a defence of Mark Steyn (et al) and their version of free speech (and it is a version, Dear Reader). He HAS engaged in an alarm bell campaign in both his columns and his book "I Slam, You Slam, We All Slam Islam" regarding the migration of Muslims to the West - at a time when the country he lives in is engaged in a War on Terror - i.e. bombing the countries where Muslims live. He has warned over and over that the Muslim culture is to be feared by the West (particularly by women in the West, who he warns will be stripped of their rights and burka'd), that the Muslim birthrate poses a demographic danger to the West such that women in the West should be forced to give birth, and that we underestimate at our democratic peril the negative political influence Muslims already here are having and will continue to have on our once idyllic Western way of life.
I know this because my co-worker believes everything both Mark Steyn and David Warren say to be true. He reads them day after day in the newspaper and online and because he is naturally impressionable and of a certain political bent (RightWingNut) he agrees with each new spin on the same argument (and they make it day after day year after year) that there is a Muslim menace and that it is to feared to such an extent that we need to support our governments when they take action against the countries where Muslims live and that we need to restrict their entry into the West because they will irrevocably alter our way of life - in the worst sense of alter.
And again, I know all this because he quotes them and then follows up his quotings with warnings about lefties and feminists and all those other Terrorist Stooges and Taliban Jacks who are preventing the good guys from beating the bad guys in the War on Terror - even though we're not - even. Grr.
Now, the reason I mention this is because, until very recently, I tended to believe, deep down, that these same two columnists were right about Israel and the Palestinians, that Israel wanted peace, but the Palestinians in electing Hamas, really didn't, that they were thwarting Israel's very believable claim that it just wanted to live in peace with its Arab neighbours and reach some sort of accomodation with the Palestinians that would allow everybody to go forward - together.
Then, as I reported in this entry:
WhatThe...?Where'dThePalestinianTerritoryGo?
I saw a map showing how absolutely opposite reality was to my assumptions about who wanted what in the Middle East.
My point is, I'm not a Rightwinger. I'm not even a Centrist. I'm a leftyleftlefterella and I believed what I believed because I kept reading it - over and over and over. And, for me, what I read re-inforced my natural prejudice in favour of Israel wanting peace and the Palestinians thwarting its efforts. Israel was good, the Palestinians were bad.
That's just a personal point on how impressionable I believe many people actually are. Combine that tendency with the attack on the WTC by Islamic Fundamentalists and you've got even big tough outfits like the New York Times suppressing what it suspects to be the truth because it doesn't want to get in the way of something as just-as-easily-fascist-as-not as one's patriotic duty to one's country.
To be frank, every time I revisit this issue of free speech and Mark Steyn et al, I'm shocked by what they have managed to get away with to date, except then I remember that absolutely all of the power of free speech (and paid speech) is on their side. They haven't been challenged by their editors/publishers/etc on what have actually been very inciteful arguments against Muslims being anywhere, because so many of those people also believe that there is a Muslim menace. Or maybe they just like the idea of a War on Terror. Either way, they're willing to let Steyn et al say anything, really, in order to convince the rest of us (the non-true-believers) of the rightness of their views and therefore of the need for ongoing undefinable (for reasons of security) incursions on our civil rights and the sovereign rights of other countries. I know this to be true (that their arguments are inciteful) because, in spite of the fact that I have only ever done business with Muslims (taxis, corner stores, shawarma huts, hair salons) and never had any kind of untoward experience, I keep an eagle eye out for any trespassing on my rights as an Infidel - because I can't leave the country at the moment on account of I don't have a passport.
So I'd really be screwed if Muslims started taking over my rights here in Canada.
Anyway, my point in making this entry is that today it's Muslims who are the threat to all that the Right here in the West believes is good and true and, although the free speech argument trumps the rest of it for me, I think it would be naive to the point of negligence if we didn't also plan ahead to ask: Who will it be tomorrow?
