Mark Steyn Agrees With Me (And He's Real Smart!)

"rather than confiscating passports and preventing these guys from leaving to fight for ISIS, I think we should wait till they get there to cancel their passports: If they prefer to be citizens of Headhackistan, so be it. But, if they attempt to return to Canada (or America, Britain, Australia, Europe), they should be charged with treason."

Mark Steyn on the Right to Offend

The detestable Senator Lindsey Graham

" ... But perhaps what’s most disturbing about Lindsey Graham’s dismal defense of his inclinations to censorship is the lack of even the slightest attempt to underpin his position with any kind of principle. He all but literally wraps himself in the flag, and, once you pry him out of the folds of Old Glory, what you’re left with is a member of the governing class far too comfortable with the idea that he and his colleagues should determine the bounds of public discourse.

I’m sick of that. I’m sick of it in Canada, sick of it in Britain, in Australia, in Europe, and I’m now sick of it in America — in part because, as Senator Graham has demonstrated in his fatuous defense, guys like him aren’t smart enough to set the rules for what the rest of us are allowed to think. In his column in The Australian, James Allan usefully reminds us of what it’s like to live in a world where Grahamesque types presume to regulate individual expression in the cause of identity-group harmony. I like his conclusion:

The only valuable sort of freedom of speech is the sort that allows people to do or to say what others find wrong-headed, offensive, distasteful and intolerant.

Being free to say and do what everyone else wants you to say and do is not a liberty or freedom you will ever have to fight for; it will make little difference to anything . . .

I think any good, well-functioning democracy requires its citizens to man up and grow a thick skin. If you’re offended, tell us why the speaker is wrong. Don’t ask for a court-ordered apology and some two-bit declaration.

I’ll take my chances with blowhard pastors, drearily “transgressive” artists, and flag-burning provocateurs. I’m far more worried about a blundering clod like Graham presuming to protect us from them."

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/264002/right-offend-mark-steyn

Best comment imho:

Kevin MacDuff: "Political Correctness: The artificial and self-serving elevation of sentimentality over objective truth.
The perfect recipe for corroding Western Civilization into a neutered vestige ripe for Islamic domination."

Of Course, Not All Whoopi Goldbergs Are Idiots

There must be more than just the one, right?
Think I'll check the phone book ...

Kathy Shaidle and Mark Steyn take a stick to the "Not all XYZs!!!" formulation -THAT JUST WON'T DIE!! (aaaaaarrrrrggggg !!!!!):

"This Appeared in an Actual Newspaper: December 7 'was the day the Japanese government bombed Pearl Harbor'

As we’ve seen via the likes of Whoopi Goldberg (who is, your tsking aside, watched daily by millions of women, so yes: on some level, she “matters”) and now, a semi-major U.S. newspaper, the “not all XYZs!!!” formulation is actually gaining traction, rather than being mocked into obscurity, like it should have been when it started almost ten years ago. ...

Now: you already know how I feel about “not all XYZs!!!”

So let’s turn it over to Mark Steyn:

The Journal’s formulation embodies one of the great delusions of our age — that there are bad governments but no bad peoples. “Not all Germans were Nazis” — but enough were and enough of the rest strung along that the qualification is irrelevant. Not all Afghans are Taliban — but the real problem in that wretched land is not “the Afghan government” but the Afghan people. A dozen pages of a Flashman yarn has a sounder grasp of the Afghan psyche than nine years of multilateral “nation-building.” Which is why we’re going round and round in circles in an almighty Groundhogistan where a man gets sentenced to death for converting to Christianity under a court system created, funded, and protected by us. ..."

read on ...

Thought Police v Maclean's - the latest

PelaLusa: The Editors of Maclean's Finally Speak Up

A guest column from an esteemed fellow blogger on a topic of the utmost importance: Liberty.