Property and Speech

Two issues illustrate a huge problem faced by anyone concerned with the cartoon riots: How does one stem the tide of multiculturalism, which threatens us with dhimmitude as people fail to stand up for their freedom of speech by standing with the cartoonists?

Bear with me for a moment as I bring up something apparently unrelated: this bit of good news on the reactions of state legislatures to the Supreme Court's universally-reviled Kelo decision.

In a rare display of unanimity that cuts across partisan and geographic lines, lawmakers in virtually every statehouse across the country are advancing bills and constitutional amendments to limit use of the government's power of eminent domain to seize private property for economic development purposes.

This is truly amazing at first glance. One would think that Democrats, seeing projects like the one in New London, Connecticut, that started this mess as a means of raising property values and thus tax receipts, would not be so swift to jump on this bandwagon. Plenty of Republicans, too.

Of course, politicians are timid creatures who stick their fingers in the wind constantly, so all but the most principled will abandon their professed beliefs at the first sign of significant public opposition. So where did all this opposition come from? Almost everybody, it seems. I recall stopping by a few lefty blogs after Kelo and even the ones who have never met a tax cut they didn't hate were suddenly singing hymns on the sanctity of the home.

In America, it seems that virtually everyone understands on a fundamental level the importance of making sure that private citizens can't simply be evicted from their own homes. I am sure that everyone came up a huge list of things they love about their homes and would be damned before letting the government help someone take them away.

Now consider the cartoon riots. Many people -- but mostly those of us who frequently exercise our freedom of speech -- are properly outraged over our government's tepid response to this blatant assault on our freedom of speech. However, most people seem almost oblivious to the problem even beyond what could be chalked up to the miserable failure of our media to report what's going on. Amit Ghate provides a very illuminating quote from a story in the Daily Telegraph about the trend towards dhimmitude in Britain:

Perhaps the explanation is just that they do not take it seriously. "I fear that is exactly the problem," says Dr Sookhdeo. "The trouble is that Tony Blair and other ministers see Islam through the prism of their own secular outlook.

They simply do not realise how seriously Muslims take their religion. Islamic clerics regard themselves as locked in mortal combat with secularism.

"For example, one of the fundamental notions of a secular society is the moral importance of freedom, of individual choice. But in Islam, choice is not allowable: there cannot be free choice about whether to choose or reject any of the fundamental aspects of the religion, [my bold] because they are all divinely ordained. God has laid down the law, and man must obey.

And I would say that many Britons also do not appreciate the threat posed by the Islamists, or their representatives would be acting to protect freedom of speech in an anti-Kelo-esque "rare display of unanimity".

I think that most people in America and perhaps other parts of the West would begin to awaken to this threat if they realized what it meant to them on a personal level. (And bloggers are ahead on that score because we are more directly affected by what has transpired so far.) Who would take, sitting down, being told to shut up every other word? Who would accept for himself the kind of self-imposed censorship that has kept Mo off television and the front pages of virtually every American paper if they understood it to mean, "Shut your piehole, infidel?" If they realized that that they were next?

But whereas most people appreciate the fact that the government, if it says it wants to take away your house, will take away your house, I don't think most people either take the Islamists seriously enough or appreciate on a personal level what not showing the cartoons for fear of offending Moslems really means. The Islamists want to be able to tell us what to do and what not to do. They mean it. Too bad the people they are speaking to don't believe them to begin with or understand the scope of the orders they are being given.

The biggest problem we face in the fight for freedom of speech is, I think, not so much the need to convince people of the value of free speech, but the difficulty in helping them appreciate that it is just as much under threat now as their homes were after Kelo. With Kelo, people knew that the government meant business, and they knew that that business meant they'd be out on the streets. How do we get people to appreciate that Moslems really believe that sharia is God's will? And how do we help them realize that, with the cartoons being mysteriously absent from their newspapers, that they have already been served with an eviction notice?

This difficulty is also the biggest opportunity: If people began to fully appreciate this threat, I have a feeling our politicians might suddenly become a lot more willing to stop snivelling about offended Moslems and start fighting to protect the right to freedom of speech possessed by their angry and impatient constituents.

I am not sure how to do this, but someone needs to figure this out. Fast.

-- CAV