THE SILENCE OF THE CIVIL LIBERTARIANS: MARILYN PENN
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When it comes to provocateurs who are anti-American, the bastions of liberalism march in lockstep to defend whatever freedom is at stake. Refusing to say the pledge of allegiance? Freedom of speech. Nazi march through a community of survivors? Same and warum nicht? Building a mosque at Ground Zero? Freedom of religion. Defacing Christian or Jewish symbols in artwork? Art trumps religion so long as it’s not Danish cartoons or a South Park show lampooning Mohammed. Publishing the Pentagon Papers or Wiki-Leaks? Freedom of the press. Strangely, when the provocation comes from the right in the person of Terry Jones, now labeled the Koran-burning pastor, the civil liberties guardians are silent. Where is Michael Bloomberg to declaim that if we don’t continue in our tradition of free expression, the terrorists will have won? Where are the cadre of celebrities usually trotted out to protest censorship of any kind? We know how many times Americans have burned flags and draft cards and used patriotic symbols as objects of degradation – all part of our unrivalled liberty. What, besides kowardice, makes the Koran eligible for exception from the rule?
The New York Times, publisher of both the Pentagon Papers and Assange’s Wiki-Leaks, refused to print even one of the Danish cartoons though it’s a newspaper that goes out of its way to illustrate its articles in dramatic and confrontational ways. The Sunday Times of April 3rd features an oversized photo of Palestinians attending the funeral of three Hamas terrorists; the size of the image would be appropriate for the funeral of an assassinated head of state. There is no commensurate photo for the 19 non-Muslim people killed and the 81 injured in Afghanistan in the brutal murders of UN workers ordered as retaliation for the Koran burning. The headline calls these murders deadly protests as if they were the unintended consequence of an unruly mob rather than the deliberate acts of violence which also extended to torching a girl’s high school in a part of the world that insists on keeping its women veiled and uneducated.
One need not sympathize with Terry Jones who certainly intended that his act create a firestorm far beyond the limited book-burning. Whether from the left or the right, people who burn books are not examples of America’s most rational voices of objection – we can do better than that and should. We should however, also be mindful of the hypocrisy in our civil libertarians when they ignore the bill of rights they summon to justify the same behavior from their own political spectrum. Let’s not pretend that jihadi murder requires incitement to be turned against us. The press in particular should recall that Daniel Pearl was decapitated on camera to the jubilation of the Muslim world for no reason other than his being an American Jewish journalist. For radical Islam, provocation requires nothing more than our existence.
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