Concurrent with the proceedings of the ridiculous Mark Steyn case (check out the cool Steyn photoshop at the link!), we have this delightful news from the beleaguered French:
Brigitte Bardot was convicted Tuesday of provoking discrimination and racial hatred for writing that Muslims are destroying France.
A Paris court also handed down a $23,325 fine against the former screen siren and animal rights campaigner. The court also ordered Bardot to pay $1,555 in damages to MRAP.
And what was it that she said that was so offensive?
In the December 2006 letter to Sarkozy, now the president, Bardot said France is “tired of being led by the nose by this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts.”
…the irony being that they are in fact trying to destroy Ms. Bardot by imposing their acts.
Liberals are fond of carrying on about the infringement on freedoms by the Bush administration. The fact is, though, that they have caused far more harm to fundamental freedoms via their hate speech and hate crime laws than a dozen Patriot Acts ever could. The Steyn and Bardot cases have become the reductio ad absurdum of those laws.
It is one of my biggest frustrations that, as man is supposedly becoming more sophisticated in understanding himself and his societies, we end up with fewer and fewer freedoms, rather than more. That sort of regression is not only nonsensical, but dangerous.
June 3, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I think we underestimate how easy it is to take advantage of our values and standards.
Consider that the 9/11 hijackers used our schools to learn about our machines, then then used our machines to crash into our buildings, killing our people. While such Islamists do not do that today, they use our laws and our courts to silence us in our own lands.
And one of the most alarming trends, which underscores the entire fall of the West, is wresting power, responsibility, and autonomy from society/societies, transferring them to the State, and thereby laying the foundation for an all-powerful (one might say totalitarian if not authoritarian) State against which the sole appeal is revolution. Sure, it’s all for the good of the People, but States have never served the good of the People with their autonomy: they only serve the good of the State.
June 3, 2008 at 3:30 pm
That said, I am extremely disappointed in the French. Very, very disappointed.
If the Canadians betray the core Western values of free speech and expression, I’m afraid it will prove Steyn right: only America will remain of the West, the rest having capitulated to a multi-culti dream of a state, which will only result in them being governed by the strong-willed and intolerant foreigners.
June 3, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I mean, convicted for offending people? That’s simply ridiculous! I have a hard time grasping this happening in the West.
Of course, this is saying nothing about the evidently ueber-sensitive immature juvenile people who were so offended they wanted redress.
Sheesh.
Sorry, Geoff. I’ll be quiet now.
June 4, 2008 at 3:38 pm
It must be widespread illiteracy in history that explains why left wingers and the mushy middle place so much trust and power in the hands of their governments. In fact, the biggest mass murders of citizens have always been by their own governments. (See the book Death by Government by RJ Rummel).
The founders of the American Republic were not history illiterate and tried to put in safeguards for citizens against what was supposed to be a small government with limited powers. Ergo the first amendment to guard free speech (with which all other rights can be won back) and the second amendment to allow potential armed revolution against oppressive government (socialist and totalitarian governments disarm their citizens ASAP). There was also a widely misunderstood stipulation that the state must not infringe on citizens’ religious rights by inflicting a state religion on anyone.
One of the biggest drivers of anti-Americanism in Europe as well as Canada is leftists’ desire to substitute government decision making for individual autonomy even on social and family matters. At least half of Americans are also infected by this stupidity gene.
June 4, 2008 at 5:09 pm
i agree with muslihoon. If ever there was a country which desperately needed a popular, democratic revolution, we canadians are living in it.
rm