| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"stoney" |
| Date: |
01 Mar 2006 11:50:43 PM |
| Object: |
Europe, time to stand up |
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3395977/
OPINION
Slate
Glenn Reynolds
Europe, time to stand up
March 1, 2006 | 10:12 AM ET
The best lack all conviction; the worst are full of passionate
intensity.
That's pretty much the story in Europe. Writing in the London Times,
Douglas Murray observes:
"Would you write the name you'd like to use here, and your real name
there?" asked the girl at reception. I had just been driven to a hotel
in the Hague. An hour earlier I'd been greeted at Amsterdam airport by a
man holding a sign with a pre-agreed cipher. I hadn't known where I
would be staying, or where I would be speaking. The secrecy was
necessary: I had come to Holland to talk about Islam.
...
The event was scholarly, incisive and wide-ranging. There were no
ranters or rabble-rousers, just an invited audience of academics,
writers, politicians and sombre party members. As yet another example of
Islam's violent confrontation with the West (this time caused by
cartoons) swept across the globe, we tried to discuss Islam as openly as
we could. The Dutch security service in the Hague was among those who
considered the threat to us for doing this as particularly high. The
security status of the event was put at just one level below "national
emergency".
This may seem fantastic to people in Britain. But the story of
Holland — which I have been charting for some years — should be noted by
her allies. Where Holland has gone, Britain and the rest of Europe are
following. The silencing happens bit by bit. A student paper in Britain
that ran the Danish cartoons got pulped. A London magazine withdrew the
cartoons from its website after the British police informed the editor
they could not protect him, his staff, or his offices from attack. This
happened only days before the police provided 500 officers to protect a
"peaceful" Muslim protest in Trafalgar Square.
It seems the British police — who regularly provide protection for
mosques (as they did after the 7/7 bombs) — were unable to send even one
policeman to protect an organ of free speech. At the notorious London
protests, Islamists were allowed to incite murder and bloodshed on the
streets, but a passer-by objecting to these displays was threatened with
detention for making trouble.
It seems to me that the European authorities are afraid to stand up for
the principles of tolerance on which their societies are, allegedly,
based.
It also seems that way to Claire Berlinski, whose new book Menace in
Europe: Why the Continent's Crisis is America's Too examines Europe's
intellectual and moral anomie, its inability to either assimilate or
deal with a swelling immigrant population, and its resentment of
America.
We interviewed Berlinski for a podcast and her take was, if anything,
even less positive than that presented in her book. (You can listen
here or, via iTunes, here.)
I hope that Europe will get its act together before it's too late, and
there are a few signs of awakening. But the last time we saw a European
nation whose elites lacked the strength or conviction to stand up to
rampaging mobs of ignorant thugs, it was Weimar Germany. That turned
out very badly, and I'm afraid that today's Europe -- in which many
nations seem to suffer from that problem -- may well turn out badly,
too.
/end
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a cornucopia of splinters.
.
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