A Forum for Vigorous Debate, Cornerstone of Democracy

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A FORUM FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND VIGOROUS DEBATE, CORNERSTONES OF DEMOCRACY
[For the journal--guidelines, focus, etc.--go to www.theamericandissident.org. If you have questions, please contact me at todslone@hotmail.com. Comments are NOT moderated (i.e., CENSORED)!]
Encouraged censorship and self-censorship seem to have become popular in America today. Those who censor others, not just self, tend to favor the term "moderate," as opposed to "censor" and "moderation" to "censorship." But that doesn't change what they do. They still act as Little Caesars or Big Brother protectors of the thin-skinned. Democracy, however, demands a tough populace, not so easily offended. On this blog, and to buck the trend of censorship, banning, and ostracizing, comments are NEVER "moderated." Rarely (almost NEVER) do the targets of these blog entries respond in an effort to defend themselves with cogent counter-argumentation. This blog is testimony to how little academics, poets, critics, newspaper editors, cartoonists, political hacks, cultural council apparatchiks, librarians et al appreciate VIGOROUS DEBATE, cornerstone of democracy. Clearly, far too many of them could likely prosper just fine in places like communist China and Cuba or Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Russia, not to mention Sweden, England, and Austria.
ISSUE #45 PUBLISHED MAY 2023. NOW SEEKING SUBMISSIONS FOR ISSUE #46.

More P. Maudit cartoons (and essays) at Global Free Press: http://www.globalfreepress.org

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Alan Levine

Cancer in the Heart of Free Society:  the Freedom-of-Expression Hating “Hate Speechers”

The revolution cannot be made without killing and, to kill, it is best to hate.
—Che Guevara

Unlike un-privileged me, Civil Rights Attorney Alan Levine got to publish a letter in the New York Times on the near Muslim massacre in Garland, Texas.  The letter was highly deceptive, and thus provoked me to sketch a satirical cartoon, which no doubt would constitute an example of “hate speech” in Levine’s perverted thinking.   
          The Southern Poverty Law Center, which Levine cited favorably, is a self-anointed determiner of purported hate-speech offenders, who have not been tried for hate speech because, well, hate speech is not yet a crime in America, though it is in Canada and Europe.  The Center is hardly at all neutral, but far-left socialist.  If Che Guevara were an American living in America today, he certainly would not be on its list.  In essence, one must take the SPLC hate-speech offender list with a grain of salt.  And how not to think of McCarthy’s infamous blacklist or Stalin’s or Castro’s or Hitler’s or Mao’s?
The fundamental fault with “hate speech” is its highly subjective nature, which is the prime reason why it is protected speech in America.  Truth and fact can easily be deemed as “hate speech.” Proponents of “hate speech” regulations, the hate speechers, would certainly opt for burying any truth and fact that offend them.  That is the crux of the problem.  
As for Pamela Geller, who staged the Texas cartoon event, she was pejoratively described by Levine as “wrapping herself in the mantle of the First Amendment.”  Yet thanks to that “mantle” We, the People can still openly express our opinions even when they counter those of civil-rights lawyers like Levine.  Contrary to the Levine’s assertion and that of the kill-the messenger dhimmi media, both right and left-wing, she has made a useful contribution to a public dialogue about Islam. For example, she helped expose Islamist propagandists in America, who seek to spread the false narrative that somehow Islam, which means submission, is a religion of peace and that jihad is somehow a touchy-feely kind of thing.  She has also helped expose stealth jihad at work in America.  Her cartoon contest helped expose that images of Muhammad were not always frowned upon by Islamists and that persons creating those images were not always butchered by them, as in the grotesque Muslim massacre of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists.  She also helped expose that the media, both left and right, have largely been suckered in by stealth jihad and do not really support freedom of expression, despite the claims to the contrary.  Furthermore, she helped keep the Ground Zero mosque, the one Obama favored, from becoming a horrendous reality.  So, if Geller’s is “hate speech,” then Levine is clearly wrong to stipulate that “the sole purpose of such speech is to inflame bigotry and to inflict injury.”  Speech does not “inflict injury.”  Islamist butchers inflict injury.  Somehow “hate-speechers” like Levine cannot seem to grasp that simple premise, for somehow they’ve been blinded.  They need to ask themselves how that happened. 
Levine mentions how he first came to truly hate Geller, who had denounced one of his clients, Ms. Almontaser, who he described as “a respected educator and community leader.”  As an educator, however, I am quite aware that far too many educators parade around as “respected” when also intellectually bankrupt and outright cowardly conformists.  So I would have to question the description, though I do not know the person.  Levine notes Geller had released a “hate-filled barrage of false and Islamophobic accusations about Ms. Almontaser,” yet fails to evoke just one such accusation.  Moreover, Islamophobic has become an idiot’s term today, used to dismiss any uncomfortable truths about Islam and Muhammad.  Levine should know better than to resort to such base ad hominem, which is normally used to divert attention away from facts that one does not like and cannot disprove.  So, city officials forced Almontaser to resign… all because of Geller’s purported “false accusations”?  Only a severely indoctrinated person could believe that.  

Finally, the real haters are the ones who kill people for drawing cartoons, the ones whose  religious book demands apostates, Jews, and kuffars be treated as inferiors and even murdered.  How can Levine and others NOT understand that?  How much money has he made from CAIR and other Islamic front groups, even if indirectly?  How else to explain the blindness?  Now, I do not know Levine.  I do not know Geller.  However, I have certainly “heard” a hell of a lot more reason from her, than from him.  The problem with ideology is that reason ineluctably becomes its enemy… 

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