You can’t stand with Charlie Hebdo if you believe people who oppose, say, same-sex marriage are not just wrong, but blasphemous and hateful. If your first inclination is to use the word “homophobe,” you can’t utter the phrase, “Je suis Charlie.” Not with any honesty, you can’t. If your first inclination upon discovering that someone contributed to California’s Proposition 8 was to chase them out of their jobs and onto the streets, you have no business in a Paris plaza today.
If you seriously think words like “denier” or “anti-science” are a proper retorts to anyone who questions environmentalism’s campaign against carbon, you can’t stand with the Parisians, either. All those words mean is, “Shut up. Stop your anti-science, climate-change denials. Shut up.” They are incompatible with no-holds-barred free speech as practiced by Charlie Hebdo.
If caring about the integrity of U.S. borders is indistinguishable from racism, xenophobia and nativism, same deal. If “race hatred” is your default response to (in no particular order) objections to the welfare state, the Tucson Unified School District’s ethnic studies program, the deconstruction of the Black nuclear family or inner-city crime, then you need to turn in your “Je suis Charlie!” placard. Because you’re not Charlie.
If you think driving George Will and Ann Coulter off the American university campus in order to keep their offensive words from singing the ears of students is a righteous act, you really should find something else to do during the next Charlie Hebdo rally. You are a free speech-hater, to coin a phrase.
I’m pretty sure that unless you want George Will and Ann Coulter KILLED, there are significant differences between you and the people who shot up the Charlie Hebdo offices, thanks. But hey, let’s not let an opportunity to conflate “freedom of speech” and “freedom from getting called on egregious stupidity” pass us by. That would be a REAL tragedy.
A.
These people really believe their own hypberbolic shit, don’t they? Who got “chased out on the streets” as the result of having their political contributions to the Prop 8 campaign revealed? Who got physically attacked? Pix or it didn’t happen. Homophobes are not crypto-Jews, reduced by the inquisition to performing their religious rituals in secret.
“[RWNJ homophobes] are not crypto-Jews, reduced by the inquisition to performing their religious rituals in secret.”
I wouldn’t be too quick to leap to that conclusion. We’re talking about the party of Dick Cheney, David Duke, and Mark Foley here.
Yes, while I agree that consequences of egregious stupidity should not include being gunned down, I have to admit, my youngest veteran son might have a point when he says that “damned near everything coming out of Arizona lately is CRAZY!”
Well, no, I don’t want Coulter or Will killed, but, I’m all in favor of them being assaulted with cream pies every time they appear in public.
In fact, I’m down with the terrorists’ weapon of choice being cream pies.