Bookworm Room

One of the common responses to my post urging hidden conservatives to come out into the open in this election, if not to their friends and neighbors, at least to their fellow Republicans was that the situation can’t really be that bad.  The Left isn’t any more snarky and snarly than the Right, and you [...]

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First, thanks to all of you who have posted such interesting, informative and intelligent comments the past two weeks.  You always make my time here enjoyable and educational.  Still, I’m glad Bookworm is back and ready to bring you her wide diversity of posts, and her thoughtfullness and intelligence that make the Bookwormroom such a [...]

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One of the things I’ve always admired about Harry Truman is the fact that he was able to separate principles from personal preferences.  He was a racist who integrated the American military and an antisemite who was among the first to recognize the State of Israel.
I keep thinking of Truman when I see the American [...]

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I just attended the end of year program at my children’s elementary school. I won’t run on here about how adorable my children were or how charming the other children ewre (accept that as given). Instead, I want to focus on the show’s content, which I found both fascinating and depressing.
A little background [...]

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. . . but this is sad:
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.
Bardot’s lawyer, Francois-Xavier [...]

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Americans do not have any idea how lucky they are to live in a land where freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution. More than that, they should resist every “soft” effort to make speech out of bounds on the grounds that it can hurt someone’s feelings. Absent this constant vigilance to [...]

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Do you recall that, on the day I posted the Fitna video, I wrote the following?
LiveLeak explains why it is showing this video, despite the fact that some at LiveLeak strongly disagree with its content. I note two things. First, LiveLeak understands free speech. Second, the LifeLeak discussion about its decision to show the video [...]

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Geert Wilders’ 15 minute film about Islam is available now. While the Dutch government is afraid to show it, bloggers are not.
Those who are anti-American, those who hate Israel, those who are completely invested in multiculturalism, try to downplay the conservatives’ concern about Muslim violence by analogizing conservatives to the Nazis, who scapegoated the [...]

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Okay, maybe the UN will listen to the report from the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) but, somehow, I doubt it:
Islamic states are bidding to use the United Nations to limit freedom of expression and belief around the world, the global humanist body IHEU told the U.N.’s Human Rights Council on Wednesday.
In a statement [...]

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In a victory for free speech, a United States Magistrate in the Northern District of California ruled that free speech includes the right to be rude, and squashed a California State University rule barring “incivility”:
To the relief of a campus Republican group, the 417,000 students at California State University’s 23 institutions no longer face the [...]

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In my post about Philip Roth, I pointed out that he characterizes Republicans as “brutal” (unlike Democrats, of course). I just saw the same theme crop up in an article about the insanity that promises to envelope Berkeley’s town council meeting on Tuesday as the town considers rescinding its ill-thought out letter to the [...]

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The Ninth Circuit, which is the laughing stock of the federal judiciary because it is overruled so often, did something bizarre yesterday: it issued a Constitutionally correct decision. Not only that, the decision meant that a citizens’ group will be able to engage in free speech that is contrary to the type of [...]

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A Dutch politician described as “radical right-wing” and “extremist”* is about to trigger some new convulsions amongst Holland’s Islamic residents:
The Dutch government is bracing itself for violent protests following the scheduled broadcast this week of a provocative anti-Muslim film by a radical right-wing politician who has threatened to broadcast images of the Koran being torn [...]

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“Scholars” and students at Sapienza University of Rome have so vociferously objected to the Pope speaking there because they disagree with the fact that, 20 years ago, he gave a speech that seemed to support the medieval Church’s silencing of Galileo that the Pope has felt compelled to cancel. The WSJ has the matter [...]

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By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard that Canada’s Orwellian “Human Rights” Commission has accepted a complaint from some irate Muslims regarding Mark Steyn’s allegedly racist temerity when he quoted in a Canadian publication the Islamist supremacist words uttered by Norwegian imams. Steyn has a few words on the subject, the most compelling of [...]

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There is nothing wrong with being a Mark Steyn groupie, not when he writes stuff like this, as part of a larger article about how easily offended people are, both in the West and the (mid)East:
But the point is that the right not to be offended is now the most sacred right in the world. [...]

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As you may recall, Hitler’s thugs made Munich their headquarters in the 20s, and were able to use it as their power base in the early 30s.  Among other, equally unsavory tactics they used to consolidate power was thuggery to suppress speech.  It’s really a simple tactic if you have the stomach for it, and [...]

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There’s what I consider an intentionally funny story today about a radio station afraid of reading Howl on the air because it’s afraid it might run afoul of FCC rules governing broadcasting:
Fifty years ago today, a San Francisco Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg’s Beat-era poem “Howl” was not obscene. Yet today, a New [...]

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This is why, even when conservatives feel Ann’s crossed a line, as she has in the past, they still read her articles — she’s nailed the whole Columbia, “free speech,” Ahmadinejad thing.

Sphere: Related Content

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A lot of people are wondering why Lee Bollinger, having invited Ahmadinejad to Columbia, then turned around and attacked him. Certainly, in the initial exchange between the two, it was Ahmadinejad who came off sounding more intelligent and reasonable when he politely expressed bewilderment that he would be invited into a forum, only to [...]

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You might have noticed that, aside from a few asides, I haven’t had anything to say about Ahmadinejad’s little kaffee klatch at Columbia. Frankly, anything I’ve even thought has been said better and louder at some of my favorite blogs. For lengthy analysis, you should check in with American Thinker or Power Line; [...]

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I shouldn’t be surprised that a student in the town of Novato, in Marin, was punished after writing an article for his school newspaper critical of illegal immigration:
[Andrew] Smith, who graduated in 2002, wrote stories titled “Immigration” and “Reverse Racism” for The Buzz newspaper while he was a senior. “Immigration” made brief references to the [...]

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FIRE has targeted the University of Maryland at College Park as one of the most repressive colleges in America. It’s created an environment governed entirely by giving all self-styled victims the right to take offense, with no vestige of the traditional Western university model of the free exchange of ideas. Given this narrow, [...]

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I’ve been quiet so far about the attack against Stanislav Shmulevich, a 23 year old Pace University student who was arrested for flushing a Koran down the toilet. Part of my silence was because this story happened while I was on vacation, which made blogging about it (heck, even thinking about it) difficult. [...]

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I used to admire the BBC. It’s role during WWII was stellar. In the 1960s, it brought us Monty Python and other cutting edge, very silly comedies. In the 1970s, it began making a series of marvelous historic dramas, many of which still represent the finest viewing TV has offered. But [...]

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