Imagine for a moment a world in which individuals who do not believe that the Holocaust occurred are jailed for publicly stating that belief. Well, that doesn’t take much imagination; this can actually happen in Europe, where laws in some EU nations prohibit individuals from denying the historical basis for the claims of systematic mass-murder against the Jews.
So, imagine now a world in which it is forbidden to deny that global warming is caused by human activity, and could be penalized—even jailed—for daring to speak out against the anthropogenic theory of climate change. That could never happen, right? I mean, that’s the kind of thing that happened to heretics during the inquisition, but surely that would never be done by open-minded, secular governments.
Well, think again.
We have all been witness to the recent, systematic discrimination and disenfranchisement of scientists who have begun to rethink the current global-warming dogma. Former Vice-President Al Gore has repeatedly denigrated these scientists as “Flat-Earthers”, as described in an article by James Murray:
“In an interview with Lesley Stahl to air on "60 Minutes"…, Gore piously declares those who don't buy his climate change theories are akin to crackpots who believe the earth is flat and don't believe man landed on the moon in 1969.”
At subsequent events, Gore maneuvered to deny access to these heretics, in order to avoid embarrassing disagreements over the accepted liberal environmental canon.
The Global-Warming hysteria is reaching the point at which proponents believe that their cause will “save the world”, and therefore, anyone who opposes them must threaten the world, and should therefore be treated like criminals, almost as terrorists. James Nash, writing for Environment, said:
“The British foreign secretary ‘has said that skeptics should be treated like advocates of Islamic terror and denied access to the media,’ Doctors for Disaster Preparedness report in their January newsletter. George Monbiot wrote in England’s “Guardian” that ‘Every time someone drowns as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned.’”
Read that again, and consider very carefully the wording: skeptics should be treated like terrorists and their access to the media should be blocked! In Britain, Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the government, went on record as saying that, "Global warming is worse than terrorism."
How ironic that global warming skeptics are to be treated “as terrorists”, since the liberals are perfectly willing to invest time trying to sympathize with the real terrorists, in order to understand what we did wrong to make the terrorists hate us, but won’t think for one moment why some scientists are skeptical about the anthropogenic causes of global warming!
But the excesses do not stop there. Brendan O’Neill, in his article “Global warming: the chilling effect on free speech”, writes:
“The message is clear: climate change deniers are scum. Their words are so wicked and dangerous that they must be silenced, or criminalised, or forced beyond the pale alongside those other crackpots who claim there was no Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. Perhaps climate change deniers should even be killed off, hanged like those evil men who were tried Nuremberg-style the first time around.”
According to O’Neill, one Australian columnist proposed outlawing the public expression of “climate change denial”.
Ian Murray, in his analysis of the behavior of the environmental inquisitors, quotes the Times' economics editor having described the fervor of the environmentalists pushing these policies as being similar to "the medieval monks who favored self-flagellation as the road to virtue. For a Government to enshrine such thinking in policy is truly perverse." He continues: “In equally medieval fashion, adherents of the environmentalist religion have launched an inquisition against scientific views that they consider heretical.”
The trend for secular governments to adopt a popularly held belief and penalize opponents appears to be growing. Muslim nations have managed to convince the United Nations that the world is suffering from Islamophobia, and are pushing for the criminalization of any speech they believe “offends Islam.” A simple cartoon by Jyllands-Posten of Prophet Muhammad triggered violent reactions by Muslims around the world. So what is the natural reaction among “freedom loving” nations in the UN? Ban any criticism of Islam. No such support for Catholicism will be forthcoming, allowing artists like Andres Serrano to continue display more “Piss Christ” creations. Perhaps, if Catholics burnt a few art museums and murdered the artists, they would get the same sympathy the Muslims do.
And now the UN “torture envoy” has declared that the United States must prosecute the Bush administration lawyers whose only “crime” was to offer legal advice that certain “enhanced interrogation” techniques were legal.
“Manfred Nowak, who serves as a U.N. special rapporteur in Geneva, said Washington is obligated under the U.N. Convention against Torture to prosecute U.S. Justice Department officials who wrote memos that defined torture in the narrowest way in order to justify and legitimize it, and who assured CIA officials that their use of questionable tactics was legal. …‘That's exactly what I call complicity or participation’ to torture as defined by the convention, Nowak said at a news conference. ‘At that time, every reasonable person would know that waterboarding, for instance, is torture.’”
The most recent example of the chilling effect these attitudes have on open and reasonable debate can be found in Andrew C. McCarthy’s letter to Attorney General Holder, in which he rejects the invitation to participate in the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy. “The invitation email (of April 14) indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants—or what the Department now calls ‘individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.’ “
Why?
“Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues. I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people.”
More importantly, McCarthy explains that the current administration’s openness to prosecution of Bush-era lawyers who advised the President about the legality of using “enhanced interrogation techniques” on the al Qaida detainees in Guantanamo Bay prison:
“Moreover, in light of public statements by both you and the President, it is dismayingly clear that, under your leadership, the Justice Department takes the position that a lawyer who in good faith offers legal advice to government policy makers—like the government lawyers who offered good faith advice on interrogation policy—may be subject to investigation and prosecution for the content of that advice, in addition to empty but professionally damaging accusations of ethical misconduct. Given that stance, any prudent lawyer would have to hesitate before offering advice to the government.”
Western values are at risk of being subverted by ecstatic fervor of liberals who are so convinced of their own moral certitude, they are willing to silence any discussion on the topics, punish lawyers who provide legal opinions that differ from their own (which is not a crime, by the way), and treat the skeptics worse than terrorists.
***UPDATE***
As if to prove my point, the English Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said "she decided to publicize the list of 16 people banned since October to show the type of behavior Britain will not tolerate..."
Number three on that list is conservative talk-show host Michael Savage.
Savage responded reasonably: "She's linking me with mass murderers who are in prison for killing Jewish children on buses? For my speech? The country where the Magna Carta was created?...It's interesting to me that here I am a talk show host, who does not advocate violence, who advocates patriotic traditional values – borders, language, culture – who is now on a list banned in England," Savage said. "What does that say about the government of England? It says more about them than it says about me."
Why did Smith do this? In an interview with the BBC, Smith said Savage, the No. 3-rated radio host in the U.S., is "someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country."
We again see that the "progressives" are willing to ban free speech if it might make certain "communities" uncomfortable. And YET they don't ban the "free speech" of Muslims who call for the destruction of Western civilization and repeatedly call for Jihad!
We need to update the dictionary, and add "cowards" as a synonim for "progressives".
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