It should trouble those on the Left (who tend to place the First Amendment above the Second) that a side effect of creeping dhimmitude in France appears to be self-censorship by Parisians so as not to offend the Muslim yutes.
Jewish columnist Nidra Poller, for example, notes that a friend of hers will “never forget hearing me tell an audience that I wouldn’t take the chance of saying shabat shalom when speaking to a friend on my cell phone in a Parisian bus on a Friday.”
During the course of commenting about the philosophy professor and his family forced to flee Paris and go into hiding after writing an opinion column in a French newspaper, she notes her shock at how casually New Yorkers speak in public about politics and religious matters. In France, they don’t anymore:
Riding uptown in a NY bus on the 1st of October (on my way back to JTS for the last part of Yom Kippur service) I catch bits of lively conversation. … The Haitian gives some details on the current kidnappings and crime situation, punctuated with flashbacks to the days of Papa Doc and Baby (still living on the Côte d’Azure if I am not mistaken) and the ups and downs of Aristide which, as far as I can gather, brings in the question of American involvement.
As the Haitian is about to get off, a woman across the aisle chimes in with a fervent defense of US governments past and present. I think she says she is from Latvia, and credits Americans with liberating her country, allowing her to come and live in this land of freedom. I am so astonished by the ease with which people express their opinions in public, that I miss parts of the conversation.
The talk is not fancy, but the participants are aware, informed, and free-thinking. … As we approach 122nd St. two men sitting behind me comment casually on the Jewish Theological Seminary training rabbis. I can’t remember what color they were, but they surely weren’t Jewish.
Charles Jacobs, founding director of the David Project, can never forget hearing me tell an audience that I wouldn’t take the chance of saying shabat shalom when speaking to a friend on my cell phone in a Parisian bus on a Friday.
Emphasis mine. Read the whole thing. Found via No Pasaran!
Yeah, yeah, I know, the First Amendment only protects against government infringement of free speech. But still, if you value free public discourse so highly, you’d think you’d be opposed to people imposing political correctness by force, wouldn’t you?
Oops, I forgot, that’s logic. Doesn’t apply where the Left’s concerned. In fact, they probably all would love to have the balls to do this to anyone whose pronunciamentos offend them:
Outraged Muslims with access to precise information on the professor’s whereabouts made convincing promises to submit him, his wife, and their children to the very bloodthirsty sharp-edged, head-splitting violence he had soberly described in a national newspaper. Result? The philosophy professor is now on the run. He cannot return to the Lycée Pierre Paul Riquet at Saint Orens de Garnieville on the outskirts of rose-tinted Toulouse.
If a forest began to collapse and lots of people heard it but no one listened, did it really begin to collapse?
The lights are going out over Europe again, and the ordinary citizens have no way to protect themselves. Or the will, it seems.