
Whenever I post about Islamization, cultural enrichment, and the suppression of free speech in Europe, commenters are likely to remark on the difference between Europe and the United States.
“Europe is lost,” they say (a particular favorite on my posts at Big Peace).
Or: “We’re lucky things aren’t this bad in the USA.”
Or: “Wake up, America! We don’t want to be like Europe.”
Well, think again, fellows: we already
are like Europe. You’re late to the game — it’s already underway here.
Five years ago I said we were roughly a decade behind Europe, and we were. But then we elected Barack Hussein Obama as our Dhimmi-in-Chief, and after that we caught up very quickly. We’ve all but closed the gap between United Socialist America and the EUSSR, and Mr. Obama is working very hard to finish the job, and maybe even pull ahead of the EUniks.
Take for example what happened yesterday to Florida pastor Terry Jones, who went to trial and was even jailed briefly because he wanted to hold a protest outside a mosque in a suburb of Detroit. Not only was he denied his First Amendment rights by a Dearborn jury, but as part of the court decision against him yesterday, Rev. Jones
was prohibited for three years from setting foot on the property of the mosque or adjacent areas.
Mr. Jones has never broken the law. He has never been violent nor threatened violence. However, because what he says makes other people threaten to kill him, his right to free speech — as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution — has been denied. And because violent idiots may confront him if he exercises his right to free speech, he has been denied his Constitutional right to peaceably assemble.
This is the equivalent of what is known as an “ASBO” in the UK — an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. ASBOs have been used repeatedly against members of the English Defence League to restrict their activities and keep them from participating in demonstrations.
In Britain, however, there is no formal written constitution that forbids the government from engaging in such tyrannical behavior. The British Constitution is customary rather than formal, and the customs of the state have changed radically over the last fifty years. What is happening now in Britain is brutal and illiberal, but there is no single document to which the average law-abiding Britain can point to and say, “According to this, my rights have been violated.”
So, in a way, our situation is worse, because the highest law in the land — the United States Constitution — forbids the states and the federal government from doing exactly what was done yesterday to Terry Jones.
His case may make its way all the way to the Supreme Court, but I wouldn’t count on five justices upholding his right to speak freely. One of the justices is, after all, on record as saying that he’s not certain the First Amendment protects Koran-burning. Since the Constitution means whatever five Supreme Court justices say it means, we are at most a single Obama appointment away from the formal encoding of sharia in the Constitution.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Unfortunately for the American Left, progress — and I use the word “progress” advisedly — towards its extra-constitutional goals has been slow and intermittent. The suppression of Terry Jones has gone fairly well, but the same is not true of all American dissidents. Some of them utter right-wing words and commit non-progressive deeds, and get away scot-free.
Take, for example Derek Fenton, a New Jersey Transit worker who was fired last year for burning pages of a Koran on 9/11 at Ground Zero. Mr. Fenton has now been
reinstated in his job. It took the help of the ACLU and seven months in court, but his right to do what he did has finally been acknowledged.
It’s obvious that Obama administration and its comrades in the trans-national Marxist community would like to speed up the transformation of America. Part of their impatience manifests itself as concern for the persistence and increase of hatred, bigotry, and “Islamophobia” in the USA, and now they’ve invited over some British socialists to give them some professional advice on how to handle restive freedom-loving troublemakers and bring on the socialist millennium.
According to the
Center for American Progress:
The growth of Islamophobia and rising hate-rhetoric aimed at ethnic minorities and immigrant communities has become a significant feature of right-wing politics in both Europe and North America. This new politics of hate and fear represents a concerted political strategy on the part of a new right, one which presents a significant challenge to those wishing to create prosperous, tolerant and diverse societies. It cannot remain unchecked.
The Center for American Progress, in co-operation with Searchlight, will host a transatlantic conversation on the rise of identity politics and its consequences for the future of progressive politics. Bringing together leading analysts and activists from either side of the Atlantic to discuss how best to approach the rise of nationalist groups, the conversation will evaluate why Islamophobia and hate-rhetoric are on the rise in the U.S. and the UK, and the panel will share lessons from their own experiences on the most successful tactics for combating the politics of hate and fear.
Our British readers’ ears have already pricked up at the mention of “Searchlight”, and yes, you are right: the upcoming extravaganza will be a real progressive kulturfest of the Left, European style. The invitation says: