Silence ...

"Silence is golden;" so teaches us the wisdom of the ages.

At the same time, the wisdom of the 20th century (and now, the 21st) teaches us: "Sometimes, silence is just yellow."


I don't recall where I read that, but Gentle Reader can be sure that it is about the obstinate refusal of the would-be elites and rulers of all the Western nations, including our own, to see reality as it really is -- and their insistence upon doing their utmost to prevent those who will and do see from even so much as describing what they see.

Christianity is not a suicide pact

DutchNews.nl: Christians can't vote for Wilders, say vicars

A Christian cannot vote for Geert Wilders' anti-immigration party PVV, say 75% of church leaders in a poll of 1,200 ministers and church workers in the Nederlands Dagblad.

The ministers represent a cross-section of all the Netherlands' Protestant churches, representing 2.3 million people, the paper says.

One third of the people polled said there were people who supported Wilders in their communities and 5% said Wilders had a lot of support.

'Wilders and the PVV's views contradict Christianity,’ one minister told the paper.

Whatever these people are vicars of, it isn't of Christ: Christianity is not a cultural/social suicide pact.

Steyn on the Persecution of Geert Wilders

Mark Steyn: The absurd trial of Geert Wilders

As with most anything Steyn writes, the whole article is well worth Gentle Reader's read, especially if one cares about liberty. An excerpt:

At a certain level, the trial of Geert Wilders for the crime of “group insult” of Islam is déjà vu all over again. For as the spokesperson for the Openbaar Ministerie put it, “It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct. What’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.”

Ah, yes, in the Netherlands, as in Canada, the truth is no defence. ...
...
It gets better. The judge in his wisdom has decided to deny the defendant the level of courtroom security they afforded to Mohammed Bouyeri, the murderer of Theo van Gogh. Wilders lives under armed guard because of explicit death threats against him by Mr. Bouyeri and other Muslims. But he’s the one put on trial for incitement. His movie about Islam, Fitna, is deemed to be “inflammatory,” whereas a new film by Willem Stegeman, De moord op Geert Wilders (The Assassination of Geert Wilders), is so non-inflammatory and entirely acceptable that it’s been produced and promoted by a government-funded radio station. You’d almost get the impression that, as the website Gates of Vienna suggested, the Dutch state is channelling Henry II: “Who will rid me of this turbulent blond?”
...
In the old days-divine right of kings, rule by patrician nobility-it was easier. But today’s establishment is obliged to pay at least lip service to popular sovereignty. So it has to behave more artfully. You’ll still have your vote; it’s just that the guy you wanted to give it to is on trial, and his platform’s been criminalized.

To return to where we came in, what does it mean when the Ministry of Justice proudly declares that the truth is no defence? When the law stands in explicit opposition to the truth, freeborn peoples should stand in opposition to the law. Because, as the British commentator Pat Condell says, “When the truth is no defence, there is no defence”-and what we are witnessing is a heresy trial. The good news is that the Openbaar Ministerie is doing such a grand job with its pilot program of apostasy prosecutions you’ll barely notice when sharia is formally adopted.

IFPS: The Trial of Geert Wilders: A Symposium

The International Free Press Society: The Trial of Geert Wilders: A Symposium

The subject matter is the upcoming trial (starting tomorrow, 2010/01/20) of the Dutch politician and MP, Geert Wilders, for, in essence, the "crime" of "Islamophobia." While I do not intend even to imply, by highlighting one contribution, that the other contributions are less than worthy, I do wish to draw Gentle Reader's attention to the contribution of David Yerushalmi:

Geert Wilders, Member of Parliament of the Netherlands and chairman of the Freedom Party, goes on trial Wednesday in the land of the Dutch. His alleged crime: criticizing Islam in such a way that it insults Muslims and causes other people to hate devout Muslims because of their faith in Islam and its scriptures. Specifically, the lengthy summons and charge sheet set out a host of Wilders’ statements that violate two specific criminal laws. One, Wilders publicly dared to criticize Islam and its scripture in such a way that he insulted devout Muslims who take their faith in Islam seriously. Two, his public statements incite others to hate or discriminate against Muslims because of their religious beliefs. If found guilty, Wilders might very well be imprisoned and stripped of his political office.

The case demonstrates in classic terms the convergence between the Left and tyranny, ...
...
To understand the rationale for such laws, we need not travel far. Europeans brought the truth of the Enlightenment to the West. This new truth is not merely close at hand, it is the hand. Indeed, it is the whole of a man’s existence.

The truth of the Enlightenment was and continues to be that there is no truth. Western men live the certainty of this new absolutism because we accept the reduction of man to the mathematical physics of science. To gain the certainty that men are bound by the material counting of scientific symbols is to know that all else is belief or uncertain opinion. What Western men at one time understood as the truth of existence is now only an absolutely uncertain belief. If political man has no access to truth except the truth that no truth exists, there can be no truthful criticism.

The Dutch take their Enlightenment seriously. Geert Wilders’s crime is that he takes his nation and culture no less seriously than he takes Islam’s. No one can study Islam and its legal context, known as Shariah, and not know that it seeks the dominance or destruction of Dutch national existence and culture. The new Dutchmen take neither seriously except to say that neither exist outside of the mind and the “feelings” of the men who harbour such beliefs.

Wilders’ crime is not his speech. It is his commitment to the truth of existence of a Dutch people and nation grounded in Christianity. That truth violates the principles of the Enlightenment now engraved in the tablets of a Western world where the only truth permitted men in the public sphere is a multicultural pluralism devoid of any truthful content but that there is no truthful content.

To that breach of peace, Wilders is guilty. ...

Firstly, it ought to go without saying that Mr Yerushalmi did not say that to be Dutch is to be a Christian ... I realize that Gentle Reader does not require this explicit statement; however, there are always intellectually dishonest fools about, who seek nothing but mischief.

Mr Yerushalmi's point is that "political correctness" is the natural working-out of the so-called Enlightenment. And that, not only is it false, but that it's killing us.

The "it" which is killing us is not "political correctness," that's merely a symptom of the illness. What is killing us is the societal rejection of truth; that is, that the anti-leven of the so-called Enlightenment has, after all these years, finally worked its way through the whole loaf.