Free Speech and More

Quoted in its entirety from Exurban League:

Not to rain on your free-speech parade, but…

Just about a year ago, the Nigerian Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped, raped and sold into slavery an entire school of 12-15 year old girls, due in large part to their Christian faith.

The reaction from the Obama administration was swift and self-righteous: It immediately asked millions of Twitter users to express their outrage over Boko Haram’s barbarity and show their solidarity with the kidnapped girls by using the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag on Twitter.

And it was a rousing success: People all around the world felt better about themselves, knowing that they had typed eighteen characters into a text box as a way to make a courageous stand against the rape and subjugation of underage girls.

Rosa Parks would be proud.

Shockingly, all of that self-gratification did wonders for the self-esteem of rich white liberals, but did nothing to free the kidnapped young girls. All the girls from the Chibok school are now dead or trapped in the hell of “marriages” to radical Islamists.

And believe it or not, it gets worse than that. Last Friday, while some free speech advocates were talking a stand against shooting editorial cartoonists (and perversely, some professional journalists were taking a stand against free speech), Boko Haram casually, and with malice a forethought, shot up an entire village and killed up to two thousand people.

That’s right, 2000 (or more) innocent lives lost. This is the worse terrorist attack since 9/11, and yet few people have heard about it or seem to care. What is it with Democratic Presidents ignoring genocide in sub-Sarahan Africa, anyways?

I digress.

Getting outraged over the killings at Charlie Hebdo magazine is a good thing, because it’s making people realize the greatest threats to our social freedoms don’t come from some bluenose Puritan Christian carrying a Bible, but rather from an Islamic jihadist with a suicide vest carrying an AK47.

Get outraged, but get active, because when we have foes who would use more than just words to eliminate free speech, free speech must be defended with more than just words.

Words matter.  Actions, even more so.