The road to hell is paved with a single word. A word that expresses a corruption in concepts and thinking almost too horrendous to explicitly name.
The latest horror? Fox News commentator Juan Williams’ recent rant about how Pam Geller, who sponsored the anti-Mohammed cartoon contest last week, is responsible for deliberate and “offensive behavior” that “led” to the deaths of two people, i.e. the would-be killers who opened fire on the event.
Watch the short video excerpt here:
Led to … that’s the key phrase here.
Watch the video again. Williams actually holds Geller accountable for the deaths of the people who planned and attempted to kill her (and others at the event).
Talk about blaming the victim. It’s a metaphor for the whole sorry “war on terror” that America’s government will no longer even acknowledge is terrorism. “We’re mean and bad and we deserve what we get.” Geller — and others who dare to oppose Islam, even though it’s still perfectly legal in the United States to do so — deserve what they get.
Seriously?
This is the mindset of a battered spouse. Has America — collectively, or at least as represented by its government and supposed intellectual elites such as Juan Williams — become the emotionally shattered equivalent of a battered spouse or child? It sure looks that way.
Just think about the level of evasion required to make Williams’ statement. Did Pam Geller load their guns? Did she actually decide, for the gunmen, that violence was the answer — as opposed to written or even legal protests outside the event?
Why is violence never the solution, not even in self-defense — except when initiated by someone sympathetic to Islam? Williams would sneer at the question, but somebody ought to ask it.
If citizens protest some action of the government — such as enforcing segregation in public schools, or drafting citizens to fight an unpopular, politicized war (e.g., Vietnam) — would Williams call this “provocative” and conclude, therefore, that the dissidents deserve what they get should the government irrationally decide to open fire?
I highly doubt it. Because progressives like Williams are all in favor of dissension and free speech — but only when it’s their speech under fire. Anti-Muslim speech is hate speech because, we can only assume, progressives such as Juan Williams like what the fundamentalist Muslims have to say.
I recognize that the analogy of peaceful protest does not even apply. Unlike open protestors (even peaceful ones), Geller was hosting a private event. She was so concerned about safety and security that she reportedly spent tens of thousands of dollars on it. Her concern probably saved her own life and the lives of those attending the event, along with the crucial and heroic help of the police.
Geller was minding her own business, trying to make a point about Islam, and trying to prove that freedom of speech is still a potent principle in America. In any other context, Juan Williams and people like him would be really upset if free speech were challenged. If Liberty University (a fundamentalist Christian school in Lynchburg VA) began to openly threaten, bomb and shoot at people critical of Jesus Christ or the Bible, Williams would not be inclined, I’m sure, to blame people for being “provocative” enough to challenge their views. In other contexts, Williams and his fellow progressives do not call challenge of others’ views “antics.”
Like mawkish schoolmarms, progressives such as Williams run around society and screech, “Shame, shame,” whenever anyone dares to disagree with them about anything — Obamacare, peace treaties with Iran, higher taxes, and the like. Yet they are the ones morally pardoning the actions of murderers and — in the case of the Texas incident — actually treating the would-be killers as the victims.
By no remote stretch was Pamela Geller doing anything that warranted an attack on her life. Unless, of course, you agree with the Muslims who now say that Geller should be executed for daring to challenge, criticize or mock their views on life and the supernatural.
I frankly do not recognize as America a place where anyone respectable and serious could say what Juan Williams said.
Are we actually to believe that when a killer sets out to kill, that the intended victim is responsible for whatever happens when things go wrong?
On the surface, it seems like things are still just fine in America. But the ideas and attitudes of the people most of us consider reasonable and intellectual are really getting quite irrational. A society rots from its intellect down. If we don’t start electing and (in the media-intellectual realm) relying on better people to guide us, we’re all in for a lot of trouble.
With a sigh, I will ask and answer the question which, in a rational culture, would not even arise.
Is Geller responsible for the deaths of the two men who tried to kill her? No. They chose to launch a vicious and illegal attack on people they had no right to attack, who were not physically threatening them in any way.
Even if Geller were responsible for their deaths, it would not be a cause for blaming her. It would be a cause for praising her. The world now has two fewer terrorists in it, and is a better place without them.
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