It's more than amusing to hear so many republicans and some liberal publications condemning these attempts to silence the pen in France, when so many republicans and a few famous liberal defenders of free speech etc would silence the pen here at home. The hypocrisy of these right wingers who suddenly have a pop of conscience about the freedom of expression and free speech knows no bounds or decency for that matter. Liberal publications such as The New York Times should know better.
Ted Cruz and his Tea Party however stands out among them all though. While Cruz supported a Duck Dynasty member's homophobic pronouncements because free speech matters, free speech doesn't matter at all when Cruz's Tea Party attempts to censor science and matters of issues they want no mention of.
"... in Gilbert, Arizona ... they decided they were going to rip pages out of the biology textbooks in the local public high schools.
The section of the Honor`s Biology textbooks that mentioned
contraception and abortion, a local school board decided they were going to
cut those pages out of the textbooks.
They cited an Arizona law signed two years ago by Republican Governor
Jan Brewer, which mandates that instruction in public schools in Arizona be
explicitly anti-abortion.
And, based on that law, they decided in Gilbert, Arizona, that the
page of the biology textbook that explains that there is such a thing as
abortion, they decided to cut that out.
The sort of Tea Party majority on that local school board cast the
deciding votes that those textbooks should be redacted, that those pages
should be cut out. A crusading religious group called "The Alliance
Defending Freedom," they came and gave a presentation to that school board
encouraging them to do it."
http://www.nbcnews.com/...
From attempts to silence any mention of Darwin to replacing science with biblical fictions, as well as using religion as a weapon to oppress Gays, a hell of a lot of republicans have a lot in common with these Islamic extremists.
That said, we are in a war of sorts with the Muslim world, a world where tyrannies rule overall, a world where our alleged ally has a blogger lashed and lashed for expressing an opinion, and where women are stoned to death and even murdered by their own families for perceived offenses and blasphemies. That so much of the populations of countries like Pakistan etc supports such punishments and such hideous acts of terror on their own people, and we call them allie,s defeats the purpose of all these years having tried to bring Afghanistan into the modern world.
That we have powerful and influential media like the New York Times refusing to reprint some of the Charlie Hebro cartoons while also supporting free speech when it applies to them, doesn't say much for some of the publications assuming the mantle of liberalism either. Those who take offense may very well need to be offended more often.