Slicing Through The Euro-Knot: Free Speech in the Birthplace of Democracy, Nazism & Communism
Coals to Newcastle, regular NRB readers will indulge me I think, when I repeat what everybody knows: that free speech is necessary to free thought, and humanity depends utterly on the freedom to think about the world we live in. But European lawmakers imagine they have a better idea, and that deserves some reflection.
In the core of this there is an act of brazen defiance of reality — of a mindless assertion of power over reality — on the part of Danish and European lawmakers. It is as though they have never recovered from the idea that it is the state that determines what is good and what is true; that reality imposes no laws that cannot be bent and molded by the state. This is plain flat wrong. It is certainly one of the errors that led Europe into the horrors of Nazism, Fascism and Communism.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights …
The need for free speech is a law of reality, we don’t get a choice. And when lawmakers attempt to repeal reality, the law of unintended consequences kicks in … hard.
Into this tangled mess walks Lars Barfoed.
Borfoed is one of a small but growing group of Europeans that have decided to stand against the tide of irrationality that has overrun Europe. Barfoed is remarkable insofar as being Denmark’s Minister of Justice he is a member of Europe’s elite, and could easily go along to get along, but he has chosen not to.
He is reaching for the one weapon which history has proven effective against political irrationality — the freedom of speech and the freedom of thought. And it seems that he is aiming to set the law in it’s proper place, in the service of the natural rights of man.
Let’s hope he succeeds.
It is a matter of some urgency that we understand what is happening in Europe. America is in better shape, as Danish laws show, but we can’t gloat. The credit goes to the founders, to what we inherited, not to what we have done recently. In our time we have been drifting in the same direction as Europe. And with BH-Mohammedan-Outreach Obama and his pals at the top, ever more quickly. Conditions in Europe show what awaits us if we continue to drift.
We will be revisiting this subject over the coming days and weeks.
