The Suicide of Europe

townhall
Ben Shapiro
Posted: May 30, 2018 12:01 AM


On Friday, the British police arrested Tommy Robinson, founder and former leader of the English Defence League, a far-right anti-Islam group. Robinson is a controversial character, to be sure, a sort of Milo Yiannopoulos lite. His chief focus is on the threat of radical Islam, which he believes threatens the integrity of the British system.

You don't have to like Robinson. But whatever you think of him, his arrest is absurd by any measure. You see, Robinson was arrested for standing outside a court building and reporting on a trial involving the alleged grooming of young girls for sexual assault by radical Muslims.

Now, what would be illegal about that, you ask? It turns out that Robinson was given a suspended sentence last year for filming outside another court building, where a trial for alleged gang rape by radical Muslims was taking place. He wasn't inside the courtroom. Nonetheless, the judge believed he was somehow biasing the jurors. According to the judge, Robinson was sentenced thanks to "pejorative language which prejudges the case, and it is language and reporting ... that could have had the effect of substantially derailing the trial."

This time, Robinson was again arrested for prejudicing a case, only he wasn't inside the court building. He was outside. And the media were originally banned from reporting on his arrest so that his trial wouldn't be biased. In other words, Britain has now effectively banned reporting that actually mentions the Islamic nature of criminal defendants for fear of stirring up bigotry -- and has banned reporting on reporting on such defendants. It's an infinite regress of suicidal political correctness.

But at least the Europeans have their priorities straight: While it's perfectly legal to lock up a provocateur covering a trial involving Muslims, the European Union is now considering a ban on products like cotton buds, straws and other plastics for fear of marine litter. And just as importantly, it's now perfectly legal to kill unborn children again in Ireland, where voters -- with the help of a cheering press -- decided to lift the ban on abortions until the 20th week, condemning thousands of children to death.

This is how the West dies: with a tut-tut, not with a bang. The same civilization that sees it as a fundamental right to kill a child in the womb thinks it is utterly out of bounds to film outside a trial involving the abuse of children, so long as the defendants are radical Muslims. The Europeans have elevated the right to not be offended above the right to life; they've elevated the right to not be offended above the right to free speech, all in the name of some utopian vision of a society without standards.

Discarding those standards was supposed to make Europeans more free; it was supposed to allow Europeans to feel more comfortable. But the sad truth is that no society exists without certain standards and Europe has a new standard: enforcement of its "tolerance" via jail sentence, combined with tolerance of multiculturalism that sees tolerance itself as a Trojan horse. The notion of individual rights sprang from European soil. Now they're beginning to die there.


Thank You Mr Shapiro and Townhall.

Actually, as loath as we are to disagree with Mr Shapiro, IF, he's referring to the misconception that the Magna Carta is the source of the Rights of the Individual, . . . . he's wrong.



The Rights of the Individual codified here were much farther reaching than those of the Magna Carta, over 1,000 years ago:

at Althing in Iceland.

Those laws sprang from earlier Laws in earlier Scandinavia. 

And half of the British Isles were under the Dane Law for 3 Centuries. 

Viking Age Iceland, Privatization Run Amok or Libertarian Paradise?
 
If you didn't like the services your Chieftain charged you a nominal fee to provide, you could contract with another Chieftain on the other side of the island to do a better job for you, without having to move there.

Imagine how much better service we'd get today from government if we could simply tell government at every level, each and everyone of us on an individual basis, we can and will do something about you.

You're Fired.
via lewrockwell.com

Privatization, Viking Style: Model or Misfortune?

By Roderick T. Long


If you want to read the actual laws:

• Laws of Early Iceland Gragas I
• Laws of Early Iceland Gragas II

These volumes are expensive. No two ways about it.

So you might ask your local Library to borrow them for you from another branch within your State.