I appeared on 'Up Close' with Diana Williams, WABC-TV’s public affairs show. I debated Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners, who is launching his own ad campaign on the subways, "hitting back" at ours. It’s a pity that Rev. Jim Wallis didn’t get his group together to stand up when Christians, Hindus, and so many others were facing vicious persecution in Muslim countries. Where is Sojourners when Christians are victimized by jihad? Wallis is standing up for those who oppress and kill Christians.
Watch the dhimmi debate. Rioting, vandalism, and assault are legitimate responses to freedom of speech.
"Up Close: Subway" Ad NEW YORK (WABC) --
Is it a message of hate, or free speech? Or both?
UPDATE: Robert Spencer says this:We're talking about an ad in New York subway stations, widely seen as anti-Muslim, that's sparking strong reaction and pushback, including an arrest for vandalizing the controversial ads.
The ad reads "In any war between the civilized man and the savages, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."
They are now posted in heavily trafficked areas such as Grand Central Station and Times Square.
We'll be joined by Pamela Geller, a conservative activist who created the ad.
She is the executive director of American Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America.
Also with us is Jim Wallis, chief executive officer of Sojourners, a Christian group which works to build alliances among people of different faiths.
Wallis says that people might get hurt because of Geller's ad. Note how thoroughly he has absorbed the dhimmi mindset: he assumes that if Muslims become violent, it is the fault of non-Muslims, who must adjust their behavior in order to placate them.
The host shows that he holds the same assumptions when he asks Geller why she is throwing a match into a powder keg. It doesn't seem to occur either to him or to Wallis that the only people responsible for the actions of violent Muslims are the violent Muslims who commit them.
Watch the clip. In it, Pamela Geller patiently explains to these cringing dhimmis elementary principles of the freedom of speech and the necessity not to kowtow to violent intimidation. She brilliantly skewers their tolerance of evil and eagerness to adopt dhimmi self-censorship to save their miserable skins.
More and more people in the public square are demonstrating an inability to grasp this basic point, and that bodes quite ill: the principle is being reinforced that all Muslims or anyone else have to do in order to silence speech that they don't like is start acting violently. Alan Dershowitz takes apart this idea in an excellent piece about the MTA's new regulations, which state that ads will be barred if people may react violently to them. Says Dershowitz: the new regulation "incentivizes people to engage in violence. What it says to people, is that if they don’t like ads, just engage in violence and then we’ll take the ads down."
We have already begun the process of testing this unconstitutional new regulation.
Pamela Geller will never stop talking. Nor will I. We will never accept dhimmitude and submission. We will never bow to violent intimidation. Jim Wallis and other dhimmi Christians and Jews ought to be deeply, deeply ashamed of the stance they've taken: they have validated and encouraged violence, hatred and oppression. If free people and free societies survive, they will be looked upon as suicidal fools.
