Robert Tracinski of The Intellectual Activist is
one of our nation's clearest and brightest thinkers. His website is one
the world cannot live without. We were fortunate to have Mr. Tracinski
attend our evening with Geert Wilders last Friday night. I had not met
him before, but I have long admired his sagacious, brilliant work.
He
has penned an op-ed on what he saw that day in DC and that night at the
OMNI Shoreham. Read it all and check out The TIA Daily site - worth the
price of admission (subscribe here).
Tracinski nails the problem dead on right: "America
used to have politicians like this. We call them the Founding Fathers.
And one of the things I love about politics is that occasionally we see
a leader who rises to that level again." —RWT
The Free Man's Rebellion Robert Tracinski
I went up to Washington, DC, Friday to see the local "tea party"
protest against big government. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a
fizzle. It was not so much the small size of the turnout—the best
estimate I could get was that it drew at most 100 people—but the fact
that those who attended were "the usual suspects." They were the kind
of right-leaning, small-government firebrands who would come out for an
event like this on the slightest provocation. They were not members of
the general public driven to outrage by the Obama administration's push
toward socialism.
So I guess I learned what I was hoping to learn by going to the event:
whether or not there is a broad, popular surge of anger against rising
statism. The answer: not yet. It confirms my expectation that the
general public is still giving Obama the benefit of the doubt. They
will not turn against him until his policies clearly have failed.
I should acknowledge, though, that Washington may not have been
typical. After all, it is a town where the local growth industry is
government. My friend Shrikant has been reporting to me that the
general mood on the streets of Manhattan is raw fear. From what I can
tell, the general mood on the streets of Washington is smug
complacency. And why not? The financial center of the United States has
just been forcibly removed from the one city to the other.
Other "tea party" events in other cities seem to have gone a good deal better; Michelle Malkin has a very extensive round-up on the protests in various cities. Note particularly the prevalence of signs with references to "Atlas" or to John Galt, which indicates the "Ayn Rand factor" at work here (my piece on which went up at RealClearMarkets on Friday).
But it is early days yet. The "tea party" idea was first broached less
than two weeks ago by Rick Santelli. We will have a lot of time to plan
and prepare and to help move the general public to the point where it
is ready to say "enough."
But assessing the tepid local tea was not by any means the most
interesting thing I did in Washington. What really made the trip
worthwhile was seeing Geert Wilders speak there in the evening. If I was looking for a free man's rebellion against tyranny, this was it.
Wilders is the Dutch member of parliament who was recently denied entry
to Britain after being invited by the House of Lords to screen his
short film Fitna which demonstrates that the Koran preaches violent
repression of non-believers. In response to Britain's betrayal of
freedom of speech, Arizona Senator Jon Kyl invited Wilders to give a
short talk and screen his film at the US Capitol on Friday.
Pamela Geller of the Atlas Shrugs blog—there's
the Ayn Rand factor at work again—decided on her own initiative to
organize a second showing of the film and a talk by Wilders at the same
Washington hotel that was hosting the Conservative Political Action
Conference (CPAC), a giant yearly gathering of conservative political
activists.
Interestingly, while the event was held alongside CPAC, it was not really part of CPAC. Geller describes how
this year's CPAC has virtually ignored Islam and terrorism as an issue
and generally refused to cooperate with the planning of the Wilders
event. Geller had to organize the whole thing herself and find the
funding for it.
The response of the CPAC attendees—the rank and file of the right, as
opposed to its leadership establishment—was quite different. There was
a large and enthusiastic audience, who lined up in a queue that
stretched from the meeting room out through the lobby of the hotel.
Geller describes the
event in her blog, and one detail in particular jibes with my memory
and give you a feel for it: hearing the wave of cheers and applause as
Wilders came down the hallway to the meeting room, stopping to shake
hands with the people waiting in line to see him. The event had a
standing room only crowd estimated at more than 500, and people had to
be turned away because the room was at capacity.
Geller accurately describes the enthusiasm of the audience. I am not
sure I can adequately describe the enthusiasm of Geller herself, a
brash New Yorker and an irrepressible firebrand. You'll have to see the video of
the event (which also briefly shows yours truly chatting with
Pamela—who I have known for a while as a fan of TIA Daily—before the
event begins). She was followed by Andrew Bostom and Robert
Spencer—both of them uncompromising experts on Islam who have warned
against its threats. Geller's report on the event has transcripts of
their brief remarks, which are well worth reading.
But of course what we all came to see was Wilders himself and his film.
Fitna is a 15-minute documentary that primarily consists of a series of
quotes from the Koran calling for the killing of unbelievers, combined
with quotes from speeches by various Muslim religious leaders
advocating violence and religious dictatorship—all juxtaposed against
images of terrorist attacks and assassinations committed by Muslims
against us Western infidels. The most interesting thing about Wilders's
film is that it includes so little commentary or interpretation of his
own. It consists of quotes from the Koran, statements by Muslims, and
actions taken by Muslims. He lets the enemy speak for himself, and the
film has aptly been described as holding a mirror up to radical Islam.
For holding a mirror up to reality, Wilders has been vilified and
attacked; he is currently being prosecuted in the Netherlands under
that nation's "hate speech" laws. Yet if these same laws were applied
to Islam, he points out, they would require Dutch authorities to ban
the Koran.
And of course he has been threatened with death. This is the usual
self-refuting Muslim response: don't say we're violent or we'll cut
your head off. And this threat is very real for a European intellectual
or politician, especially after the murder of Theo van Gogh, who was
killed for making another short film critical of Islam. If you watch
the video of Friday's event, you may notice that Wilders was flanked
throughout the speech by two tall, well-muscled gentlemen. The fact
that he needs this kind of protection says everything you need to know
about the current threat to freedom of speech and where it comes from.
When I met Wilders before the event, I told him that a writer in the US
can say the most controversial things with no real fear. (I've called
Islam "The Killers' Creed" and put Kurt Westergaard's cartoon of
Mohammed on the cover of TIA,
and I've never had reason to think I was in serious danger.) So we
appreciate all the more those who speak up when they are taking a real
risk.
Wilders's speech—which I understand is essentially the same speech he
gave at the Capitol—named in bold, straightforward terms all of the
essential issues. Here are the best excerpts:
Today, the dearest of our many freedoms is under attack all throughout
Europe. Free speech is no longer a given. What we once considered a
natural element of our existence, our birth right, is now something we
once again have to battle for….
The real question is: will free speech be put behind bars? And the
larger question for the West is: will we leave Europe's children the
values of Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem, or the values of Mecca, Teheran,
and Gaza?...
Cultural relativism is the worst disease in Europe today. Most of our
politicians believe that all cultures are equal. Well let me tell you
they are not.
Our Western culture based on Christianity, Judaism, and humanism is in
every aspect better than the Islamic culture. Like the brave apostate
Wafa Sultan said: it's a comparison between a culture of reason and a
culture of barbarism….
I propose the withdrawal of all hate speech legislation in Europe. I
propose a European First Amendment. In Europe, we should defend freedom
of speech like you Americans do….
Ladies and gentlemen, our enemies should know: we will never apologize
for being free men, we will never give in. We will never surrender.
There is no stronger power than the force of free men fighting for the
great cause of liberty. Because freedom is the birthright of all man.
Freedom must prevail, and freedom will prevail.
Beyond that, I can give you my sense of Wilders as a person. He is
usually portrayed sneeringly in the press as an angry reactionary
rabble-rouser or as some kind of opportunistic publicity hound. What
struck me most about him was precisely the opposite: there was no
element in him of pretense or posturing, no trace of the self-conscious
display of courage that you usually see in the leftist activist who
shouts out bromides for which he knows he will never be punished.
Rather, Wilders projected the most profound sense of dignity I have
ever experienced from a speaker. In person, meeting members of the
audience before the event, he was quiet, mild-mannered, and unfailingly
polite. At the podium, he was calm and focused, maintaining his
composure even in the face of the energetic and at times raucous
response he got from his audience. I got the sense that he would have
been equally composed if the audience had been just as energetic, but
hostile. He was not really concerned with the audience and its
reaction. He gave the sense that his only mission was to convey clearly
the important message he had to deliver.
When Wilders first came walking to the event and shook hands with the
people in line, I thought that he looked just like a politician at a
campaign event shaking the hands of his constituents. And of course, he
is a politician, holding a seat in the Dutch Parliament as a member of
what is now his country's largest political party. But he is also much
more: a man of courage and principle taking a stand on an issue that is
crucial to the survival of our civilization.
America used to have politicians like this. We call them the Founding
Fathers. And one of the things I love about politics is that
occasionally we see a leader who rises to that level again.—RWT
A great American's take.
Iranian dissident Amil Imani writes a glorious tribute to Wilders: A Salute to Champions of Liberty
