Wilders and Limbaugh--> BEFORE and After?

This Past weekend, President Obama decided to get into the trenches with Rush Limbaugh

President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration. "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done," he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package. NY Post

Rush Limbaugh is a media giant, I am the last person from whom he needs support, I will leave his defense in his own capable hands. I find the spat between the President of the United States and the Dean of Conservative Talk Radio quite disturbing on a different level. Folks this is the first step of the ruling Democratic party controlling speech in America.

The President's comment was immediately joined on by the rest of his Party. Democratic congressional campaign committee chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said in a statement:

Rush Limbaugh's reprehensible remark that he 'hopes' President Obama fails to meet the extraordinary economic challenges Americas face has no place in the public discourse.

Mr. Limbaugh's comments politicize the economic struggle of millions of hard working Americans. With the unemployment rate over seven percent, today's news that 62,000 more Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, and millions of Americans struggling to keep their health care and homes, all Americans, regardless of their ideology, hope that President Obama succeeds in getting people back to work and turning our economy around.

This was followed with the  Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launching an online petition to express outrage at conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for saying he wanted President Obama to "fail."

Some people think that the democratic response to Rush is the first stop to bringing back the fairness doctrine. I believe that their goals are much more nefarious--more like what Robert Spencer described today:

......The White House website pledges that “President Obama and Vice President Biden will strengthen federal hate crimes legislation…” The problem with this, of course, is that “hate” is in the eye of the beholder, so “hate crime” laws are essentially tools for enforcing officially-endorsed views. It’s another form of censorship.  “Hate crimes” legislation begets “hate speech” legislation. A cautionary tale is unfolding in the Netherlands this week about how dangerous those can be.

“The insult of Islamic worshippers”? The very idea of trying someone for insulting someone else is absurd, and unmasks the Dutch initiative as an attempt by the nation’s political elites to silence one of their most formidable critics. The one who judges what is an actionable insult and what isn’t is the one who has the power to control the discourse -- and that’s what the prosecution of Wilders is all about. If insulting someone is a crime, can those who are insulted by hate speech laws bring suit against their framers?

The action against Wilders is taking place against the backdrop of the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference’s efforts at the United Nations to silence speech that they deem critical of Islam -- including “defamation of Islam” that goes under the “pretext” of “freedom of expression, counter terrorism or national security.”

If they succeed in doing this, Europeans and Americans will be rendered mute, and thus defenseless, in the face of the advancing jihad and attempt to impose Sharia on the West -- in fact, one of the key elements of the laws for dhimmis, non-Muslims subjugated under Islamic rule, is that they are never critical of Islam, Muhammad, or the Qur’an. Thus this initiative not only aids the advance of Sharia in the West, but is itself an element of that advance.

But of course, it couldn’t happen here: freedom of speech could never disappear in America, right? After all, we have the First Amendment. But the Fairness Doctrine initiative shows that its protections can be chipped away. And “hate speech” laws could be justified by a declaration that free speech is still a constitutional right, but after all, every right has its limits: “hate speech” will be specifically exempted from its protections -- and “hate speech” will be defined to encompass speaking honestly about the actual texts and teachings of Islam that contain exhortations to violence and assertions of supremacism, unless one is referencing such material approvingly as a believer. 

For to speak of such things in any other way would be to “insult” Muslims, as has Geert Wilders.

Lovers of freedom should be watching the Wilders case very closely -- as President Obama is already making abundantly clear -- it could happen here. Source Robert Spencer Jailed For An Insult?

I disagree with Spencer on this one, its not that it could happen here..if we don't stop it now it WILL happen here, Geert Wilders today----Rush Limbaugh tomorrow.

If you are interested in helping Geert Wilders in his fight against censorship click on the his picture which is on the left side column of this blog.