Category Archives: libertarianism

Updated: Judenräte Turns on Geert Wilders

Free Speech, Islam, Judaism & Jews, libertarianism, The West

In “Nitwork Solutions Suspends Wilders Site,” you read about a heroic Dutchman by the name of Geert Wilders who is fighting Islam’s suffocating strictures. In a country of dhimmis, this Dutchman is a rare breed (so is Ayaan Hirsi Ali); he is trying to reclaim his country.

When the self-anointed Jewish leadership is not reaching out to libertines and left-liberals, it is siding with Jew haters. Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League is still mum about the dangers to the American Jewish community of Muslim immigration.

On the other hand, Foxman had a fit over Mel Gibson, a man who has never hurt a Jew (unless hurt feelings count—and they don’t; sticks and stones and all that). But when a Seattle Jihadist murdered a Jewish woman and critically injured five other women at the downtown Jewish Federation building, our defender issued only the tersest of statements, making no mention of the dead, the injured, and the Muslim.

By the ADL’s telling, this was a random killing.

Now the Dutch Judenräte has turned its back on a friend of the Jews, Geert Wilders:

“In a statement following the film’s online release, the board said that Wilders – the leader of the Party for Freedom – was guilty of serious generalizations. ‘Wilders presented demographics on the increase of Muslims in Europe with pictures from scenes of terrorist attacks, suggesting all Muslims are potential terrorists,’ head of the Hague-based Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, Dr. Ronny Naftaniel, Saturday told Haaretz.”

Dr. Ronny Naftaniel’s incorrect deduction aside, Jews who side with him and his ilk ought not to complain when increased Muslim immigration coincides with more hate crimes against them. Nor should they be surprised when the many Dutch who secretly consider Wilders a patriot think of Jewish representatives as unpatriotic, and worse.

By the way, the response of the Muslim world and its representatives to “Fitna,” the Wilders film, proves irrefutably that Wilders is right about Islam. To deny that he is correct about the dangerous, dampening effects of Islam on a free society is to deny reality.

Wilders would have been shown to be wrong had the Muslim world and its proxies refused to bring pressure to bear on organizations that screened “Fitna,” and adopted a western live-and-let-live stance toward this form of speech.

Had Wilders not been subjected to death threats for his speech; and had the Dutch government not been pressured by Muslim leaders to denounce Wilders—I’d have been the first to concede that the Muslim Ummah is indeed benign, peaceful, and presents no threat to the West.

Speaking of the Ummah; where is my libertarian community on this? Have those few errant folks repented yet?

Update (April 1): “LiveLeak restores Fitna. Score one for freedom,” reports the intrepid Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch. LiveLeak had previously removed the piece.

Update 3: Nitwork Solutions Suspends Wilders Site

Free Speech, Islam, libertarianism, Media, Morality, The West

A hosting service has suspended the site erected by the heroic Geert Wilders to popularize his film about the Quran. Wilders is the only politician I know of, aside Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to speak truth to power about Islam.

We all recall the tragic fate another brave Dutch film maker met. Vincent van Gogh’s great-great-grandson—more authentically Dutch you cannot get—was “stuck like a pig” on an Amsterdam street by a Muslim immigrant.

So who has curtailed Wilders in his heroic efforts? An American company, of course:

“Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation … The company could not immediately be reached for comment. Its terms of service contain a sweeping prohibition against ‘objectionable material of any kind or nature.’”

(I’ve just asked the designer of our new fabulous website under construction to check up that the server to which we will be migrating tolerates speech. American companies are becoming oppressive.)

The Herald Tribune has characterized Wilders as heading “a reactionary party with 9 seats in the 150-member Dutch Parliament, which was elected on an anti-immigration platform. He lives under police protection because of death threats.”

If by reactionary the Tribune means that Wilders would dearly like to prevent Sharia from becoming the law of the land in his beloved homeland, and that he doesn’t rah-rah for Muslim rioters, then yes, I guess he could be called a “reactionary.”

The fact that a man who voices unpopular opinion is required to “live under police protection” in a western, liberal society—this, the Herald Tribune doesn’t find the least bit “reactionary.”

Update (March 25): Posted over at Jihad Watch is an interview with “Nitworks Solutions.” That is if long pauses and pregnant silences from the company’s representative constitute an exchange.

My contact for all things webular tells me that “Network Solutions has a long history of screwing people. They were the first—and for a long time the only—people who registered domain names for the Internet in the early years.” They had a government granted franchise or monopoly [like Comcast in certain regions] and, consequently, charged very high fees. “Down the road, when people became savvier and other high-tech companies wanted the ability to sell domains as well, the latter had to go to court to get the ability but they won. Today Network Solutions still sells domain names and they are about a tenth of what they used to charge but they still cost more than most everywhere else. The markup is ridiculous.”

In any event, if Mr. Wilders contacts us, we’ll put him in touch with someone who’ll fix him up in no time with a reliable, willing host.

Libertarians who fail to protest such intimidation are a sad joke. Sure, a host is a private company and ought to be able to host or not host at will. However, this is an example of intimidation at the threat of death. (By the same token, neither did the ousting of Imus have anything to do with private property or market forces. Rather, mob forces shaped that event.)

In “Those Cartoons: A Reply To Walter Block,” I addressed the moral confusion that led some libertarians to shirk the responsibility to defend the great Danes in what I termed “one of the defining libertarian issues of our times,” and that is:

“Speaking and publishing under the threat of injury or death … what is becoming a matter of life and death for writers, filmmakers, comics, and caricaturists in the West.”

Update 2 (March 27): I am disappointed that some libertarians construed the protest on this post as a call for censorship. You really have to develop the ability to distinguish between a debate about libertarian law vs. one about morality and ethics. Or values, as an Objectivist would put it. Objectivists often complain that libertarians are incapable of bridging this void. I can see the merits of their complaint.

I believe I’ve done this exercise once before, but here goes again: It has to be manifestly clear that no one on this blog has called on the state to intervene with Nitwork Solutions, which, by the way, was operating by grant of a government privilege when it monopolized domain licensing; that’s another problem some correspondents clearly struggle with: telling the free from the fettered market.

In any event, the debate here is about this new phenomenon we in the West are subjected to, and that is publishing under the threat of death. What Nitwork did to the heroic Wilders is perfectly licit in libertarian law. Some libertarians, however, go so far and say it is moral; they even lend their imprimatur to Muslims in terrorizing writers for doing no more than “hoisting their epistolary pitchforks.” For this perspective, I have nothing but contempt.

That said, let’s move on to a letter from my mother, our correspondent in The Netherlands:

Wilders: A Principled Man

Holland has a hero. Geert Wilders represents many Dutch people who are anxious about the growing power of Islam in Holland. He is a member of the Dutch Parliament and has won 9 seats in the parliament.

The parliament members have done everything to stop Wilders legitimate objection to the growing power of Muslims in all spheres in this country. The government is terrified that the Arab states will object and will take measures to decrease monetary gains. This terrifies all Dutch parliamentarians and, as a result, they have done everything to stop Wilders from speaking out about this Islamization, have tried to stop him from releasing the film he has made about Islam; and have done all in their power to intimidate him into silence and threaten him to keep his mouth shut.

And this in the “Great democratic Holland,” where, supposedly, “Freedom of Speech” is a holy right of all. It is clear to all of us who support this brave man that freedom of speech in Holland is only allowed to those who agree with government policy—their fear of reprisal from Arabs, in the manner used against Denmark, is the only thing they can think about.

Wilders holds onto his principles, even though his life is threatened—he is indeed a man who is prepared to sacrifice himself for his principles—and for his country.

—Ann

Update 3 (March 29): ACCEPTING THE TERMS OF SURRENDER. As I’ve said, we’ve arrived at a stage in the West’s demise where we are publishing under duress—under the threat of death, to be precise. This state of affairs has arisen due to our welcoming into our midst a culture and faith that doesn’t comport with life and liberty. Philosophical disagreements will henceforth be settled by the kafia-clad hit squad, or their proxies, CAIR and their ilk.

LiveLeak.com has folded. Here you can find a statement of cowardice and capitulation from this outfit as to why they’ll not be honoring the courage of Geert Wilders, and posting his film, Fitna (Fatwa).

Those who threatened LiveLeak.com have rejected the way philosophical battles are fought by westerners (to distinguish from their governments). What they’re doing is laying down the law under Islam. Each capitulation brings us closer to a time when this space, and spaces as outspoken, will cease to exist.

What’s worse; westerners, with few exceptions, are accepting the terms of surrender.

Derb On The Irrelevance of Libertarianism

Elections 2008, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Ron Paul

In “High Priests of Pomposity Pan Ron Paul” I contended that whatever was revving the Ron Paul Revolution, it was not the ideas or the “energy” of Beltway libertarians, represented by the Cato and Reason claque. In fact, there was almost no overlap between “the [Ron] Paul and the [Virginia] Postrel solitudes”:

“Ron’s Revolutionaries have coalesced around the illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq, against America’s hegemonic overreach, and for a sovereign, less ‘cosmopolitan,’ America.
Beltway libertarians, conversely, are moved in mysterious ways by gaping borders, gay marriage, multiculturalism, cloning, and all else ‘cool and cosmopolitan.’”

John Derbyshire goes further. In a new VDARE.com column, Derb contends that, “Paradoxically, Ron Paul’s candidacy is proving the irrelevance of libertarianism.”

Particularly courageous, given the commentariat’s general allergy to the truth, is Derb’s daring defense of Paul’s association

“with people, fifteen or twenty years ago, who thought that we were all better off when homosexuals had to be discreet, and that black Americans are prone to civil disorder, and that Martin Luther King was a philandering plagiarist, and that the Confederacy had a right to secede from the Union, and that the Korean storekeepers of Los Angeles behaved in true American spirit when they defended their property with guns against rioters. People really seem to have believed such things! And Paul gave them space in his newsletters! Euiw!”

As I’ve said in this space, “Derb’s Da Man.”

Derb also adds an “affirmations of undying political correctness” to his indictment of the Girls and Girly Boys of the Beltway.

That has to be particularly painful to a collective—and they do act and think as one—that likes to think of itself as ultra-rad (man).

The article is “Paradoxically, Ron Paul’s Success Proving Irrelevance of Libertarianism”

High Priests of Pomposity Pan Ron Paul

Elections 2008, libertarianism, Ron Paul

“What are the odds that Rep. Paul’s followers have come to the philosophy of freedom through Reason Magazine? Is it remotely possible that the passionate soldiers of the Paul Army enlisted after chancing upon a dispassionate, desiccated, dry-as-dust disquisition on a free market in kidneys (I’m all for it)? I think not…

Picture a Venn diagram. The overlap between the Paul and the Postrel solitudes is invisible to the naked eye. Only in the atrophying attics of mainstream intelligentsia and media does Postrel’s stuff resonate.

Ron’s Revolutionaries have coalesced around the illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq, against America’s hegemonic overreach, and for a sovereign, less “cosmopolitan,” America.

Beltway libertarians, conversely, are moved in mysterious ways by gaping borders, gay marriage, multiculturalism, cloning, and all else “cool and cosmopolitan…”

In “High Priests of Pomposity Pan Ron Paul” you can read why “the Reason Magazine and Cato Institute claque,” as well as others “in the atrophying attics of mainstream intelligentsia and media,” don’t count much in the Ron Paul Revolution.