Not too keen on the Churchill quote. Seems like you guys are leaning a bit heavy on taking a stick to pluralism, so of course you can't also be funny.

http://silentrunning.tv/?p=2625

Rick,

 Pluralism is a multi-way street.

 Give me that bumpersticker with all the religious symbols kind of spelling out "coexist."  One symbol is not playing nice.  And another one ain't takin' it.  I'm not religious, but I'm with the one standing up to the bully.

 I listened to SNN 113 this morning oddly AFTER reading your (Rick's) comment. I didn’t get the same impression as you. There was much variety and it was not to me primarily about the advance of extremist Islam.  I think it’s more towards how the PC mindset can’t call a trowel a trowel. (And have I been squishy polite enough so far?)

I also think the Churchill quote is appropriate for all times. A micro analogy: If, in your London flat it is illegal– the law– to defend yourself with a baseball bat against home invasion, you nevertheless would do so. Some laws (many laws) are wrong. It’s inalienable laws, inalienable rights (endowed or endemic, take your pick) that supercede mere human contrivences.

A big part of the this show was about borders, especially the border between USA and Mexico. I read a good Fred Thompson (I’ll miss him) quote today: “We don’t put locks on our doors to keep people out. We put locks on our doors so we can choose the people we let in.”

Cross commented at that silentrunning.tv link.

Time for me to weigh in as I did post at Silentrunnin.tv I should cross post here!

You make some valid points Rick. However, the Churchill quote is not from a speech. It can be found in The Gathering Storm and comes from a memo written by Churchill on 16th Dec 1939. He may well have said those words or similar in the house however.

There is (some) debate over that quote in various texts, usually about neutrality in war. Some may say it is somewhat out of context when applied to free speech I’ll admit BUT I disagree.

We have no effective legal way to deal with political Islam within our current systems. Europe also had no way to deal with internal Nazi movements all over the continent before 1939 and contributed to small neutral nations like Norway and Sweden falling to the Nazis later. We are in an even worse position now because Islam has a double face: we can’t touch its political side because it hides within a religious shell. First we have to see that there is a danger, then we have to rationally change our laws. The alternative (which is closer in Europe than many realise) is unthinkable fascism. Worse, through human rights commissions and spurious complaints our own laws are being used against us by those who would abolish them in a heartbeat.

Good laws should treat all people as equals. We must not forget that. Any system that has any hint that all people are not equal must be exposed for the evil that it is and the greater evil it can always become.

But I take to heart your comment about being for something instead of against something. That is a valid and just criticism and being just anti-anything is far less effective than pro-something.

To Reese: very good points and I'll bring up something that our increasingly godless world doesn't like to admit. When there are laws that we know and feel to be right or wrong (in what we call the West) we are deriving this from a moral code we take from Judaism. It underpins ALL our laws in a way we (and dozens of philosphers) try to deny but in the end it is there. The modification to Roman law that prohibts the killing of the sons of traitors comes from Jesus (who in this was saying only what any good Jew would have said). Examples are legion, denial of this is futile but lucrative for Dawkins et al.

And I say all this, without having a strong personal faith myself, but with a very strong and healthy respect for the genius of the ideas expressed in the Torah! In an essay quoted in Sir Martin Gilbert's latest book about Winston Churchill and the Jews:

Turning to the central theme of Judaism, that of one God whose code of human conduct Moses had received at Mount Sinai, Churchill wrote: 'This wandering tribe, in many respects indistinguishable from numberless nomadic communities, grasped and proclaimed an idea of which all the genius of Greece and all the power of Rome were incapable.'

Brian

For want of context, Brian, all I can think of is how Nietzsche has said exactly the same thing about St Paul....

I think we could pick at details about the show to back up my negativity concern. But that would be tedious. Perhaps worth doing to the next one, though.

With respect to mutating our civilisation to get at its devils, I shall blog again as I have before, that objective law including free speech and unfettered liberty will save us if we let them. And nothing else can.