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Me#1You#10 Site Admin
Joined: 06 May 2004 Posts: 6503
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 8:49 am Post subject: Mark Steyn: "Celebrate tolerance, or you're dead" |
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I think that perhaps, were I an author, the last person I might want to write a favorable review of my work would be Mark Steyn. I mean, how could even a commendable work follow writing such as the following? Mark Steyn is just scary good at his art and this review brought tears to my eyes (from laughter). Pity the topic is so deadly serious. A few excerpts (or, better yet, read the whole thing)...
Quote: | BOOKS
April 28, 2006
Celebrate tolerance, or you're dead
Oriana Fallaci appeals to Europe to save itself. Good luck
MARK STEYN
Over in Sweden, they've been investigating the Grand Mosque of Stockholm. Apparently, it's the one-stop shop for all your jihad needs: you can buy audio cassettes at the mosque encouraging you to become a martyr and sally forth to kill "the brothers of pigs and apes" -- i.e. Jews. So somebody filed a racial-incitement complaint and the coppers started looking into it, and then Sweden's chancellor of justice, Goran Lambertz, stepped in. And Mr. Lambertz decided to close down the investigation on the grounds that, even though the porcine-sibling stuff is "highly degrading," this kind of chit-chat "should be judged differently -- and therefore be regarded as permissible -- because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict."
In other words, if you threaten to kill people often enough, it will be seen as part of your vibrant cultural tradition -- and, by definition, we're all cool with that. Celebrate diversity, etc. Our tolerant multicultural society is so tolerant and multicultural we'll tolerate your intolerant uniculturalism. Your antipathy to diversity is just another form of diversity for us to celebrate.
Diversity-wise, Europe is a very curious place -- and I mean that even by Canadian standards. In her latest book, The Force of Reason, the fearless Oriana Fallaci, Italy's most-read and most-sued journalist, recounts some of her recent legal difficulties with the Continental diversity coercers.
<snip>
Racked by cancer, Oriana Fallaci spends most of her time in one of the few jurisdictions in the Western world where she is not in legal jeopardy -- New York City, whence she pens magnificent screeds in the hope of rousing Europe to save itself. Good luck with that.
<snip>
Signora Fallaci then moves on to the livelier examples of contemporary Islam -- for example, Ayatollah Khomeini's "Blue Book" and its helpful advice on romantic matters: "If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen, he cannot enjoy her any longer." I'll say. I know it always ruins my evening. Also: "A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin." Indeed. A quiet cigarette afterwards as you listen to your favourite Johnny Mathis LP and then a promise to call her next week and swing by the pasture is by far the best way. It may also be a sin to roast your nine-year-old wife, but the Ayatollah's not clear on that.
<snip>
This, it seems to me, is the most valuable contribution of Oriana Fallaci's work. I enjoy the don't-eat-your-sexual-partner stuff as much as the next infidel, but the challenge presented by Islam is not that the cities of the Western world will be filling up with sheep-shaggers. If I had to choose, I'd rather Mohammed Atta was downriver in Egypt hitting on the livestock than flying through the windows of Manhattan skyscrapers.
Macleans.ca - cont'd |
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Schadow Vice Admiral
Joined: 30 Sep 2004 Posts: 936 Location: Huntsville, Alabama
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 2:20 pm Post subject: |
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Mark Steyn is close to being the finest satirist writing today. He fits nicely into the company of Mark Twain and George Bernard Shaw who wrote, for instance, "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
Schadow _________________ Capt, 8th U.S. Army, Korea '53 - '54 |
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