Tea Party is new front in the 'war on terror'-Steyn

4/25/10: "If the Tea Partiers were truly the murderous goons they've been portrayed as, they would draw the obvious lesson from the kid gloves with which Comedy Central strokes Islam. They would say,

• "Enough with peaceful rallies where we pick up the litter afterwards.

• Let's just threaten to decapitate someone.

• You get more respect that way. At least from the media....

Comedy Central – you know, the "hip" "edgy" network with Jon Stewart from whom "young" Americans under 53 supposedly get most of their news – just caved in to death threats. From a hateful

• 83-year-old widow who doesn't like Obamacare? Why, no! It was a chap called Abu Talhah al Amrikee,

who put up a video on the Internet explaining why a "South Park" episode with a rather tame Mohammed joke was likely to lead to the deaths of the show's creators. Just to underline the point, he showed some pictures of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film director brutally murdered by (oh, my, talk about unfortunate coincidences) a fellow called Mohammed. Mr. al Amrikee helpfully explained that his video incitement of the

• murder of Matt Stone and Trey Parker
• wasn't really "a threat but just the likely outcome."

All he was doing, he added, was "raising awareness" – ...

• Faced with this explicit threat of violence, what did Comedy Central do?

Why, they folded like a Bedouin tent. They censored "South Park," not only cutting all the references to Mohammed but, in an exquisitely post-modern touch,

• also removing the final speech
• about the need to stand up to intimidation.

Stone & Parker get what was at stake in the Danish cartoons crisis, and many other ostensibly footling concessions: Imperceptibly, incrementally,

• remorselessly, the free world is sending the message

that it is happy to trade core liberties for the

• transitory security of a quiet life.

That is a dangerous signal to give freedom's enemies. So the "South Park" episode is an

• important cultural pushback."

• from Mark Steyn column, "Tea Party the new front in 'war on terror'," Orange County Register, 4/24/10

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