Sunday, February 17, 2013

If Lars Hedeggard Is "Racist," Then So Are John Milton and George Orwell

Andrew Bostom  has an interesting post about truth-teller Lars Hedegaard. Hedegaard, the Swedish journalist/editor who recently outwitted an assassin intent on silencing him forever, explains that the word "racist" is being deployed by those who hope to assassinate free speech:
After several years of misuse, the word ’racist’ means nothing more than a person considered by the rulers to be a threat to their power, and whom they thus persecute by all means possible. Being called ’racist’ in Sweden today is similar to being branded an ‘outlaw’ during the Middle Ages – a person standing outside the protection of the law, and whom one can thus freely lie about, assault and even kill.
 That being so, John Milton, who said this, is "racist":
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. ..Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?
 So, too, is George Orwell, who said this:
[T]he immediate enemies of truthfulness, and hence of freedom of thought, are the press lords, the film magnates, and the bureaucrats, but that on a long view the weakening of the desire for liberty among the intellectuals themselves is the most serious symptom of all… The journalist is unfree, and is conscious of unfreedom, when he is forced to write lies or suppress what seems to him important news.
And the biggest "racist" of all, perhaps, is Thomas Jefferson, who observed that "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

Lars Hedegaard stands up--and on guard--for freedom. Those who brand him "racist" for doing so do not.

It's as simple--and as sick-making--as that.

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