The Thomas Chronicles

Increasingly, the Left’s version of freedom of speech is to deny others their freedom of speech. That is, “I have the perfect right to shut you up.” In other eras of our history, we would call this censorship when one forcibly silences unwanted opinions. Any rational person would see this as antithetical to freedom of speech where ideas are exchanged and debated in the marketplace of ideas.

Or as the pro-choice activist says to a cop in this video, “You’re going to arrest me for my freedom of speech?”

If he hasn’t forgotten, vandalism is against the law…

(hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

I know many conservatives and many conscientious bloggers have gone after the Berkeleyites for their hostility toward the Marine recruitment center. It has been long known that radical, totalitarian Leftists reside in that little cubbyhole of the universe.

Their hostility toward our men and women in arms is well known; in fact, their claim to fame is their constant rallies and protests over every minutia of Leftist ideology. And, you know, I’m fine with that, as long as they conduct themselves in a democratic manner that reflects the conduct of our great Republic.

An ignoramus, if they are such a person, can believe any number of things, and it is their sovereign right as free-willed individuals to do so. What one believes is between them and Almighty God and no amount of legislations can be levied against them for their error in thought.

America’s business is not the business of thought-control and goose-stepping collective state ideology. It is to build damns, build roads, protect and defend the country against foreign incursions, etc. There is nothing extraordinary about what I’m saying. This is simply the basic function of government.

However, I do have issue with what happened at Berkeley this past week. Berkeley’s City Council was re-evaluating their decision to kick US Marine Recruiters out of the city, which was based on the presumption that the US military could go recruit elsewhere. America’s a big country and the military’s over funded anyway.

Well, during their deliberation in the council, two demonstrations occurred. One in support of the original decision to kick out the Marines; the other in support of the Marines themselves. I saw a news clip of these protests in the morning on Wednesday, I think, and what I saw was just shameful.

A middle-aged to elderly woman was telling the camera how a Berkeleyite assaulted her and torn her US flag from her. She thought she’d come out in support of the US Marine Recruiters; the anti-Marine Berkeleyites, however, had other ideas.

It is one thing to believe in Leftist ideology whose basic tenet is that the United States is a force of evil in the world. It is quite another thing to force others to believe in the same thing. From their actions and a litany of others throughout the latter half of the twentieth century to now, it is clear that Leftists (as opposed to the run of the mill liberal) do not believe in self governance, nor do they believe in the free exchange of ideas. Ironically, this is the very thing they proclaim to want: the freedom of ideas.

Please do note, that these people aren’t the pacifists they claim to be. They are not opposed to violences if it furthers their cause, and they employ brownshirt tactics if it gives them the edge. It seems that they are against the United States and they are using the US military, or the Marines in this instances, as proxies to vent their distaste.

I have not met a Leftist who wasn’t angry, and the majority of them that I’ve known are certainly not pacifists.

In light of the recent terrorist attack in Glasgow and the attempted attack in central London, Cal Thomas made remarks some view as Islamophobic. The Council on American-Islamic Relations placed Thomas’ remarks under their action list.

Action: Contact WTOP-FM About Thomas’ Islamophobia

ACTION REQUESTED:

Please call or e-mail WTOP to express your concerns about the Islamophobic attitudes expressed in this commentary. As always, be POLITE.

CAIR drew particular attention to Thomas’ remark that when he compared Islamofascists to a “slow spreading cancer”.

The problem is, Islamofascists are, well, evil and they do want to kill us Americans.

Either we’re at war or we’re not. C’mon folks.

Here are his statements in full. Is he a racist, or is this another instance of “I’ll beat you down in the name of Tolerance?” You decide.

(hat tip: Drudge Report)

***Update Below***

After yesterday’s post about the Angora wildfire in Lake Tahoe, another blog responded with this comment:

In my obsessive search for news about the fires, I decided to read blogs to hopefully read some first-hand accounts. But instead of that I am treated to drivel by dickweeds (That’s yours truly) who are suggesting environmentalists are to blame for the fires. Blogs really might be the worst thing that has ever happened to people because it makes you realize just how ignorant and self-centered people are. My hometown is slowly being destroyed and instead of worrying about the people who are losing their homes, people are using the opportunity to push their ignorant political agenda. Picking up some sticks in the forest would have done nothing to help prevent the fire. Nevermind that there are 150,000 acres in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Everything is so simple and obvious when you are behind a keyboard.

Yyy-ouch.

Well, that morning on Foxnews, a park ranger working in the Lake Tahoe area said that all efforts to remove deadwood and underbrush had been successfully blocked by environmentalists for 11 years. He further said that the entire area was like a “furnace” with plenty of fuel laying around. All it needed was a match.

I can’t find a video to substantiate it for this blog, but there’s an article from the Tahoe Daily Tribune that says much of the same thing.

Even before the ash from the Angora fire has settled, some South Lake Tahoe residents have begun to lob accusations that decisions based on politics contributed to Sunday’s devastating blaze.

The League to Save Lake Tahoe, the Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club’s influence drew much of the ire of Sue Abrams, a resident of the Mountain View Estates subdivision heavily damaged during the blaze. These groups exert too much control over Tahoe Regional Planning Agency policy decisions, according to Abrams.

“No policies in the 30 years I’ve been here allow us to create defensible space,” Abrams said during a phone interview on Monday. “Every ordinance that was put together over the past 30 years except for the past year or so has been hands-off. Every bit of this was preventable had politics moved aside.”

Abrams, unsure of the status of her house as of Monday evening, filed suit against the federal government in 1997 concerning the management of hazard trees in the basin and is looking to bring issues surrounding the Angora fire into court as well.

drivel by dickweeds who are suggesting environmentalists are to blame for the fires?… People are using the opportunity to push their ignorant political agenda?

I would greatly prefer to preserve our forests. Somehow I don’t think leaving dessicated kindling wood all over the ground in a fire-prone forest is a good idea. But maybe I’m just a stupid ignoramus behind a keyboard.

Update 6/26/07:

Boy howdy, the folks up at Lake Tahoe are angry. Here’s an LA Times article describing the residents’ extreme annoyance and displeasure.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE — The mood of the crowd jammed into the meeting room was angry.

Many had lost their homes to the forest fire that swept through the Sierra Nevada just south of Lake Tahoe.

They said they were angry at bureaucrats and environmentalists who made cutting of trees and clearing of land difficult. There was always too much red tape, they said, and now it was too late.

In all, a crowd of nearly 2,000 people descended on the South Tahoe Middle School auditorium Monday night, wanting to be heard in the face of their losses.

And if there was an object of scorn in the crowd, it was the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a powerful bi-state environmental land use agency charged with managing the resources of the basin.

When a speaker mentioned the agency, the crowd responded with a chorus of boos. “What a joke!” yelled one man.

The wrangling began in earnest over the assignment of blame, including arguments over whether federal and state forest managers had made their tree clearing rules too strict in the face of pressure by environmentalists.

A common sentiment Monday was expressed by Jerry Martin, a bartender at the Horizon Casino Resort, whose house was still standing, although eight others around it had burned to the ground. He said U.S. Forest Service rules regulating the harvesting of dead trees were too stringent for those living next to government land.

“I hate to get political, but environmentalists wouldn’t let us cut down the dead trees,” he said.

The amount of fuel in the Tahoe Basin has reached critical levels after years of discord among environmentalists and government agencies over how to thin forests and reduce the fire threat. And it has led to predictions of a devastating wildfire because the basin is one of the areas with the most fire starts in the Sierra Nevada.

….

…the people at the meeting Monday said that regional planning agency regulations were the source of much of the problem when it came to clearing the land.

A man got up and said, “I’ve lived here 35 years. Is this going to open TRPA’s eyes?” The room erupted into cheers and applause.

According to the SFGate.com, though, the blame for this fire laid squarely on the shoulders of all the people who moved to Lake Tahoe, from the Gold Rushers to the current residents of the area to… Global Warming?

The raging fire that is denuding hillsides and darkening the clear blue waters of Lake Tahoe is the final product of 150 years of mismanagement of the Sierra Nevada ecosystem, fire management experts said Monday.

….

Ecologists and local residents said they saw such a disaster coming.

“It’s the fire we’ve been anticipating for 20 years,” said Patsy Miller, who owns a residence at Fallen Leaf Lake, about a mile from where the flames had spread by late Monday.

“People have interjected their homes into a system that has a natural tendency to burn very frequently, and where we have suppressed the frequency of those fires for so long, there’s an ungodly amount of fuel there,” Forest Service regional ecologist Hugh Safford said.

The immediate cause of the Angora fire was under investigation Monday. But the fire’s beginnings can be traced all the way back to the Gold Rush and the Comstock-era mining boom.

“They clear-cut about two-thirds of the basin,” said Shane Romsos, science and evaluation program manager for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency.

…

Federal officials began to shift fire-management policies in the mid-1990s and in recent years have sought to clear away dense underbrush and thin trees in the forests around Tahoe and in the rest of the Sierra. U.S. Forest Service officials said those efforts probably saved at least 500 homes that otherwise could have been engulfed by the Angora fire.

So, what’s the solution to all this? How do we prevent another catastrophy like this?

Just letting nature handle the recovery isn’t an option after 150 years of human activity and mismanagement.

“We need to more aggressively manage our forests,” Miller said. “In the days of the Indians you had a lot of periodic small fires that kept the forests clean, so fires wouldn’t get huge and out of control. We can’t rely on that anymore.”

The Forest Service’s Safford noted that even the climate has come under human influence, as evidenced by global warming and increased forest fires in a dryer, warmer West.

Okay, let’s get this clear. The residents of Lake Tahoe are all up in arms over what they view as government overreach. They are blaming the environmentalists for throwing up one obstruction and red tape after another to halt or slow down the rate of clearing the deadwood and underbrush. They are so upset over the matter they are willing to sue environmental groups for directly causing the Angora fire.

The environmentalists on the other hand, represented by SFGate.com, suggested that, at root, humans residence in the area is the real cause of the fire. The Gold Rush miners destroyed the original forest and it’s been mismanaged ever since. Though they don’t overtly advocate it, it almost sounds as though the environmentalists want all the residents in Angora to take a hike because it was their fault anyway.

It seems like their solutions to halt future fires is to draw up more regulations…

Yeah, like the regulations that started this one?

(hat tip: NewsBusters)

Speaking of tolerance, this article from the Guardian perfectly elucidates my point of the pseudo-tolerance that’s endemic to the ideology of the Left.

A ban on a teenage girl wearing a “purity ring” was attacked at the high court today as an “unlawful interference” with her right to express her Christian faith.

Lydia Playfoot, 16, is one of a group of Christians at the Millais school in Horsham, West Sussex, who wears the ring as a sign of her belief in abstinence from sex until marriage.

The teenager claims her secondary school, which allows Muslim and Sikh students to wear headscarves and religious bracelets, is breaching her human rights by preventing her from wearing the ring.

But authorities claim the band, which is engraved with a Biblical verse, is not an integral part of the Christian faith and contravenes its uniform policy.

Today, human rights barrister Paul Diamond, appearing for Lydia, argued that secular school authorities had no right to set themselves up as arbiters of faith and “cannot rule on religious truth”.

He asked deputy high court judge Michael Supperstone QC to declare that the school had acted outside its powers when it banned the wearing of the purity ring.

He also claimed that the school authorities were violating Lydia’s right to “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” under article nine of the European convention on human rights.

It is not the first time students have faced school bans over Christian symbols.

Earlier this year, 13-year-old Catholic schoolgirl Samantha Devine was told not to wear a crucifix on a chain because it breached health and safety rules at the Robert Napier school, in Gillingham, Kent.

The school said the only exception it would make to its uniform rule would be if the jewellery was an essential part of a particular religion, which they did not feel was the case for the teenager.

After years of observation on the point, the Left has a consistent pattern of choosing to be tolerant of ideologies and religions and behaviors that are antithetical to Western Christian culture. Of course, this article was addressing a particular injustice in Britain, not the United States, but the pattern of behavior from the Left here in the United States is very similar.

Indeed, most of our liberals want to re-make America into the image of Europe and discard our outmoded pedestrian views. Americans are really a backward people, didn’t you know?

More

Michelle Malkin has a longer post up on this topic.  Bookworm has one up as well.

The liberals always love drape themselves in the noble cloak of tolerance.

Tolerance, indeed, is a great virtue for an individual to have. It helps an individual squeeze through the strictures of his his rigid thinking and look past what he thinks he knows.

By doing so, he is building something called a character.

Building a character is not done very often anymore. Indeed, none of our churches (at least, none I’ve seen), none of our institutions— nothing in our entire society at the present time encourages the building of a character. Quite the opposite.

Virtually all of society is telling the individual to do the opposite of building a character— to numb out, give in, do what feels good, indulge. The only time you’ll hear about character in the way I’m using the word is when politicians talk about it to promote themselves and smear their opponents.

It goes without saying that secular progressives don’t use the word “tolerance” in the same way. Oftentimes, they use the term to control social behavior and promote indifference to real divisions and real differences. To have “tolerance” toward someone or something, there must be something objectionable. Otherwise, what are you tolerating?

Instead, people are being force to deny reality in the name of “tolerance”.

A spade is no longer a spade.

We also have the Guardians of Tolerance standing virtuously at the side waiting to pound people into pancaked lumps of hamburger if they step out of line. I have heard and witnessed many times when some poor sop was stomped verbally because he said something “intolerant”. Heck, I’ve been the target at times as well. These are self-elected people all around you who take it upon themselves to force you to be “tolerant” of others by force of arms, if you will.

Every supporter of the Iraqi war living in a Blue State knows intimately what I’m talking about.

When you point out the fact that most women divorce their husbands in the wake of them losing their jobs, the Guardians of Tolerance will be there to correct you.

When you point out that the white American middle class are the decisive majority serving in our military rather than poor minorities, the Guardians have a sharp elbow waiting for you.

When you point out that lots these people talking “family values” have multiple kids in multiple marriages, the Guardians will be there to take care of you too.

Oh, and if you point out that the enforcement of liberal tolerance through force is probably the most prevalent intolerance in today’s world… well, you get the idea.