The University of “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” Florida continues on its slippery-slope, First Amendment descent. The latest was the politically correct, administrative putdown of a campus group that sponsored a showing of the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.
Posters advertising “Radical Islam Wants You Dead” as a movie tease prompted more than official disapproval. A vice president of student affairs demanded an apology because the publicity approach was offensive to Muslims on campus.
Two points:
*”Radical Islam Wants You Dead” is protected speech, even if it offends. Communicating in this democracy can, at times, be discomforting, unpalatable and insulting to some – or to most or, seemingly sometimes, to all. But it’s the price we pay for unsupressed, free speech.
*Second, “Radical Islam Wants You Dead” is, quite arguably, true. To anyone paying attention in the post/9-11 world, it’s not exactly hyperbole or character assassination. In fact, “You” also includes non-radical Muslims.
And, yes, I’ve seen Obsession . It ends, appropriately enough, with the famous quote of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
It still applies.