May 8, 2015

In Praise of Pamela Geller

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"I will continue to speak in defense of freedom until the day I die. It's just that simple. It's not even a choice. It's a calling."

How can any thinking and civilized person ever believe there is a wisp of truth to the proposition: "There are times when it is 'understandable' that people would slaughter others because of a cartoon"? Everyone who follows world events in the United States, regardless of their political leanings, has seen the unimaginably vile actions of ISIS against "unbelievers" and "those who defame the prophet." How can anyone take their side? To do so even to the smallest extent renders the defender equally vile. And yet, of course, that is what we have come to in the cesspool that is the American left.

Over the past few days the denouncement and criticism of Pamela Geller for the Garland, Texas terrorist attack against Americans on American soil has reached unusually disgusting levels. The transexual poster pedophiles at the New York Times, in an item typical of the crack-smoking Marxist media and its acolytes, proclaims in an editorial: Pamela Geller, the anti-Islam campaigner behind the Texas event, has a long history of declarations and actions motivated purely by hatred for Muslims… To which the always measured Neoneocon responds:

So here’s my challenge to the Times editors: give us some quotes from Geller. Some, you know, evidence of her hatred. Surely there must be reams and reams and reams. What has Geller said that’s so venomous and bigoted? About whom did she say it, all Muslims or Muslim terrorists? What was so hateful about the cartoon that won the contest, and why is it so obvious it wasn’t about free speech? neo-neocon

Neoneocon is correct. You will search long and search deep for the evidence of such hatred for it is slim to scant to none.

The attitude of the American Left towards Geller is expected. But more disturbing and more to the point of the issue involving "Free Speech" are the Pecksniffian qualifying statements from a number of commentators on the Right.

These blighted souls are those I term the "Yes But Brigade." These are the folks, Greta Van Susteren as just one notable example among many, who seem to feel that Geller "provoked" two Islamic insects to get in their car, drive to the event in Garland, Texas, and attempt to enter the venue with rifles in order to slaughter all, all, the Americans inside. That they failed is beside the point. If things had gone the other way we would have had an attack on American soil more dire that the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris.

And yet still there are those on the right ("Yes.... but.....") that believe that Pamela Geller should just have been very, very quiet about cartoons that "defame the prophet;" that she should have just, like all these quiet cowards on the right, let the terrorists continue their winning streak when it comes to shutting down the right to make a drawing.

I've met Pamela Geller personally on a few occassions and in the past corresponded with her and consulted her by phone during the time I was the Editor-In-Chief of Pajamas Media. Geller is a person who, in the wake of 9/11, found her life changed, changed utterly, and who has followed the cause of resistance to terrorism without fear or favor since that time.

It has led her to lead the opposition to the insulting mosque near Ground Zero. And it has led her to be one of the most unlikely champions of free speech. Many say that Garland was just some sort of bizarre attention-getting device for Geller, but that is not true. It is a device for calling attention to the fact that many do not believe their own ardent proclamations of 1st Amendment when the hammer comes down.

Just now on Fox News, playing in the background, a panel was discussing Geller some pundit declared: Quote "I am a first ammendment absolutist and there is no "but" after that, but...." Endquote

None of these pundits has, between them, five percent of the courage that Geller has displayed. Nor will they have her courage. Ever. Islam has cowed them all; cowed them into their cowardly appeasement signaled by their "Yes, but".

In sharp contrast, Geller has effectively put her life in jeopardy now and for decades to come. For the rest of her life she will never again be able to more without guards and a care for her security. She has sacrificed the freedom found in anonymity for the 1st Amendment that enables so many of those who criticize her to make their living and live their life. She has not made herself a target for Islamic vermin out of a thirst for personal publicity. Nobody sane does that and Geller is more than sane. She has done this because she believes that it is evil to kill people for making drawings. She believes this with no "Buts" attached. Geller has more balls than all of the "Yes But Brigade" combined.

More than that she has principles by which she lives and which she has not compromised. She's not some martyr in the making like Joan of Arc. She's much more like, if you want a contemporary icon, Sylvester Stallone's character in Cobra, Marion Cobretti: I don't deal with psychos. I put them away.

If the Right in this country had a division of people with the balls and brains and insights of Geller, our sinking ship of state could be made to float and sail on again.

Those on the Right who condemn Geller are those who already "hold their manhoods cheap." This is a war. A war that has come -- again -- to American soil, and one that will not go away. What happened in Garland was not a "provocative art show," it was another armed skirmish of a long terror campaign. ISIS in the last few days has confirmed it. Geller knows what it was and speaks the truth about Islam's aims in America. No "buts" about it.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at May 8, 2015 8:17 AM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

Hear, hear.

Posted by: Rob De Witt at May 8, 2015 9:40 AM

Those who kneel and fellow-travel with the rapers, mutilators, and murderers of men women and children,
are the excrement of our society.
They need to be flushed out.
Geller deserves a USA National Medal of Honor and our support for risking her life against the jihadist jackals.

Posted by: Howard Nelson at May 8, 2015 9:58 AM

Pam's outrage is against ...Islamists . So should every American. We all wish Obama and his lib-progressive Dems did as well. Islamists are murderous thugs and cannot be abided by any civilized person. It is not cartoons that are the feature here. It is her WARNING against Islamists that our media and the lib Dems and Obama will not give. Radical Mosques, any sharia-jihadist-madrasse Muslim in the USA should be outed and ousted . They are all 5th columnists.

Posted by: Glenn Koons at May 8, 2015 10:41 AM

Free speech, and free thought, are like rights of way. If you do not use them you will in time lose them. Geller and Wilders are doing the work others don't have the character to do.

The winning comment from the Muhammad cartoon contest was from the man who wrote that the winners were the two chalk outlines.

Posted by: james wilson at May 8, 2015 11:02 AM

It's so depressing that all of those American men who fought and died on battlefields all over this world truly believed they were fighting for liberty for the future of this country.

It now seems to me they have died in vain. There's nothing more pitiful on earth than a cowardly people who don't even know who their enemies really are.

Posted by: Denny at May 8, 2015 11:06 AM

I doubt that Pamela Gellar would ever be on a list of "friends" because, well, she's not my cup of tea. But she will always be on my list of heroes. And she, like most who are possessed by a cause and not the other way around, will always seem at a right-angle to the lemmings rushing over the cliff.

Posted by: Joan of Argghh! at May 8, 2015 11:27 AM

The targets in the case of cartoons and other "offensive" expressions are the offenders themselves. Why should the cowards among us care? They themselves are "safe" from those assaults.

The fact remains that the vast majority of victims of jihadist terror are not people who draw naughty cartoons, but ordinary folks going about their business. Nobody is safe from those attacks. Nobody among the 3,000 in the Twin Towers ever drew an offensive anti-Islamic cartoon.

Posted by: Don Rodrigo at May 8, 2015 11:39 AM

I feel as though I've stepped through the looking glass: Chris Hayes agrees with my position, but Laura Ingraham does not.

Ace had it right: it's all about class with these people. I'm certain T. Coddington Vorhees IV (thanks, Iowahawk) would turn up his nose and sniff haughtily at the thought someone would have the temerity to say something negative about the savages attempting to saw off his head.

Posted by: physics geek at May 8, 2015 11:58 AM

Ace had it right: it's all about class with these people

Which is why certain "conservatives" voted for Obama. He went to the right schools.

Posted by: Don Rodrigo at May 8, 2015 12:00 PM

To to say that a group of people is so infantile that it needs to be protected from cartoons is far more insulting to that group than any cartoon could ever be.

Posted by: Gagdad Bob at May 8, 2015 1:26 PM

Pamela Geller: okay, those are the hills I want to die on.

Posted by: Ray Van Dune at May 8, 2015 2:12 PM

Limbaugh gobsmacked the MSNBC slackers right in their collective pie holes when he told them that they are doing the same thing when they rub the Muslims faces in the Gay marriage/Transgender/Gay Rights blather. What do they think those demands are?

Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck at May 8, 2015 2:16 PM

What's truly frightening is the absence of organized resistance to the accelerating encroachment and penetration of Islamism into our Congress, Executive, national security agencies, communities, and schools.

Except for our military and police, we've had it too easy for too long. How surprised will we be when the next Black Swan makes 9/11 look like a mild massacre.

Posted by: Howard Nelson at May 8, 2015 3:33 PM

For some reason I can't get worked up over this silliness.

As these people adults?

Posted by: ghostsniper at May 8, 2015 5:09 PM

The offense is the murdering religion. Pam Geller is a hero and I pray for her safety. The world watches as ISIS slaughters, beheads, burns alive, abducts, rapes, sells children, etc., but Pam Geller has a cartoon show. Being from a background that experienced Islam firsthand (Armenian), the Armenians were defenseless and there was nothing to do to appease their murderers. I am offended by mass murder.

Posted by: andre at May 8, 2015 8:20 PM

The REAL reason for that eternal, terminal "but" in the arguement.................

It has to do with that speech of Kurtz' in Conrad's "heart of darkness".

"EXTERMINATE ALL THE BRUTES"--said he. They simply cannot wrap their heads around the concept of a war to the death; nor understand that we are in one whether we want one or not. A war fought on the next street the next block, or on our own doorsteps. No set weapons, no sense of 'who' the enemy might be--what sane person wants that?

It is that simple, as well as that difficult.

Lock and load, boys and girls.

Posted by: Flintlock at May 8, 2015 8:39 PM

It's sad indeed to see Ingraham, O'Reilly, Trump et al. resort to the 'you wouldn't have been raped if you hadn't dressed so provocatively' argument, but there you are. As Mark Levin says, the true issue is not freedom of speech, but the imposition of shari'a law. It's madness, cowardice and suicide to relinquish our civilization without a fight.

Yes, this is the hill to die on.

God Bless and protect Pamela Geller. She is the kind of human we are a called to be.

Posted by: ahem at May 8, 2015 9:12 PM

"The American people, and that's everybody from the rich aristocrats to the poor illegal immigrants and hard-scrabble folks, do not have the will to fight for anything except tangential, insignificant issues, like injustices to migrant workers, or whether women were getting paid the same, or whether queers could get married.
We will sit in the metaphorical pot of water as the frog did, getting used to increased heat until one day ... we perish.

We are all listening to rumors that something bad is gonna happen, worse than 9-11.
Instead of cowering and hoping that it won't happen near us we should be fire-bombing Baghdad and other concentrations of Muslim terrorists. Can't find 'em? Enlarge the target area.
The only solution for the Muslim threat is to kill every last one of them, their families, their friends, their neighbors;
to lay waste to their crop lands and salt their wells, to destroy their buildings such that no two stones lay atop one another.
The justification, if one is needed, is that the Muslims are Evil.

If it can save just one Pamela Geller ...

Posted by: chasmatic at May 8, 2015 11:50 PM

The real cowards in the matter of Islam? (And by the way, I don't go along with "radical Islam", Islamism or any such word or phrase - it's Islam pure and simple.)

The "leaders" who have repeatedly, starting with Bush directly after 9/11, failed to admit that without drastic action (which would probably cost them power) the war will go on as far as the eye can see and claim a few hundreds of lives per year - and freedoms too, as the countries of the West gradually turn into surveillance states to counter the threat.

The Kaaba should have become part of a cloud of toxic smoke on 9/12. It should now. Today. And until it does, the 1400-year war will continue.

Posted by: Fletcher Christian at May 9, 2015 1:47 AM

We're deluding ourselves if we think that Islam has been 'hijacked' by extremists; rather, Islam is in the midst of a religious "Reformation", a cleansing and returning to its original roots. This is the secret of its great power. Lenin overthrew the Russian empire with fewer people than are present at most board meetings. Similarly with Mao and Hitler. And with Jesus Christ, for that matter. So great is the power of a single idea to move men's souls.

It's a mistake for us in the west to assume that we are 'above' the impulse to faith. Faith may be 'dead' to us, but it is alive to millions of others. In our self-deception, we have discounted the great need for transcendent belief that motivates us all---hell, even secular humanism is a religion.

In the meantime, we await the emergence of the one compelling idea that will galvanize us into fighting for our own survival...

Posted by: ahem at May 9, 2015 6:04 AM

I believe Ann Barnhardt hits hard and heavy against Islam, making Pamela Geller appear like a Girl Scout. I also believe Ann Barnhardt has been bringing the evil aspects of Islam much longer than Geller. I respect both women.

Posted by: Cilla Mitchell at May 9, 2015 7:53 AM

re: ahem @ 5-9-15 7:53 AM
"...we await the emergence of the one compelling idea that will galvanize us into fighting for our own survival..."

How about sustaining love of life for ourselves, families, and other like-minded people, and expressing it in fairness, self-expression, and opposition to opponents of this kind of life?
Nothing new here; pity that today it is the bold old.

Posted by: Howard Nelson at May 9, 2015 8:30 AM

Great post on Pamela and more power to her.

I agree: the First Amendment primarily exists because we are all going to be both offensive and offended from time to time with regard to others' thoughts, words, art and deeds. Trying to get all offense to go away, is the height of immaturity and unrealism.

I think we live in a time of great societal regression in which we mistake freedom for security and strident group think for truth....Or the one who screams and protests the loudest is the one who thinks they get and own the truth. What complete idiocy.

Posted by: Webutante at May 9, 2015 12:08 PM

It is everyone's OWN choice to be offended or not be. It is not the fault of the alleged offender.

Posted by: Janmil200 at May 9, 2015 1:24 PM

Who will the Left blame after the Islamists attack and murder all of the participants at a GAY WEDDING? After all, Islam hates homosexuality even more than cartoons. Surely, staging a gay wedding is the ultimate in provocation for the Islamist crazies. Why, the groom and groom are just asking for it!!!

Posted by: Hangtown Bob at May 10, 2015 6:16 AM

What do monkeys have to do with war, oppression, crime, racism and even e-mail spam?
You'll see that all of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense once we go Inside the Monkeysphere.

Check it out, it explains everything:

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

Posted by: chasmatic at May 10, 2015 11:26 AM

How is it that there is so much confusion over the term "Islamophobia"? Pam Geller and Ann Barnhardt are not islamophobic, they are Islamofearless and Islamodefiant. Those who criticize them are the true islamophobes who crouch in fear of offending Islamists who are offensive.

It is ironic that those who are the most easily offended are the most offensive.

Offend those who make Islam offensive.

Posted by: Richard G. at May 10, 2015 12:12 PM

If all of us who are determined to preserve our most precious possession, the freedom of speech, were to post a link to a "Prophet" Muhammad cartoon everyday, they would become so ubiquitous that it would become obvious even to the Islamites that the idea of stopping the cartooning with jihad attacks was a lost cause. Free Speech lovers outnumber the Islamites by far. Let's take advantage of it and put an end to this barbaric lunacy.

https://drawthevileprophet.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/preserve-freedom-of-speech-draw-the-vile-prophet-muhammad/

Posted by: Theodoric at May 10, 2015 1:05 PM

We few, we happy few will win this fight in the end, despite the efforts of those who worship death, and those in the media who cheer them on.

Posted by: ro at May 10, 2015 2:06 PM

In La La land states that infringe on the rights and responsibilities of citizens, parents, and teachers to used armed force for protection, there is no true freedom of speech. Innocent heroes who carry weapons are given 7 year jail sentences, while murderers are let out of jail in 5 years.
The JPFO, Jews for the Preservation of firearms ownership, document how millions of innocents have been and are being killed and driven from their homes by vicious murderers and their useful idiot Quack prostitutes who advocate sitting duck and running duck defensive strategies.
In the La La land state of Connecticut at Newtown at the site of the former Sandy Hook Elementary School which they tore down,
they are building something else. There are signs there saying "visitors to the site must
sign a non disclosure agreement." Visitors to the site should contact Consigli
860 239-0257.

Universities also do not trust their students and teachers with fire arms to defend themselves. In fact in a Kenya university, 150
students were murdered and hundreds wounded while
survivors had to wait 7 hours until military forces could over come the 4 attackers.

In Garland, Texas a single NRA National Rifle Association trained individual who happened to be an off duty police officer killed two heavily armed attackers with a concealed pistol.

These two Jihadists could have readily done the same thing in many so called American La La Land schools if Pamela Geller had not provoked them into attacking in a state like Texas where the NRA, armed carry individuals, and the police still have the support of responsible government officials.

Posted by: Edward Mackouse at May 10, 2015 2:16 PM

There is a muslim brothethood'er who works in this admin who is close to an imam who actually stated, "Christians provoke us! If they wouldn't be Christians, we wouldn't have to kill them". So much for laura ingram, greta and OReilly who THINK WE SHOULD NOT DO THINGS TO PROVOKE THESE SICKOS!!

Posted by: whatzzhername at May 10, 2015 5:34 PM

Pamela Gellar responded to you, Gerard.

Enjoy!!!

pamelageller . com/2015/05/gerard-vanderleun.html/

Posted by: cond0011 at May 10, 2015 6:19 PM

Don't forget Bill Whittle, of Common Sense Resistance, who has devoted two segments to his support of Pamela Geller:

https://www.billwhittle.com/afterburner/i-support-free-speech

https://www.billwhittle.com/trifecta/post-texas-shooting-free-speech-mousetrap-terrorism

His humor and keen insights really put this event, and the cowards who condemn Ms. Geller for it, in perspective.

Posted by: Reginald Bacon at May 11, 2015 8:22 AM