November 20, 2016
Let’s Talk Turkey: Free Speech in an Autocratic EraBy Clarice FeldmanA. The Alternate Universe of the Europeans and the Domestic AcademiesIn increasingly lawless Europe they are criminalizing objections to the Western-Civilization-destroying, really homicidal immigration policies and intellectually bankrupt economic policies adopted by an incompetent class of political leaders. They are tearing their hair and shredding their alliances in response to Trump’s victory and the triumph of common sense.
In the less overwrought responses from Europe we see signs of a patronizing Big Brother, to which JMHanes responds online:
The Euro version of the "Trump needs guidance" meme was already taking on some water this weekend:
Britain and France on Sunday night snubbed a contentious EU emergency meeting to align the bloc’s approach to Donald Trump’s election, exposing rifts in Europe over the US vote. Hailed by diplomats as a chance to “send a signal of what the EU expects” from Mr. Trump, the plan fell into disarray after foreign ministers from the bloc’s two main military powers declined to attend the gathering demanded by Berlin and Brussels."
LOL! Are the Brits & the French finally telling Germany enough is enough?
"The German foreign minister had wanted to demonstrate that the EU was capable of rapid response when it came to foreign policy. Instead the disarray highlighted a familiar problem for Berlin, according to diplomats. “When the EU’s most powerful country wants to lead, other member states don’t necessarily follow,” said one EU diplomat."
Can't imagine why, can you? "But the German foreign ministry put a brave face on events, saying on Sunday: “It’s good that the EU meets… to look into the consequences of the election of Donald Trump for Europe.”
Other European leaders have openly criticised the incoming president. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker last week accused Mr Trump of ignorance. “We must teach the president-elect what Europe is and how it works. I believe we’ll have two years of wasted time while Mr Trump tours a world he doesn’t know.”
Can we really fault Juncker for thinking that, given the abiding ignorance of Trump's predecessor?
When I heard that Theresa May had apparently sent Trump one of the more gracious congratulatory messages, I suddenly found myself imagining Reagan-Thatcher redux. Wouldn't that be nice?
Here, we’re subtler because constitutional restraints imposed by the First Amendment still survive. With the media and universities almost entirely in the hands of the left, the punishment of dissenters is left to neurotic pedants and their immature students, paid thugs, and illegal immigrants and minorities revved up by false narratives about the president-elect and his inner circle.
In the academic monoculture of the left, dissenting speakers are banned from campus, shouted down and mobbed on stage if allowed in. Their tormentors are given Play-doh, coloring books, and safe spaces to shield them from any other point of view. Even elementary students are not exempt from such tyranny and propaganda. Teachers are urging kids to skip class to protest elections they aren’t old enough to vote in. San Francisco teachers have fashioned an alternate curriculum which attacks the president-elect, and suggests that those who follow it might not even alert their students to the fact that Hillary lost the election.
It’s quite obvious that many protestors are paid to do so and a good many -- perhaps more than half -- never voted or even registered to do so.
If you bound and crippled your children and forever weakened them you’d be guilty of child abuse. Yet parents spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to allow their children to be emotionally and intellectually handicapped. It’s paradoxical, to be sure.
continued at:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/11/lets_talk_turkey_free_speech_in_an_autocratic_era.html____________________________________________________
