Posted by Tina
Having grown up in the United States of America in the fifties and sixties I have been privileged to enjoy carefree opportunities to live, study, work and play in peace. Because I am an American I’ve been able to lounge on a riverbank, follow my dreams, get my hands dirty in dark rich soil, and sit in the dark of a movie theater, laughing or weeping, as a wonderful story unfolded before my eyes. I’ve been able to discover the joys and frustrations of owning businesses and trying out every new invention from television and transistor radios to laptops and the Blackberry. I’ve attended the church of my choice, purchased homes, spoken my mind in public and voted my conscience.
All of my life I have lived in this atmosphere of complete freedom and so I find it difficult to accept what is happening on many college campuses across America. I’m dismayed, saddened, shocked, and angry that people are being threatened and discouraged from speaking. I’m disgusted that administrators condone and indeed at times support the denial of free speech. Is this what passes for the equal exchange of ideas in our supposedly stellar institutions of learning?
I’m sharing this with you because we must not ignore or hide from the reality that freedom can be taken from us. It is imperative that we open our eyes to see clearly what is going on around us on college campuses today. David Horowitz is sounding a warning and we would do well to listen.
David speaks regularly on campuses around the country but in the last few years he has needed protection. Can you believe that? If it doesn’t shock you, you need to let it sink in. A body guard and six armed guards accompany David, an intelligent, thoughtful man who has spoken out for freedom and equal rights all of his life.
The following is a portion of the transcript from a talk he gave at USC. I hope you will read the entire transcript posted at Frontpage Magazine:
The assault on freedom of speech in America, which is most advanced on college campuses, is greater today than at any time since the Salem witch trials, thanks to the political Left, their liberal protectors, and the Islamic jihadists who have established a base in this country and on campuses like USC. ** Thus, the Muslim Students Association, whose members have helped to organize the protest against this talk, is part of the Muslim Brotherhood Network and the Brotherhood’s plan to destroy American civilization. How do we know this? We know it because during the Holy Land Foundation trial in Texas against a Muslim charity that was funding the terrorists, the FBI seized Brotherhood documents describing the network and the plan. The organizations named in the document, which had been set up to carry out the plan included the Muslim Students Association, the Council on Arab Islamic Relations, the Muslim American Society, and the Islamic Society of North America. All these groups not only have privileged access to university administrations on campuses across America, but to the administration in the White House as well. ** The organized smear campaign designed to intimidate the sponsors of tonight’s event and cause them to cancel it is a campaign familiar to every campus where speakers with views like mine appear. Speakers such as Robert Spencer, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, Daniel Pipes, Walid Shoebat all must be accompanied by armed guards when they appear in university settings because of the threats posed by the Muslim Students Association, Students for Justice in Palestine, and their non-Muslim leftist allies, the Progressive Alliance being only one of many. No critic of the Islamo-fascist war against the West is permitted a civil platform on a college campus today. That is the reality.
This is happening in America now! What will tomorrow bring if we fail to recognize and disallow such willful disregard for the important rights of speech and assembly? David states his own purpose in speaking:
My purpose in enduring these attacks is to teach the students who come to hear me two important lessons. The first is for Jewish students. As Jews we are facing real enemies in this country who will pretend to be for peace and justice, and to disarm us will go through the charade of engaging in civil exchanges with those Jewish organizations who are deluded enough to think they can persuade people who want to kill Jews for religious reasons that maybe they’re mistaken, and that we are really nice people who don’t deserve to be killed. I want these Jews not to make the mistake their forebears made with the Nazis whom they thought were too civilized to actually want to kill them. ** My second purpose is to alert Americans to the most important battle of our lifetime, which is the battle we are having on this very campus for freedom of speech. What is at stake in this conflict at USC – and on campuses across the country – is the ability to assert that there are Muslims who have a religious hatred for others and who consider it a religious obligation to make war on them. ** Of course there are also Muslims who dissent from these views and who find the genocidal sayings of the prophet Mohammed hateful and who would condemn the Muslim oppressions of women and gays and Christians. But so far not many have had the courage to speak up.
I will leave you with one more excerpt from David’s talk at USC that describes, in part, what occurred at Temple University when conservatives on campus invited Gert Wilders to speak:
…three university administrators, led by Temple’s Vice President of Student Affairs, summoned the students who had invited Wilders and told them their invitation was divisive, and hurtful to Temple’s Muslim students. They urged the students to cancel their event and suppress Wilders’ views, just what the leftists and their Muslim Brotherhood adviser(s) were demanding. When the students argued that this was a free speech issue, the Temple administrators told them, “Foreigners don’t have free speech rights in America.” (emphasis mine)