Obama State Dept. Official Calls for Criminalization of Burning the Qur’an – IOTW Report

Obama State Dept. Official Calls for Criminalization of Burning the Qur’an

PJM/ Robert Spencer: The totalitarian tendencies of the Left become more obvious by the day, as the Washington Post continues to cover itself in glory. Richard Stengel is a former editor of Time Magazine and was the State Department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs from 2013 to 2016. In this piece, he says the First Amendment is an “outlier” and calls for “hate speech” laws that would criminalize, among other things, the burning of Qur’ans.

Stengel claims that he is a convert to authoritarianism, a former believer in the freedom of speech: “When I was a journalist, I loved Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s assertion that the Constitution and the First Amendment are not just about protecting ‘free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.’”

His conversion came as a result of his world travel. Travel is supposed to be broadening, but in Stengel’s case it was narrowing. He says that even as he went around the world defending the freedom of speech, he came to despise that freedom: “But as a government official traveling around the world championing the virtues of free speech, I came to see how our First Amendment standard is an outlier.”

Part of his new dislike for this cardinal American freedom, the cornerstone of any free society, apparently came from his own lack of understanding of why it was so important, and inability to defend it in the face of criticism. He recounts that “even the most sophisticated Arab diplomats that I dealt with did not understand why the First Amendment allows someone to burn a Koran. Why, they asked me, would you ever want to protect that?” read more

19 Comments on Obama State Dept. Official Calls for Criminalization of Burning the Qur’an

  1. if you are free to burn a Koran you are free to print a Koran. or in other words Larry flint is free to print his fith and Koranimals are free to print their fetish porn.

    the kicker is I’m free to call it the way I see it and print what is sacred to me thank you very much.

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  2. Desecrating anybody’s religious texts or articles of faith is bad form and ungentlemanly.
    Don’t care if it is that heathen religion of the East, it is bad form.
    Illegal and a prosecutable offense? Not so much.

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  3. Wow.

    People shut down in police states.

    If the US has free college and you get a degree, you might make more money, but your taxes will be used to fund war, debt, and tyranny.

    If you have high speed rail, TSA will grope you to use it.

    If you get a job and work hard, you can buy a mobile phone, but the NSA will wiretap you. If you buy a car, your car will be tracked by license plate readers.

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