Having plenty of Irish blood in me, I am delighted to report this story. Few conflicts could be more bitter than the Protestant/Catholic hostilities that have plagued Ireland. Yet the government of the Catholic South recently authorized a parade of Northern Protestants right through the heart of Dublin! IRA fanatics of course attacked the police who were protecting the parade and thus forced it to be cancelled. But I liked the response of the Irish Republic's Taoiseach:
"The mayhem forced Protestant hardliners from the Love Ulster campaign to abandon their plan to parade through Dublin, which the Irish government had supported in a gesture of reconciliation. It would have been the first parade in Dublin by pro-British Protestants since Ireland's partition into a mostly Protestant north and mostly Catholic south in 1921. Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Protestant "unionists", who favour Northern Ireland's union with Britain, should have enjoyed freedom to demonstrate their views. "There is absolutely no excuse for the disgraceful scenes in Dublin today," Ahern said. "It is the essence of Irish democracy and republicanism that people are allowed to express their views freely and in a peaceful manner.""
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The Irish government could teach the Muslims a lot.
Illegal to Insult Religious Beliefs?
Looks like half of America's Left would be locked up if the U.S. had the same laws as Germany:
"A German court on Thursday convicted a businessman of insulting Islam by printing the word "Koran" on toilet paper and offering it to mosques. The 61-year-old man, identified only as Manfred van H., was given a one-year jail sentence, suspended for five years, and ordered to complete 300 hours of community service, a district court in the western German town of Luedinghausen ruled..... The maximum sentence for insulting religious beliefs under the German criminal code is three years in prison".
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Wait! Silly me! I forget that you can insult Christianity all you like. It is only OTHER religions that you are not allowed to insult. So America's Left would be OK under German law after all.
Vicious Croat politically correct?
Although I am an unwavering and lifelong supporter of the State of Israel (I think modern Israel is one of the great adventures of the human spirit), I have often set out my view (e.g. here) that freedom of speech has to include freedom to deny the holocaust. I would be a pretty odd libertarian if I did not have that view. But it irks me if only SOME holocaust denials are penalized and condemned. If you are going to condemn holocaust denial, it surely should be ALL holocaust denial that you condemn. But it seems that some denials are more correct than others.
Feisty Scottish blogger, Neil Craig has had a letter published in The Scotsman which points that out:
"David Irving is sentenced to three years in jail for denying the Holocaust. The late ruler of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, also denied the Holocaust, but this did not prevent us helping him to get his own country and ethnically cleansing 560,000 Serbs, 240,000 of whom are still "missing". Nor did it prevent him being invited to the United Kingdom's celebration of the defeat of Nazism in Europe. Just as there are some Holocausts which may not be denied and some which may, there are clearly acceptable and unacceptable Nazis".
Neil Craig takes a line broadly opposite to the Clinton one -- he favours Serbia and deplores Croatia. There is no doubt that the Croats of WWII were appalling. They even sickened the Nazis. Gouging people's eyes out was their specialty. But I think I am like most Westerners in saying "A pox on both their houses". I think they deserve one-another. But that does not mean that we should condone their misdeeds.
