The French Cave

The French have caved already. The managing Editor of French Soir, the newspaper who published the Mohammed cartoons, has been fired and the owner of the paper has issued an apology. Effing pathetic:



France Soir originally said it had published the images in full to show “religious dogma” had no place in a secular society.

But late on Wednesday its owner, Raymond Lakah, said he had removed managing editor Jacques Lefranc “as a powerful sign of respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual”.

Mr Lakah said: “We express our regrets to the Muslim community and all people who were shocked by the publication.”

The president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), Dalil Boubakeur, had described France Soir’s publication as an act of “real provocation towards the millions of Muslims living in France”.


Well, what do you know? I guess "religious dogma" does have a place in secular society.

See, the reason the West believes in Free Speech is not because we believe "religious dogma" needs to be kept out of the public sphere. For God's sake, the foundation of Free Speech is that all individuals were created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. We are created with Free Will, and imagination, and society is best served when individuals are allowed to express their imagination and will.

It all comes down to "religious dogma," really, whether you, as an individual, believe in God, or not.

Go back over the history of Western Civilization. The principles upon which our great culture is founded, did not spring out of the heads of people who had contempt for God. Instead, the ideas came from a deep contemplation of God, and of man's place in the God's creation.

The reason the French caved on this is, specifically, because of their "secular" society. By this, I do not mean to put down secularism, but instead to say that when a society holds up secularism as their ideal, eventually, they will lose all ideals, because they have nothing upon which to base any ideals.

G.K. Chesterton said that the person who doesn't believe in God, does not believe in nothing, but instead, will believe in anything.

In other words, when one's mind is not oriented around principles which rest upon bedrock faith, then one will waver and change one's principles when challenged.

The French, in this case, looked at their principles of secularism and got caught between two ideas.

1) the desire to avoid "religious dogma" in the public sphere,

and

2) the multiculturalist desire to be "tolerant" of the various peoples in their society.

If the question was not whether "religious dogma" should be allowed to assert itself in public, but instead was whether people have the inalienable right to express themselves, then the dilemna would have been an easy call.

But, the French Resistance caved to the Islamists, as quickly as they had once caved to the Nazis.

The French had better stop caving, or they are going to end up living in a cave.