The growing restriction on Speech

I have argued at several JAS debates that I believe the way radical islam could creep into our way of life and possibly destroy it is through the self censorship of any criticism of radical islam. The self censorship comes through the real and perceived threat of violence towards any criticism. We have seen it already through the violent reaction to the Mohammad cartoons, the murder of Van Gogh in Holland, and many other examples. In my post below about the BBC, I cite two additional examples 1) the BBC admitting to self censorship and 2) a teacher France that had to go into hiding.

All the jihadists have to do is threaten writers and editors with suicide bombing of them or their families. The result of this censorship will be a white-wash of the true nature of radical islam, which will cause either no response or delayed response by us in the face of attack. To some extent the white wash is here. For example, you hear to no end how Hezbollah sets up schools and hospitals. The liberal media implies that this is a good thing, yet we never hear any details about it (about the schools being madrasses and not K-12).

There is still plenty of criticism of Islam in the conservative media, however, we will see how long that lasts....