by Yesterday the Ayn Rand Institute weighed in on the farce that is the United Nations Human Rights Council by saying:
The U.N. Human Rights Council recently passed a resolution urging nations to pass laws prohibiting the dissemination of ideas that “defame religion.” It appears that the resolution was partly a response to last year’s Danish cartoon crisis, where hordes of angry Muslims rioted in violent protest of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
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“To morally equate the Danish cartoonists with the Muslim rioters is to wipe out the distinction between speech and force. It is to declare there is no essential difference between the filmmaker Theo van Gogh,and the Muslim who murdered him for producing a film that ‘defamed Islam.’
“Freedom of speech means that individuals have the right to advocate any idea, without the threat of government censorship, regardless of how many people that idea may offend. To silence individuals in order to protect the sensibilities of mullahs and mobs is to wipe out this crucial right–and it is to whitewash the blood-stained hands of killers by declaring that they are no worse than those who peacefully criticize them.
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“The United States should condemn this resolution–and the morally corrupt organization that produced it.”
If we have the desire and the courage to stand for truth and justice then yes, the U.S. should reject this resolution utterly for the lie that it is.
If as a nation we do not, we can expect to see attempts to bring this exact form of censorship to media publications and the public square here at home. Moreover we will have asked for these attacks on our freedoms by virtue of having failed to protect them from the outset.
