5.23.2007 | How the mighty have fallen

"And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and Jonathan his son..." This, from 2 Samuel 17, describes David's great sorrow at the evil which had overtaken Saul. This is the passage that occurred to me as I read this account of two former stalwarts of human rights: the American Civil Liberties Union, and Amnesty International.

On the ACLU, we've got, from the Wall Street Journal, the sadly accurate headline, "The American Liberal Liberties Union". The thesis? The ACLU tends to ignore cases where it disapproves of the content of the speech. And, of course, like all good multi-cultis, weigh in with vigor whenever the rights of Muslims to blow us up in the name of the Religion of Peace whenever there is "hate speech" about.

For the ACLU, "hate speech" may best be translated as: "Say nothing that even remotely criticizes Muslims, members of other approved minority groups, or the unfettered 'right' of a woman to kill her unborn child." As for the rights of Christians to proclaim our views? Fugeddaboutit.

Then there are the pro-terrorists over at Amnesty International. If a Jew in Israel looks cockeyed at an Arab terrorist, that's a human rights violation. If the Arab blows up a pizzeria or a rocket kills an innocent woman (as happened just this morning, thanks to the terrorists of Hamas), well, those poor Arabs are freedom fighters.

The story is told in this New York Sun opinion piece. An objective man might think that Israel, with a robust, functioning democracy, complete with the rule of law, is somewhat better than places where you can be killed for being a Jew or Christian. You might think this; you'd be wrong if you were only to read what AI puts out.

By way of example, from the Sun article:

...in 2006, Amnesty singled out Israel for condemnation of human rights to a far greater extent than Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and other chronic abusers of human rights.

This kind of a double standard might be called anti-Semitism, but then Amnesty also is fierce in the protection of any terrorist who has been taken off the jihadi rolls and given that life of tropical ease at Gitmo.

The ACLU, Amnesty International, and others of that ilk might be only annoyances. But they reflect a dangerous mindset in the West: America, Israel, believing Christians, Jews, those in favor of actual free speech and civil liberties for all, must be put in their place. And actual enemies of freedom, who inhabit much of the Muslim world, must be treated with kid gloves lest they take offense.