On the Third Hand…

Because Steyn’s Online.

MommaBear’s post below inspired the above comment. I understand her outrage; although I don’t completely share it. (In fact my exact first thought on reading her post was that you can’t censor someone with a web page. I just liked the rhyme better.) What the Telegraph did was not, strictly speaking, censorship. If the BBC (state-financed) had pulled his article, that would perhaps have been censorship. The Telegraph; however, is not state-run and so their decision to pull his article was simply because they (very likely rightly) thought their readers and advertiserers would be upset about it. They were simply refusing to print something they thought people wouldn’t want to hear. Not censorship, just plain, old-fashioned cowardice. Their bottom line was at stake. I can’t even really blame them.

Steyn’s article is cold, baby, freezing cold, chill-to-the-bone cold. And completely correct.

Though I think he does miss one thing. If anything can convince those like Paul Bigley that the jihadis cannot be negotiated with, that they really do not have any human sympathy, that they use their religion to disguise their sociopathy, that one thing that may convince them is Ken Bigley’s death. And perhaps, just perhaps, while the Islamists were learning things from Britain, Britain was learning a few things about the Islamists. I haven’t given up hope for Britain yet. Steyn shouldn’t either.