Behead Those Who Insult Obama

I have not yet blogged about Obama's outrageous threats to use Missouri law to criminally prosecute entities engaging in speech that is displeasing to The One. If you have not seen this, you owe it to yourself to watch this link from a Missouri tv station. Fortunately, the Governor of Missouri is fighting back, and has issued a statement calling Obama's actions "scandalous beyond words." But this is not the first time Obama has resorted to Gestapo tactics in an effort to silence his critics, and it is alarming to contemplate the assault on the First Amendment that awaits under an Obama presidency. One can just imagine a string of "hate speech" laws -- "hate speech," of course, being defined as speech that is harmful to the interests of Obama and his "progressive" friends.

Obama's assault on free speech reminds me of how Islam deals with speech it does not like: "Behead Those Who Insult The Prophet." The latest incident in Islam's ongoing war against free speech occurred this weekend in London, as the publisher of a new book about Mohammed had his house fire bombed by Muslim extremists.

Islam's assault on free speech in the West is disturbing enough. The last thing we need is fascism from our own elected leaders.


10/1/08 Update: Andy McCarthy from the National Review hits on the same themes:

In London last week, a frightful warning was sounded about encroaching tyranny. At an important conference, speaker after impassioned speaker warned of the peril to Western values posed by freedom-devouring sharia — the Islamic legal code. Like all tyrannies, sharia’s first target is speech: Suppress all examination of Muslim radicalism by threats of prosecution and libel actions, and smugly call it “the rule of law.”But we may already be further gone than the London conferees feared. And without resort to the Islamicization that so startled them. For that, we can thank the campaign of Barack Obama.