John Kerry's Shamefully Familiar Victim-Blaming: Matt Welch on Tonight's Kennedy
Fox Business Network at 8 p.m. ET. Show also includes Glenn Greenwald!
Secretary of State John Kerry's appalling Charlie Hebdo statement yesterday—which he tried to walk back today—was no mere slip of the tongue, I argue on tonight's Kennedy (Fox Business Network, 8 p.m. ET). No, they're an accurate reflection on how the Obama administration has, just like a prospective Clinton administration most definitely will, treated Muslim-tweaking free speech in America and the West.
Tune in at 8 p.m. ET to hear me ramble about it! Also, Glenn Greenwald will be talking about current events, which may be of interest….
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I for one can’t wait to hear how John Kerry’s comments were misunderstood.
I can. In fact, I can wait until the end of time to hear anything about that idiot. Anything at all.
Totally. The fact that they mirror his employer’s belief that the future does not belong to those who slander He Who Shall Not Be Drawn is just a strange coincidence.
Will you also comment on Rand Paul’s absurd move to ban giving visas to French people? I know he was never pro-immigration but he’s really selling his soul to the Breitbart crowd.
I have no idea what keeping credit cards out of the hands of French people would accomplish.
Teach them fiscal discipline, of course.
Too late I’m afraid.
I find all the outrage over the notion that the Charlie Hebdo attack was “understandable” rather odd since libertarian are quite into how terrorism is blowback
And this: https://reason.com/blog/2015/04…..s-rational
That’s not to say I condone their acts, but I find them understandable.
^ This.
Now I despise Kerry as much as the next guy, but clearly the point he was making was that the Hebdo attack was *motivated*, whereas Friday’s attack was just lashing out at random people.
It’s hard to make the distinction without using phrasing that implies that Hebdo *deserved* to be attacked, which they didn’t, but they were attacked *for* something specific that *they* did. The fact that Kerry is an idiot doesn’t invalidate the distinction.
Actually, it is common in proggie circles to assume Hebdo did deserve it for microaggressions against islamites. I still don’t understand why proggies place islam and all it’s bad practices high on the minority protection chart, but there it is.
Because proggies are effectively misogynistic, bigoted homophobes. If you aren’t willing to oppose that sort of belief when it matters most, then your stated positions are irrelevant. In the battle between tolerance and hate, they picked hate.
Are we really splitting hairs about the what ‘motivates’ these murderous nutcases? Since Kerry is a babbling knave who couldn’t be bothered to articulate his thoughts better I’m gonna interpret this as it feels on first read. That Hebdo had it coming and if only they stopped being mean.
Friday’s attack was motivated by France’s intervention in Syria.
Um, there is a serious difference between thinking that it’s rational to respond to bombing of your friends, family, and countrymen, and propping up of the brutal dictator that oppresses you with violence, and thinking that it’s rational to respond to a cartoon with violence.
They believe that insulting their religion deserves death and someone insults their religion so they kill them, there. Also they attacked the actual people responsible for the insult rather than some concertgoers.
And nobody believes that’s rational, except I guess John Kerry. Whereas plenty of people (myself and Reason included) believe it’s rational to respond to our foreign policy with violence.
It seems like the fact that there are Islamic terrorists who want to kill for religious reasons is too much for some to comprehend. It doesn’t have to be rational but it is understandable and I certainly don’t condone it. Perhaps it will help the Islamophobes? Ruin the romantic image of ISIS as heroic freedom fighters fighting the good fight against Dictatorship and Western Imperialism? In Reason’s case I think it has to do with fear that this will be used to justify hate speech laws since that sure is hell what the Progs want.
Whereas plenty of people (myself and Reason included) believe it’s rational to respond to our foreign policy with violence.
ISIS will be happy to oblige you.
Of course by your own logic Jordan you must be an ISIS sympathizer for saying that you find their terrorist campaigns to be rational.
Wrong yet again. My problem with Kerry is not that I think he’s an ISIS sympathizer. It’s that I think he’s a fucking idiot.
I think we might be arguing at cross purposes here? I don’t like how Reason acts as if declaring that the Charlie Hebdo massacre was “understandable” is essentially the same as endorsing it while you seem to be attacking how Kerry could declare that the Charlie Hebdo Massacre was “understandable” while finding it incomprehensible that ISIS would attack France for attacking ISIS. Well yeah, I agree that he’s a fucking idiot for saying that.
our foreign policy
I thought libertarians opposed the notion that government is “us”?
As far as I know, John Kerry isn’t a libertarian.
So why do people here refer to his foreign policy as “our” foreign policy?
Ask them.
Point is, from Kerry’s perspective, I don’t get how the Hebdo attack just makes sense, while the Paris attacks are somehow, bizarrely, mystically beyond all understanding.
Unless he doesn’t drink his own koolaid, and he’s a raging libertarian underneath it all.
Lots of politicians assume that foreign policy is an extension of the will of the people, implicating the people in foreign policy decisions.
See: John Kerry.
It doesn’t take rocket surgery.
I think the issue is that Kerry said that the Charlie Hebdo attack was understandable, but the November 13th attacks weren’t.
Islamic terrorists kill Charlie Hebdo personnel over cartoon….check.
Islamic terrorists kill French people over French foreign policy… check.
What’s so crazy about the last one that isn’t in the first one?
because cartoons are drawings and policy can have violent components?
That’s what’s crazy about the first one that is in the second.
I think we’re getting to the root of the problem: John Kerry is an idiot.
I think we’re getting to the root of the problem: John Kerry is an idiot.
This.
Um, isn’t Greenwald one of those “Charlie Hebdo was understandable” people?
Ah, Snap! “US authorities have charged at least 66 men and women with ISIS-related terror plots on American soil ? including a handful of refugees,”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..error.html
What was so amazingly stupid about his comment was that he tried to say that the Paris attacks (and by extension 9/11, Madrid, London, Boston, etc.) “wasn’t to aggrieve one particular sense of wrong. It was to terrorize people. It was to attack everything that we do stand for”, whereas I suppose “free speech for blasphemers” is NOT something we stand for?
What the fuck was he trying to say anyways?
AND THIS IS OUR HEAD INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMAT.
I can’t even.
“THIS IS OUR HEAD INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMAT”
This is the real shame. Not the content, which I don’t think was as idiotic and shameful as it’s being made out to be, but that our chief diplomat couldn’t figure out how to say it without looking like an utter jackass.
Both Clinton – former SoS – and Kerry – current SoS – having such trouble defending a core American value of free speech as an adjunct of a core Western value of freedom of conscience is just mind boggling. How have we sunk this low that actual atheists are running the church? They’re the epitome of the admonition not to be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
John Kerry Suggests Killing Cartoonists Is Less Appalling Than Killing Concertgoers
I grew up reading Mad Magazine. IMHO, it is not at all fucking understandable why someone would kill over a drawing.
http://d1g4sq00ps2bp3.cloudfro…..715mad.jpg
Did they ever manage to free the Indy 500?
At least Kerry’s retardation is to be expected.
On the other hand, this magazine’s position that you’re not a libertarian unless you want to use tax dollars to import and support thousands of Muslims, and since they’ll be ‘vetted’ by our Top Men in Gov’t there’s nothing to worry about, is thisclose to peak retardation,
“unless you want to use tax dollars to import and support thousands of Muslims”
I don’t think the ongoing debate here has really parsed out along these lines all that clearly. Few if any here have been arguing that the government should *pay* to import and support refugees. I think the refuges apologists see it as more of a debate over whether people should be *forbidden* from coming here using their own or voluntarily supplied means.
One group thinks the other is advocating using tax money to relocate a foreign population to this country, the other group ignores the idea that this is even a possibility, and the two are screaming past one another.
Unleash the Matt.
Next thread.
Dude that makes no sense at all man, I mean none at all dude.
http://www.CompleteAnon.tk