Well, for one thing you could have had an assault rifle with a high capacity magazine at hand.... - Granite Grok

Well, for one thing you could have had an assault rifle with a high capacity magazine at hand….

DENMARK-ISLAM-CRIME
Danish free-speech advocate—and former “young Marxist”—Laars Hedegaard (AFP/Getty images)

Less than three weeks ago an Islamic assassin attempted to murder Danish journalist and free speech advocate Lars HedegaardAfter missing at point-blank range, the would-be killer and Hedegaard scuffled, after which the guy with the gun ran away.

The reaction of the Scandinavian mainstream media is interesting. It included denouncing Hedegaard and wishing the assassin had been better with a pistol. Here’s some of what Hedegaard has to say about the incident and its aftermath, from today’s Wall Street Journal:

Some people don’t like what I have been saying or writing in recent years, and they want to silence me. For years I have been a campaigner for free speech—since 2004 as president of Denmark’s Free Press Society. I have been an outspoken critic of Islamic supremacism and of attempts to impose Islamic Shariah law in Denmark and the West. Together with my Swedish colleague Ingrid Carlqvist, I have recently launched a Swedish-language weekly newspaper called Dispatch International—to the great dissatisfaction of the Swedish mainstream media, which are probably the most politically correct in the Western world and are in absolute agreement on every issue of any consequence.

Dispatch International is critical of mass immigration to Sweden and Denmark from third-world countries and takes a dim view of Islam. As a consequence, we have been reviled as “racist.” We are not. We simply insist on our right to defend freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and individual and sexual equality. We also insist on our right to criticize religious fanatics of every stripe who try to impose theocratic laws and customs on free societies.

When I was a young Marxist during the 1960s and ’70s, these opinions used to be described as characteristic of the political left. Nowadays the defenders of such positions are routinely labeled as right-wing or as belonging to the “extreme right.” Meanwhile, what used to be the left is cozying up to holy men who want adulterous women to be stoned, homosexuals to be hanged, apostates from Islam to be killed, and 1,200-year-old laws emanating from somewhere in the Arabian desert to replace our free constitutions.

In my home country of Denmark, the reaction to the failed murder has mainly been one of horror. Nearly all leading politicians and media have condemned it. To be sure, some newspapers have availed themselves of this opportunity to emphasize what a despicable racist I am, but at least they express their satisfaction that I’m not dead. Not so in Sweden, where I work most of the time. The Swedish media have either hinted that I have invented the incident in order to set myself up as a martyr—which would have required a major conspiracy involving the Danish police and Security Service—or they seem disappointed that my delivery man was not a better marksman.

What’s next?

“What’s next,” Mr. Hededgaard? Well, to put it simply, “what’s next” is the logical culmination of you and others being “young Marxists” during the 1960s and ’70’s. Don’t get me wrong: No one begrudges you and your generation (which happens to be mine also) your youthful stupidity; after all, young people in America today voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, a President who is busily destroying their chance for a free or prosperous future. But, as the Democrats here in America are fond of repeating, “elections have consequences.” So do ideas. And your plight today is a logical culmination of your ignorant, foolish, stupid, vicious anti-freedom views that you and an entire generation of anti-Western leftists espoused in your youth; you are living with the result of your early Marxism. In short, “you own it.”

Today? How to cope, you ask? Take a cue from us bitter right-wing Americans, clinging to our Constitution, Bibles and guns as we do: Buy an assault rifle with a high-capacity magazine, and keep it close at hand. It might come in hand the next time an assassin comes calling.

(Mr. Hedegaard’s entire column can be read in the Wall Street Journal HERE.)

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