Beginning in the 1960s, the UK moved away from a paternalistic regime of censorship and censoriousness. The British were proud of their new-found free speech, . . . But a triple whammy towards the end of the 20th century upended this: the arrival of fundamentalist Islam in the West, the rise of far-left critical theories of social justice and the advent of the internet as the public square. . . . Of course, some internet regulation is necessary . . . But conservatives underestimated how regulation could morph into a regime of surveillance and censorship. . . . The losers are the millions of people who believe the government exists to protect us from foreign enemies and criminals, not to prohibit ideas, words or images that might offend. The winners? That unholy alliance of Islamists and leftists who want to use the state to impose their dogmas on everyone else.
– Ayaan Hirsi Ali, writing in The Spectator, “The death of free speech in Britain“
Urgent though the problem of the Palestinians may be, if it were only of interest to the Jews in the Land of Israel, it might be solvable without the measures proposed here. But we must recognize that the Palestinians are, in the end, only the pawns of players in a larger game. This larger conflict pits an unholy alliance between Progressivism and Islamism on one side against another side sometimes referred to as the West or the Judeo-Christian tradition. This latter term is, of course, unacceptable to a Torah-true Jew, but it nevertheless describes an existing reality. I will refer to that reality instead as the Sinaitic tradition, meaning the strain of human history and culture that is morally guided, to a significant degree, by the text and traditions that were given at Sinai.
– ממרא, “The Larger Game”
EN