Time Immortal

Wordpress.com blogger Lorelle wonders why more people aren’t concerned about Brazil’s banning of the Wordpress.com domain on account of a single blogger there posting an embedded video in a blog post showing a couple having sex.

I think bloggers around the world have become apathetic. Lazy. Uninspired. Dumbed down. Honestly. When the term echo chamber was coined, it was a good label for all the regurgitation of content spread all over the web, drowning individual voices. Self-interest blogging is pervasive. What happened to altruism and using the blog publishing platform to support freedom of speech and bloggers around the world?

What happened to us? Why am I not seeing protests and opinions on this issue all over the web? Why isn’t the banning of three million WordPress.com blogs a big deal? Why aren’t we talking about this instead of the latest iPhone gizmo and useless SEO techniques? Why didn’t people get angry and protest loudly when WordPress.com blogs were banned in Turkey, China, and other countries? WordPress.com continues to be banned in places - why aren’t we talking about this?

Have we really become desensitized to the plight of other bloggers and the oppression of freedom of speech?

We need to find our indignant righteousness again, fellow bloggers. We need to make our voices matter. Three voices should not have to shout to be heard on behalf of millions of bloggers. I want my WordPress.com blog to be read by those in Brazil, Turkey, China, and everywhere in the world. Don’t you? Why should my blog be penalized because of the actions of one?

People are asking Automattic to take a stand. I’m asking bloggers around the world to take a stand and let their voices be heard when others can’t.

Let not millions of bloggers be blocked and banned for the sake of a couple of idiots. You don’t send an entire city’s population to jail because two people break the law. Maybe the world would be a better place if we did, but that’s another discussion.

I wholeheartedly agree. Oh, that’s not to say that I agree with a blogger who posts sexually explicit material on his website, of course; I find that sort of content unnecessary and immoral. But just as I will defend the right of someone to articulate racist views on a public website, I will defend the right of someone to post sexual material on a website…because the essence of freedom of expression is that we have to accept that people will use the right to express immoral and vile things. Chesterton noted that love means loving the unloveable, or it means nothing at all. Much the same can be said about defending freedom of speech — either we defend the rights of people who say the unsayable, or we may as well not defend the rights of people to say anything.

I disagree with the Brazilian government’s move in its entirety, as surely as I disagree with the actions of the CHRC and other human rights commissions in Canada. And I think bloggers not only should speak out about blatant acts of censorship such as these; I think they have a moral imperative to do so. To refrain from doing so is, in essence, to be a parasite, sucking at the flesh of the great, big internet while doing nothing to foster the fundamental freedoms that is offers, freedoms that are slowly being eroded.

While examples abound of just how barbaric and misogynistic Islamic Sharia law really is, Pope Benedict XVI has issued a new statement condemning chauvinism and violence against women.

Pope Benedict decried chauvinism and the “serious and relentless” exploitation, discrimination and violence being waged against the world’s women.

“There are places and cultures where women are discriminated against or undervalued just for the fact that they are women,” he said Feb. 9 in remarks to participants attending a Vatican-sponsored international congress.

The Feb. 7-9 congress, Woman and Man: The Humanum in Its Entirety, was organized by the Pontifical Council for the Laity to mark the 20th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter, Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity and Vocation of Women).

The pope told some 250 participants during a special audience at the Vatican that discrimination can be the result of “religious arguments and family, social and cultural pressures” aimed at supporting “the disparity of the sexes.”

The pope recalled a speech he gave last year in Brazil, at a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean bishops, in which he criticized the persistent “chauvinistic mentality” that “ignores the novelty of Christianity which recognizes and proclaims the equal dignity and responsibility of women with respect to men.”

He highlighted how, in some societies, women continue to be violated and are turned into objects “of maltreatment and exploitation in advertising and the consumer and entertainment industry.”

Of course, we the wise folk know that all religions really are the same — Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins tell us so!

But setting all facetiousness aside, the contrasts between Christianity and Islam could not be better illustrated with a picture after reading the above. One is a barbaric faith trapped in 7th century Bedouin bigotry, and one is a living faith that confronts the world before it, and presents to that world the Truth.

It is good, O Reader, that Christianity — in the person of Christ, and in His death and rising again — has already triumphed. Islam is merely something we must contend with for but a while, as we live out the remainder of time in style.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!