Lars Hedegaard, Defender of Freedom ... Mark Steyn

A few days ago, a man tried to assassinate Lars Hedegaard in Copenhagen - an event Mark wrote about here and here, but about which the broader western media has been shamefully silent. Last summer, Mark had the honour of presenting Lars with a Defender of Freedom award at the European Parliament. Here is some of what Mark had to say:

Thank you. I don't spend a lot of time in the European Parliament or in Brussels, and one of the few things that could persuade me to set foot here is the opportunity to say a word for the man we honour today, Lars Hedegaard.

After I accepted the invitation to come here, I received a couple of emails from prominent persons saying wasn't I a bit worried that some of the people here are a bit controversial and it might not be a good idea to be seen in the same room as them. And that's a fair point. Obviously, it would be far safer for one's reputation to appear in the same room as less controversial figures such as the chaps appearing last weekend at the Muslim Council of Calgary's big event in Alberta. Their keynote speaker was the Saudi-educated imam Dr Bilal Phillips, who's on record as saying that every male homosexual should be executed. He later clarified his position: He only wants all male homosexuals in Muslim countries executed. "The media tends to take my words out of context," he said.

Outstanding essay. Steyn is amazing. Last part:

I would urge anyone to do that twilight walk from downtown Malmö to Rosengard, as the blondes thin and the bearded men multiply. That’s Europe’s future walking toward you, and most Europeans did not choose to live in that world. In Malmö, in Rotterdam, in Yorkshire and here in Brussels, their betters made the decision for them. A society that becomes more Muslim becomes less everything else – less Jewish, less gay, less feminist, less artistic, less scientific, less free. That’s a simple statement of fact, but we shrink from it. I saw an ad the other day for a clothing store called U.S. Arabia, and it showed happy, smiling, apparently Caucasian models in Muslim garb. And I could see how that might catch on. You’re in an office where two of the ten people are Muslim, and then it’s three, four, six, and suddenly it’s the non-Muslim workers who are feeling the odd ones out. And the fashion magazines are running all these features about how cool it is to wear head coverings, even for non-Muslim women. So you try it, and suddenly you feel less obvious when you’re walking through certain neighborhoods late in the evening. Why not meet Islam halfway? A headscarf here, halal-compliant meat there… What’s the big deal? By the time, you formally convert, you’ll barely notice it.

Islam won’t have to blow anything up, it just has to be – to be itself, and in being itself make us less ourselves – less Belgian, less Dutch, less Danish, as already Malmö is day by day less Swedish. The man we honor today will not go quietly into that Rosengard night. He understands that we cannot prevent it if we cannot talk about it, honestly and openly. But the zombie husks who lead the western world in twilight pass off their groveling prostration as a defense of “multicultural tolerance”. It’s not. It’s the Pansy Left (in Orwell’s phrase) auditioning to be Islam’s lead prison bitch (that’s mine, not Orwell’s). In the same way that the left embarked on its long march through the institutions, so too has Islam. Its Gramscian subversion of transnational bodies, international finance, human rights institutions, the academy and the justice system is well advanced.

At one of his trials – maybe it was the first, the second, the third, I forget which – Lars quoted John Milton:

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

Milton wrote that in 1644. Three hundred and seventy years later, it falls to our generation to fight that battle all over again. Lars Hedegaard has led that fight, a fight that so many of his fellow Danes, his fellow Scandinavians, his fellow Europeans have either ducked or joined the wrong side of. In some of the oldest free societies on the planet, far too few are doing the heavy lifting for all of us, and paying a very high price. So I am honored to salute today a champion of liberty, a defender of civilization, and a European hero whether Europe’s rulers know it or not – Lars Hedegaard.

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