The other night I saw the flag of my country being set on fire by a raging crowd half way around the world. And you know what? It brought a smile to my face.
Denmark has always been sitting on the hedge. A socialist democracy, a peace-loving member of NATO, known primarily for our Queen, our victuals and our soccerplayers and the fact that the Danish Jews not only survived the Holocaust, but were able to return to their jobs, friends and property immediately after the German surrender. A country so small that most of the people familiar with the name of our country would be hard pressed to place us on the map.
We are a very secular democracy: Abortion is an issue long settled, porno is an acceptable pass time, speech is very free and religion is mostly a joke. And you know what? It's toll free. No one really knows what Denmark is all about and, thus, we are friends to all the world. Or we were until recently, that is.
An editor decided (very sensibly) to push back at an encroaching tendency of self-censorship on issues dealing with Islam. 12 drawings of Muhammed were published . The initiative sank without a ripple until it was fished up by a group of Islamists who went on a rabble rousing tour of the Middle East. It worked!
Suddenly Denmark is facing an international crisis, based on cartoons. Half the Danish population is ready to slug it out with the Islamists, half is ready to sell out the same democracy for the ability to go back to obscurity, from which we can safely peddle our wares, and being friends with everyone again. Now, who do you think are the ones ready to sell out democracy?
That's right - the left wingers. The same people who fought for abortion and women's rights: Who defended pornography and derided the morals of Christians are now siding with the Islamists, pleading the respect for different norms and values that they never showed an affection for, when targeting the morals and ideas of more settled fellow citizens.
Effectively they are siding with people fighting for a totalitarian state based on religous law, their own convictions acceptable casualties if it means that we can all be friends again, even if it is at the price of freedom of speech. Muslims are a silent minority in Denmark. Islamist an out spoken minority within the minority and so far they have won an easy victory holding their muslim brothers hostage in the attempt to hi jack the press. The Danish left wing are seling out their principles, selling out the homosexual muslims, selling out the secular muslims, selling out the muslim women in order to please the extremists. Islamists and socialists, joined in the fight against freedom of speech: Strange bed fellows indeed.
My conclusion is, that it has been too easy in Denmark. Too many people have forgotten, that democracy is something that yoy can never take for granted. That it is something that people have fought, bled and died for. It is never free. It is always opposed by those who would govern not only the bodies but the minds of human beings. The crowd with the burning flags just pointed out that fact and for that I thank them.
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