Hoekstra Warns West Not to Trade Freedom for 'Peace' with Terrorism

Speaking of someone who gets it regarding global jihadism, Michigan Congressman Peter Hoekstra, ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, says the presidential candidates are doing “the nation a disservice by not keeping the spotlight tightly on the terrorism threat.” Quoted in a Nolan Finley op-ed piece in Sunday’s Detroit News, (“Don’t let terror slip from radar screen”), , Hoekstra warns “We are as much at danger today as we were on 9-11. When the politicians ignore or downplay the threat, it just makes us all more complacent about our security.”

Finley describes how Hoekstra, in a most welcome turnabout from dhimmi business-as-usual, views our security as going hand-in-hand with our most basic freedoms--like speech:

Right now, Hoekstra is looking toward the Netherlands, where a right-wing Dutch politician and filmmaker plans to release a short documentary linking the Quran to violence. The film reportedly ends with a copy of the Muslim holy book ablaze.

Hoekstra worries that the film, if allowed to air, will spark a wave of violence similar to the one that erupted after Danish newspapers published cartoons depicting images of Mohammed.

Few American newspapers reprinted the cartoons when writing about the controversy. Borders-Waldenbooks refused to stock a magazine that included the images out of fear of inciting violence.

But Hoekstra is more fearful that Western countries will suppress the film in the interest of keeping the peace.

Accommodating Muslim sensibilities to keep the radicals from exploding, he says, is dangerous because doing so will ultimately erode Western values.

“They're using our values against us,” Hoekstra says. “We want to be tolerant of other religions and sensitive to people's feelings, but in doing so we toss out our commitment to free speech.”

This article gets it just right. Where we expect the usual hand-wringing about making the chronically upset more angry, we get a tough truth about freedom of speech.

Check out the rest of this op-ed.