Roger L. Simon: Calling PEN

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Roger, I have been waiting for you to post this story on your blog. I have sent the following email to Borders.

I am profoundly disappointed in your decision to censor yourself by refusing to carry the April-May edition of Free Inquiry. That decision was bad enough in itself, but you succeeded in adding insult to injury by your Orwellian statement that: "We absolutely respect our customers' right to choose what they wish to read and buy and we support the First Amendment," Bingham said. "And we absolutely support the rights of Free Inquiry to publish the cartoons. We've just chosen not to carry this particular issue in our stores."

I want you to know that your decision does not come without consequences. You have chosen to not carry that particular issue and I have chosen to never again set foot in your stores. You have lost me forever as a customer. You do not deserve to be in the book selling business. Hopefully enough other people will make the same decision I have and you will no longer have to worry about not selling books because nobody will be buying them from you.

Just this morning, I posted on something Winston Churchill said in the late 1930s, re his concerns about the *domestic* implications of the policy of appeasement. William Manchester, in his book "The Last Lion--Alone" summarized as follows:

"unendurable..sense of our country falling into the power, into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany, and of our existence becoming dependent upon their good will or pleasure...In a very few years, perhaps in a very few months, we shall be confronted with demands" which "may affect the surrender of territory or the surrender of liberty." A "policy of submission" would entail "restrictions" upon freedom of speech and the press. "Indeed, I hear it said sometimes now that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticized by ordinary, common English politicians."

I can understand the disappointment, but frankly I give these folks mega-credits because they were brutally honest about their reasons (fear). They made this completely clear.

Look, you can't expect a simple book merchant to take on the Islamic monsters. They have employees to protect, these employees are their colleagues and friends and frankly, there is every real and valid reason to worry about what the Islamic thugs would do here.

Or, go open your own bookstore(s), hire your friends an families and carry the MoToons, and be willing to display the same level of courage you expect from others.

Now is the time to take a stand. Once you have surrendered to fear as little as one iota of your freedoms, the demands, and the price paid for resistance only go up. Printers and booksellers understand (or used to understand) this better than anyone. I would ask you at what point in our submission by degree you think our freedoms worth defending?

They have a valid concern about the safety of customers and employees--but when does this process stop? If there were a significant number of American Catholics with a propensity toward violence, would Borders pull "The DaVinci Code"?

Seems to me that giving in to intimidation like this is bound to encourage further acts of threatened violence. I don't mean to suggest that Opus Dei is going to start blowing up bookstores; but at the margin, there will be people of all types who notice that violence--or the threat of violence--works.

"Choose not to" offer the April-May issue of Free Inquiry - and suffer verbal brickbats by clear-thinking citizens such as Roger, who recognizes their caving to intimidation by organized thugs. Hopefully more such verbal brickbats will follow, sufficient to make the card-carrying intellectuals who set policy for Borders/Waldenbooks realize how their craven choice makes life worse for all of us in the future. The time to confront this intimidation (how does it differ from a classic protection racket, with cartoon suppression the payoff?) is now.

Reverse that "choice", sell that issue, and run a public relations campaign trumpeting their principled defense of free expression. At the same time making public, in every store location, that local law enforcement agencies have been alerted to the possibility of political violence by intolerant thugs, and that any such thugs apprehended will be prosecuted vigorously by Borders/Waldenbooks.

Oops, my bad... the bookselling business loves exposing evil deeds by law enforcement agencies, and lionizes radical behavior of political mobs.

Never has an old motto been more apt than in
the current world. Western civilization is divided and vulnerable to caving in to the very sort of demands envisaged by Winston.

Borders surrenders without a shot being fired, having recently been conditioned by the actions
of Islamic jihadis all over the world.

There is no group willing to stand up and organize marches and protests against this
takeover of our society. Where will it end? Or, rather, where is there a line where the people will be willing to take a stand?

One day, Americans, like our European friends, will look at one another and say "How did this happen? Why didnt someone tell me this was
happening?"

FOX and CNN to their credit have been hammering away at the illegal immigration mess which we have. It was those two channels which brought about the public demand for something to be done.
We need them to take up the alarm to the loss of
our way of life (by default). Each of these small capitulations on an almost daily basis has to be exposed to the public.
There is a need for a coalition of organizations to spearhead the movement to protect ourselves.
I do not see any organization or group of organizations today who can do that. Maybe some
of you have some ideas along those lines. Years ago we could count on the industrial unions and
the American Legion and VFW to organize marches and protests. Not a peep from them lately.

If you read While Europe Slept, by Bruce Bawer, you will see a blueprint of what is coming here.
It's not as if we havent been warned.

I cannot imagine what you believe Borders/Waldenbooks stands to gain from carrying the magazine.

Look at it from their perspective: It's not as if the cartoons haven't been published widely. Who hasn't seen them? So why, sir, should B&N waste their time carrying something that isn't new, and will only serve to rile up the true believers?

When it comes to expressions of virulent anti-Semitism, it appears that anything goes in the name of free speech.

I'm going to use a post from littlegreenfootballs last night as a handbill (3oo copies made from FedExKinkos) and picket my local Borders, advising customers to go elsehwere because this company is supressing the free expression their livelihood depends upon.

Will Borders also stop carrying Oriana Fallaci's books? Bat Ye'or's Eurabia? The Satanic Verses? Robert Spencer's books about jihad?

Because, let's face it, Muslims are pretty thin-skinned. And as Mr Bones reminds us, it's just a sensible business decision when you're being blackmailed by murderous animals

How very 'Neville Chamberlainish' of you. Hurry, hurry this could be your Sudentenland too. There you go lad, turn the other cheek, I really want a clear shot at you. By the way here's a word for you; apeasement. Look it up.

MrBones: "I cannot imagine what you believe Borders/Waldenbooks stands to gain from carrying the magazine."

This just goes to show that we are all soldiers in this war, whether we like it or not.

A soldier in the Army isn't the person that is being called upon to buck up and risk his life. The soliders are answering the call.

The Borders executives and employees, on the other hand, are turing tail and running. So are the newspaper editors who refused to publish the cartoons. They are cowards!

They didn't sign up to fight? They are businessmen, not soliders? This isn't their war? Someone might sue if there is an attack and employees and customers are injured or killed? Tough!

This is a moment of truth. Are the Borders execs going to grow a pair and stand up for the freedoms that we Americans hold dear, or are they going to surrender?

They are no better than draft-dodgers. Worse, actually, because it would not require much "courage" for Borders to sell this magazine. There probably wouldn't be any retalliation. If there was, it would be a rock through a window. I very much doubt that someone would walk into a Borders in Toledo wearing an explosive vest. This hasn't happneed yet, and it probably won't happen if Borders shows some resolve. But they're not, so we'll never know.

The irony is that by censoring toons
Borders too released them like balloons.
In effect, fear has wrecked pen too
And now passers by rubberneck.

If a violent offshoot of Opus Dei threatened to firebomb movie theatres that run the upcoming Da Vinci code film, OF COURSE many theatres would refuse to show the film, purely for financial reasons. Particularly if they are first able to succeed in actually bombing one or two theatres for this reason. Societies pay attention to cranks who care enough about their causes to kill for them. Cranks who aren't willing to kill are ignored, laughed at, or condemmed for their backwardness or stupidity.

This is as basic as the law of gravity, and the main reason why terrorism is as prevalent as it is.

It is time that we took a stand against this type of Islamic fascism. If our soldiers can fight and die in foreign lands taking a stand, then the least a bookstore can do is carry a magazine.

Therefore I propose we start a boycott of Borders! We will see how much the "safety of their employees and customers" is worth to them.

In fact I would not be surprised that if they sold the publications and there was some kind of attack on one of the stories and someone was killed, that there might even be lawsuits by the families of employees or customers who were injured or killed. They could say the bookstores were negligent in protecting the safety of their people. I know in my job [home health care], my employer can not send me into a dangerous place or situation.

Sorry guys, no amount of oh-so-sensible rationalization can justify this decision.

The situation is no different than the KKK threatening blacks who showed tendencies to break free of the second-class social compact forced on them. OF COURSE it was 'sensible' and 'good business' for them to knuckle under and stay second-class. Nobody got hurt, unless the self-appointed KKK decided that its sensitive racial feelings had been violated.

The answer now is the same as the answer then: find out who's threatening our civil rights and turn the FBI loose on them.

Unless you're such a deluded leftie that you believe the FBI is more your enemy than the thugs are.

News organizations have done little but create something else for people to get hysterical about. It is what they do best.

I have not watched cable news on any network in over a month and I don't think I am mising anything but a lot of propganda.

Well, sure. But that's a risk the bookstores are going to have to take. Is the risk of losing money in a lawsuit more important to them than the Constitutional right of freedom of speech? Evidently to Borders it is.

There are some things more important than personal safety and money. Freedom of speech is one of those things.

If I were Borders, or a newspaper, I would warn my employees, telling them they don't have to come to work or shop at my store if they feel endangered. And then I'd sell the magazine anyway. Would my warning exclupate me from liability? No, almost certainly not. Maybe someone would sue me and win millions of dollars. But this is more important tht money, there is a principle at stake here.

I buy all my books from Amzaon, but you'd better beleive I'd make a trip to Borders if they would do the right thing.

Not saying you are, didn't mean to unwittingly imply that, just saying that I'll do my part.

A few of us have a little blog. Not a big deal, but when those cartoons came out we posted them. Now if some whackjob wants to track us down and lob off our heads he can, but I am not losing any sleep worrying about it.

I think you are missing my point. I am saying that there are certain things that employers and business owners are supposed to do and not do. If I ran a bookstore like that I would probably sell the publication, but the people who made this decision might have felt they had no alternative legally. If my supervisor sent me into a situation that she had reason to believe might be dangerous and then I got killed she would not only lose her job the company would be sued by my family because it says right there in my job description and responsibilities that I can not be put in such a situation.

Borders main store in lower Manhattan is on Broadway near Wall Street - it wasn't always there. I work five short blocks away from its original location. I would go in at lunch or on the way home to browze and buy.

I have to wonder now how many customers that morning passing through the mezzanine who stopped at Borders and grabbed a Times, a Post or a coffee and croissant before stepping into the elevator to their deaths that September morning.

Islamofacists literally destroyed our Borders that morning and now they have destroyed their corporate soul.

Doesn't Borders owe something to the customers who made that last purchase?

Borders has the right as a private buisness to carry whatever they want. But they are not reading some of the books that they carry. This is violent blackmail and they are bowing down to and it won't stop with this one issue. Now that the Islamo Fascists know they can pressure Borders into blackballing the cartoons they will use the same threats to get them to drop Rushdie. And on and on and on. At some point they will have to stand up or submit to the Mullah's preffered reading list.

If they have not dropped Rushdie in all these years I doubt if they will do it now. I suppose time will tell.

"There is a need for a coalition of organizations to spearhead the movement to protect ourselves.
I do not see any organization or group of organizations today who can do that."

The only organization that seems to be doing much of anything is the Ayn Rand Institute -- in spite of resistance from such bastions of intellectual freedom (*snort*) as NYU. Instapundit has links to news on an ARI-sponsored event at NYU here.

Terrye:
I am very religous and I generally don't like secular cheap shots on religion, even faith's that I have severe theological disputes with. But this is different. You can't back down to violent bullies and especially if your trade involves the tranmission of ideas. If Borders had a policy that excluded all sacriligous material I might understand. Trust me, I shop at Borders, they don't. And they shouldn't. If I was to write a letter about some of the books and periodicals that have offended me and asked them to drop them I would be ignored or I would get a letter about censorship or the value of freedom of speech. I understand the very real threat of violence but you have to think of the economic damage to this periodical. Most of them can't afford to be dropped by any major chain and if they think that they can't piss off the Islamo Fascists without taking a economic slam they will resort to self censorship, exactly what the thugs want.
I understand economic boycotts and if all the Muslim world had kept it at that I wouldn't complain. But they went further,they used violence to intimidate and Borders has a responsibility not to back down.
When Iran threatened Rushdie I went out and bought the Satanic Verses. Rushdie's view on religion isn't my cup of tea. He is a talented writer but I normally wouldn't read his work. But I bought Shame, The Moor's Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet.I read them Not because I like his books. But because he needs to be supported so the Mullahs don't win. I have never read Free Inquiry and I may hate their views. But I am going to get this issue. The Islamo Fascists have to be fought on every front, and especially on the idea of Freedom of Speech. We can't let them win. Borders blew it.

ECS, that's an awfully convincing point! What do you think are the chances that the NYT or WSJ or some other paper that every Borders carries would publish that letter on their "letters to the editor" page?

Recall the LA Times piece about how City Lights, the smug-filled self-reverential indie bookstore in SF, said it wouldn't carry the Oriana Fallaci book because it didn't stock books by fascists. Nice to see the chains & indies coming together on something!

Via Allah, filling in for Michelle Malkin, Robert Bidinotto writes an open letter to Borders. The cover of his mag features the most famous cartoon.

Borders' decision is sad on so many levels: it is a declaration that the jihad threat exists; it is a vote of confidence that the threat will be carried through; it is a vote of no confidence in our law enforcement. Without much evidence from American Muslims Borders has declared that yes, the mosnter in the storybook is real, he exists.

Intellectual/artistic America has just been slaughtered by this cartoon thing. The ceiling room for epxression is now about one inch high. There is to be no more BSing about courage from these quarters; we know what real courage will look like from now on, George Clooney notwithstanding.

Meantime the jihadists willing to kill over cartoons have given those of us with courage a wonderful weapon. So this is what gets your goat? Hmmm...OK. Back to the drawing board...

LIke I said we posted the photos, but that does not mean that I would want to make posters of them and put them on school buses just to prove a point either.

Other than giving Michelle Malkin something else to have a tantrum about what exactly is telling Borders how to run their business going to accomplish?

I have seen these things over and over again. Thanks to the rioters and the bloggers these silly banal cartoons have recieved far more attention than they deserve.

I agree with Kevin Peters. Border's business is the business of ideas. Many ideas are offensive to a lot of people. Some ideas are offensive to just about everybody. But Terrye, for a small group to be given the power to hold the majority hostage is wrong. And Borders did indeed give that power to fundamentalist Islamic groups. Yes, these groups have proven themselves to be violent; all the more reason to stand up to them and send a strong message that Americans and American institutions will not be intimidated. In addition, nowhere did I see that Border's has received any threats regarding the sale of the magazine. They are acting in anticipation of possibly getting threats. If they had just put this issue of the magazine out as they do with every other issue, likely there would be no reaction.

I would also add that the fact that Border's carries Rushdie books was not really an issue at the time of publication of Satanic Verses. If there were violent Islamist groups in the U.S. they certainly did not react. There was no expectation of retaliation so there was no perceived risk in carrying the book. In fact, as I recall, we in the U.S. were pretty smug about our ability to acquire copies of Rushdie's book due to our freedoms.

You can't have a proper discussion on the subject without looking at the items that are "causing" the violence. I would wager that 60 to 70 percent of Americans have never seen the offending cartoons. The mild nature of most of them makes the reaction even more obscene. Printing them in a periodical that talks about current events is not "flaunting." If the violent blackmail had not occurred I would not agree with printing them over and over. As BeckyJ pointed out censorship in anticipation of a threat is chilling.That is exactly what the Islamo Fascists wanted.

My only point is that Borders is a private business and they should have the right to make decisions concerning their business.

As for what the Islamists want, they want to control the debate and play us and that is exactly what they are doing. After all, we have already reached the point where there is no debate on the question. What we do or do not do depends on the reaction of a bunch of intolerant narrow minded backward bigots. All they have to do is have a riot and there we are telling private companies how to run their business.

If some nutjob looking for an excuse to kill someone walks into a Borders and opens fire it will not be the CEO bleeding out on the floor. That requires no real physical courage on the part of the CEO.

I am feeling like Pavlov's dog, like I am being manipulated by these people and I am probably one of the few people here who actually hangs out somewhere that posted these cartoons and who could be traced if someone wanted to find me.

I am only saying that Borders may have reasons for what they did that have more to with the safety of their employees and customers than have to do with plain old greed.

Does this publication have a website? Go find out and get a subscription, buy a bunch of their magazines and sell them door to door.

Are we to the place that people and companies are not allowed to make individual choices and decisions? All these people have to do to control the debate is riot.

The first line of my first post on this thread stated that Borders has the absolute right to carry whatever line of product they want. If they wanted to ban any publication or book that went after Islamo Fascism in any form they have the right to do it and I don't want any government agency to have the ability to make them do it. They own it , it's their buisness, and they have the absolute right to do whatever they want. But they have often carried material that was sacraligous and they had no problem offending other faiths. And it seems that the reason they are banning this publication is out of fear. You can't force someone to be brave and if someone decides to give in to blackmail that is their choice. But this type of blackmail usually doesn't stop and once you give in to try to protect others it is very hard to not give in the when the next death threat comes. And given the nature of the Islamo Fascists I doubt that this is a one time occurence. Why would it when it has worked so well.

"My only point is that Borders is a private business and they should have the right to make decisions concerning their business."

Does this mean that clothing retailers have the right to buy from third-world sweatshops? Did the businesses that supplied the crematoria for the Third Reich's death camps not deserve criticism? This last point may seem over the top, but where do you draw the line?

The larger issue, as others have pointed out, is that Borders' decision encourages the jihadists to more violence and increases the danger to us all. Bottom line, all of us who enjoy the freedoms of this country are charged with defending them.

Perhaps we should remind Borders of those who made it possible for them to have a business in a free society:

I'm coming in late on this discussion... Everyone seems to have their opinion about this "business decision" of Borders, Inc. (LLC, whatever). The truth of the matter has been stated - Borders makes the business decision and now must live with it or spin it in some way to show that they are the victim....

Has everyone forgotten the purposes that the Danish Mullah went on his ME tour? The insertion of some "extra" cartoons to further inflame the ME masses? How is this not seen as Borders being a partner in Islamic propaganda? We need to speak with our wallets and feet. Anyone own Borders stock (BGP)?

"How very 'Neville Chamberlainish' of you. Hurry, hurry this could be your Sudentenland too"

Nice. Someone has a differnt take on the situation, you can't wait to puke out the ad hominems.

Well, two can play that game. Look, read the end of my comment. Go start your own bookstore and sell the book. Display the MoToons. Hire your family and friends and put them in harms way.

You're not a hero. You're a complete zero. You don't have a pair of balls to hold in your sweaty, zit-riddled hand. You're a big boy, posting a comment on some other guy's blog. You're probably dressed in your pajamas as you type.

I repeat. Under the current situation, in which the Islamic monsters can blow up any book store in America at will, in an America neutered by political correctness, in a culture that refuses to defend businesses like Borders, real people that run real businesses know that they can't count on the government to protect Americans.

You'd do better to channel your childish, imbecilic energy into motivating the police to protect all of us.

Until then, until you grow a pair of balls and prove to us all that you can run a real business in today's climate of terror, STFU.

After this, I don't want to hear the MSM (who have not published the cartoons) or Borders to ever again lie about DEFENDING freedom of speech or of the press. By their failure to publish and by their decision to boycott this magazine they have demonstrated in no uncertain terms that they USE freedom of speech and the press, they do not DEFEND it.

They are civilians in the war against Islamofacism, and have declined to enlist. That is their right. It is our right to call them cowards. They had their chance, and failed.

March 30, 2006: Calling PEN

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