Norway: New York Times Swings And Misses

From the very start, you know the New York Times is going after the Right wing: Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.

That's right--forget about any lesson to be learned in Norway from the terror attacks.
Let's see what it allows to say about the Right wing in the US:

The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.


In the document he posted online, Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.

I've already written by the gross hypocrisy of the Left wing which blamed the Right wing for the Giffords shooting. The Giffords shooter was later to be described by friends as a left winger and a pot head.

What was louder across the blogosphere: the apologies of the left or the blast of right wing criticism of the left wing inspiration of the shooter?

But here there is another point--what do Breivik's quotes of right wing righters and bloggers prove?

Melanie Phillips writes that the response to the terrorist attack of the left reveals A Wider Pathology:

The supposed beliefs of the Norway massacre’s perpetrator has got the left in general wetting itself in delirium at this apparently heaven-sent opportunity to take down those who fight for life, liberty and western civilisation against those who would destroy it. On Twitter and the net and in the liberal media, the forces of spite, malice and venom have been unleashed in a terrifying display of irrationality.

After all, we don’t even know yet whether Breivik acted alone. We don’t know whether this ‘manifesto’ was indeed written by him or indeed what it is: as Mark Steyn observes here, it reads like as weird kind of cut-and-paste job. If it is indeed the work of a psychopath, it doesn’t bear examination for a single minute. And yet the words of a deranged individual are being cited by people like Hundal who are taking them entirely seriously. Since when did people ever use the ravings of a madman in public debate? [at the time of this writing, Phillips blog is down. A copy of her post is available here]

Phillips quotes Mark Steyn, who writes about the danger the Left wing reaction to the Norway massacre represents:

...when a Norwegian man is citing Locke and Burke as a prelude to gunning down dozens of Norwegian teenagers, he is lost in his own psychoses. Free societies can survive the occasional Breivik. If Norway responds to this as the left appears to wish, by shriveling even further the bounds of public discourse, freedom will have a tougher time.

Let's home this current threat to free speech will pass.

Technorati Tag: Norway and Media Bias.