We won’t bother to give you the context of this government inquisitor’s attempt to probe the mind of a magazine publisher to determine whether his inner being is acceptable to the state. The whole story is fairly chilling. For many years, the proper response of a publisher to the thought police would have been a three word interview (“go to hell”) but it appears that times are different now:

The performance of the grand inquisitor in the video, a “blandly unexceptional bureaucrat,” is, its way, Oscar-worthy and reminiscent of past films that cover similar ground. The government apparently thinks it is its business to enforce a regime where “tolerance means accepting and defending everyone’s values but your own.” More of the interview here and here. (Finally, Scott Johnson manages to work Alexis de Tocqueville into the discussion.)

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under art, culture, General, idiots!, Law, Left of Left, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.