Illustration by Bosch Fawstin

by David Swindle

It’s always a sad day when someone you admire tremendously, who has entertained and challenged you for years lets you down and reveals themselves to really stand up only for themselves instead of the ideas of freedom they claim to support.

Reason Magazine highlights some deeply discouraging remarks from Penn Jillette, the libertarian co-host of the extraordinarily great Showtime show “Penn and Teller’s Bullsh*t”:

Reason Magazine: Are there any groups you won’t go after?

Penn: We haven’t tackled Scientology because Showtime doesn’t want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists—I’m not sure. And we haven’t tackled Islam because we have families.

Reason Magazine: Meaning, you won’t attack Islam because you’re afraid it’ll attack back …

Penn: Right, and I think the worst thing you can say about a group in a free society is that you’re afraid to talk about it—I can’t think of anything more horrific.

Y’know there are a whole lot of prominent people — who do have families — who have had the courage to tell the truth about Islam. Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Mark Steyn, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Geert Wilders… It’s actually a fairly long list with people who would be much more prominent targets than Penn and Teller.

When Jillette says things like he has here it accomplishes one thing: it empowers the enemy. It tells them to keep making threats and to keep killing people because ultimately it works because we in the West are too complacent, comfortable, and selfish to care.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who would be willing to put their lives on the line to hide and protect Jews in Nazi Germany, and those who looked the other way and lived comfortably as the Holocaust happened. The situation is pretty much the same in our age.”

http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/06/26/penn-jillette-not-having-the-courage-to-confront-islam-is-bullsht/

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell

“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
-Thomas Paine

“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
–Albert Einstein

‘To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true.’
– Ayn Rand

“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.” Winston Churchill on Islam

Don't get your hopes up. They only play brave people on TV.