The Queens Village Republican Club has announced that they are honouring Pamela Geller as the “American Patriot of the Year” at their 138th Anniversary Lincoln Dinner today.
They explain:
Pamela Geller’s award for patriotism is due to her courageous and unwavering stance as a major proponent of free speech. Whether we agree or disagree with her ideas and opinions, true patriotism is having the guts to speak out and champion our First Amendment rights without surrendering to intimidation, threats, and violent acts. Ideas can change the course of history and the Freedom of Speech protects all ideas, whether we like them or not, and if this freedom was lost, someone else will dictate what’s right and what’s forbidden for us.
Geller claims that America’s free press, the bulwark against tyranny, has been compromised and people have been silenced by the threat of Islamic terrorism. With over 20,000 deadly terrorist attacks since 9-11, this, she asserts is the gravest threat that civilization faces. Geller has simply been calling attention to the perpetrators of these terrorist attacks, church bombings, honor killings, bus bombings, and the ideology that inspires them. For this, she, rather than the perpetrators of these acts, has been the focus of outrage from many media outlets.
However, Ms. Geller has courageously stood her ground and continued to tell the truth. Truth, she says “is the new hate speech “and it’s even come to the point where “telling the truth is a radical act.” Exercising her fundamental rights, she has recently been in the news for a massive campaign of subway ads calling for support of civilization against the savagery of jihad: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad” The MTA rejected her ads, while she noticed many negative anti-Israel ads were accepted. She sued the MTA and won in court with the judge ruling that the MTA violated her First Amendment rights.
We agree with Michael Coren, Sun TV host who said “I honestly think that one day historians will write about the defense of Western values and virtues in the 21st Century and speak of heroes. And one will be Pamela Geller.”
Yes, this is the same Pamela Geller who, less than a week ago, posted a piece on her Atlas Shrugs site that called for Islam to be banned, mosques to be demolished and Muslims to be deported or killed. Is this what passes for “patriotism” in the Republican Party these days?