Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of London,  will be speaking at a conference of technology executives in Austin, Texas.  The gist of his remarks has been announced.  It is a speech advocating a troika of control, condemnation, and confiscation.  The control he requests is that the masters of the internet bar anti-Islamic comments and threats.  His condemnation is of President Donald Trump for his tweets (especially those in support of Britain First), which have proven to be an encouragement to those with an anti-Islamic agenda.  And he suggests that the big technology firms be taxed not on the basis of profits, but on the basis of revenue if the anti-Islamic messages continue on the internet, thus threatening confiscation if his "advice" is not taken.  He has expressed delight at Germany's hate speech laws, advocated and advanced by Angela Merkel.

Mr. Khan comes out of a cultural mindset that does not understand the idea of the marketplace of ideas, independent thought, individualism, and the Anglo-American tradition of liberty within the context of law.  You see, there are hundreds of millions, if not billions of people who want to be told what to say and even what to think.  Thinking is a burden for them.  It's not just a matter of wanting to "go along to get along."  No.  The exercise of thinking for themselves, and having fewer pressures and controls on their speech, behavior, and especially mentality, is too much pressure for them.  It's a level of responsibility they cannot cope with.  Why can't they cope?  Here is where metaphysics hits practical day-by-day exigencies.

To exercise one's freedom responsibly, one needs the grace of God and the enlightenment from on high that one finds in the Holy Scripture (Old and New Testaments).  In our culture, although not all persons were evangelical, Protestant Christians nonetheless cultivated that norm of free thinking from the time when the central influence on the colonies and the United States was God-centered.  Thus, certain patterns and habits of respect and thinking became engrained among even the non-Bible-believing population.  Even the non-Christian Aristotle, living in 4th-century B.C. Greece, knew about the importance of habit and about the importance of forming virtuous habits by the proper use of reason.  He advocated a balanced approach ("hexis") and implied that our freedom (and happiness) lies in our balanced use of reason.  Thus, the Christian implication of a divinely based freedom was written into our Declaration of Independence ("endowed by our Creator") along with the rationalistic, virtue-oriented "pursuit of happiness," which was the purpose of life ("telos") for Aristotle.

That foundation has become diluted, plus we have increasing numbers of people from cultures where that type of free, responsible, independent thought was never cultivated.  Mr. Khan is from one of those cultures and sub-cultures.  In the Islamic worldview, taqiyya (deception) is a legitimate part of jihad.  It is a way of resisting the infidels.  He is speaking the language of liberalism in order to move forward an illiberal agenda.  Jamie Glazov has characterized this trend beautifully in his volume United in Hate, where he describes in detail the mindset of the left as it converges with the goals of the Islamists in perpetuating an ongoing crisis in the West.  Dr. Glazov appeals to the unconscious Freudian death wish as a deep unifying force in this seeming convergence of interests (each expecting to ultimately dispense with the other faction at the right time).

The leftist nihilism not only is parallel to the suicidal "death wish" of the terrorists of Islam, but provides a deep sense of complementary identity between the two groups or movements.  Both groups hate individualism, romantic love, humor, good cheer, and people finding satisfaction in life.  For the leftist believers, the happiness of the regular folks living under capitalist systems is a "false consciousness," whereas for the Islamists, Western civilization's joy in the life of the individual and the family is an offense to God (conceived as Allah).

Yes, the Islamic mindset is far from both the Christian and the Greek mindsets that gave birth to our unique culture.  I guess all that jihad talk by the so-called right is exaggerated.  It's all driven by a bunch of mean-spirited xenophobes, right?  We've had them before in the U.S.  They were called the "Know Nothings" in the 1840s and 1850s.  Later, the so-called xenophobes were responsible for those Palmer Raids in the early 1920s.  It's the same misanthropic thread.  Or is it?

Could it be possible that the U.S. is facing an unprecedented political and cultural threat?  Could the evidence be mounting that a sinister Islamic Trojan horse is being promoted by a fifth column of leftists determined to undermine whatever stability is left in the U.S. of A?

But Islam and Mayor Khan are not the only elements that want to silence free choice (free speech is only one aspect of free choice in the context of a free market and a free mentality).  There is a ubiquitous and chaotic trend that runs across many groups that cannot bear the weight of responsibility that comes with freedom.  Thus, as atheism grows, the relationship with Almighty God through His Son by the power of the Holy Spirit fades from the equation.  Not only sin, but grace becomes an alien term.  Rationality is declared an enemy of freedom and is put in the service of a deterministic social science by the so-called truth-seekers in academia.  

Hence, even the learned ones in our universities increasingly cannot handle diversity of opinion.  The word "veritas" (truth) in Harvard's motto becomes another part of the thought control mindset.  That means that it is not sufficient for them to disagree with other ideas and values; rather, they must outlaw those ideas and values, squelch them.  Mayor Khan of London is one such squelcher.

Image: mc_london_002 via Flickr.