In Germany, there is no freedom to free speech. An outrageous statement? Not at all. Recently, a Lutheran pastor was sent to jail for a YEAR for something he said. For something he SAID.
The Lutheran Pastor spoke out against abortion, and said the murder of 150,000 babies in Germany via abortion was comparable to the murder of thousands of Jews in Auschwitz. For that, a German court sent him to jail.
The court, which consisted of no jury and a single judge, ruled that this statement made Lerle a holocaust denier.
On 14 June, Judge Erda Erdenhofner convicted Lerle of a particular crime known as “volksverhetzungâ€, or “incitement of the peopleâ€. Ironically, volksverhetzung was an accusation that was frequently used by the Nazis to convict those with whom the regime disagreed, a slap-conviction that could be used to dispose of inconvenient people.
During his address to the court, Lerle defended himself and claimed that his statement was in no way taking away from the gravity of the sufferings of the Jews.
The German Catholic news service kreuz.net reports that the reason for the severity of the punishment is in part due to the pastor’s six previous convictions, which have seen the pastor serve two prison terms lasting eight and a half months in total. He was formerly imprisoned for calling abortionists and their aides “child murderers.†[Source]
How can Germany lay a claim to free speech when this conviction is upheld? This pastor did not deny the Holocaust. In fact, he was using it to illustrate the horror of abortion. Doesn’t matter in Germany, I guess.
The raving liberals in America who decry the “dictatorship” of Bush have no idea what dictatorships look like, let alone understand what it is like to live in one. Search the liberal blogs and you can find slanderous claims against the President and members of his administration. You can find comparisons between Bush and Hitler, usually claiming Hitler to be the better of the two. Yet none of these morons have been imprisoned for what they have to say. And they have the gall to claim to be living under a fascist regime.
Appreciate your rights. Most Americans have never known any other way. They take them for granted. This is just a glimpse of what the other side looks like, even today in so-called free countries.
