Curt Shilling Suspended From ESPN – for stating a fact

On Tuesday, ESPN suspended former MLB pitcher Curt Schilling for posting a tweet comparing radical Muslims to Nazis. 

“It is said only 5-10 percent of Muslims are extremists. In 1940, only 7 percent of Germans were Nazis,” read the tweet.”How’d that turn out?”

ESPN immediately posted the following respons: “Curt’s tweet was completely unacceptable, and in no way represents our company’s perspective. We made that point very strongly to Curt and have removed him from his current Little League assignment pending further consideration.”

Nearly every major study on the topic of Muslim extremism corroborates Mr. Shilling’s point, but this has not saved the former World Series champion from an indefinite suspension. In fact, Shilling was simply suspended for saying something everyone already knew:  a small percentage of extremists can decide the fate of a much larger group.

Extremists have a militarist advantage over moderates, and we have seen this played out throughout the Middle East. When Libya or Syria were destabilized by the quite foolish Obama administration, there were significant amounts of moderate groups. 

Moderates don’t blow themselves up, believeing god will reward them for killing innocent women and children. Moderates don’t chop the heads off of dissenting view holders. Moderates don’t exhaust their funds taking care of hostages. There is no surprise, when moderates and fanatics meet in the field of battle, the moderates don’t last very long. 

The same can be said about the history of Germany and Russia, where the groups who were not ashamed to murder entire groups of dissenters were the ones who rose to the top. 

Given that Mr. Schilling never said anything resembling a condemnation of all Muslims of Germans, the fact that he was suspended is very troubling for anyone who cares about the first amendment. In the 21st century, we are seeing truth, anything awkward or possibly displeasing to the ear, become ripe for criticism and scorn. 

We can agree on specific truths, but the stating of such truths is considered distasteful. There is little surprising about the existence of this phenomenon in America. After all, with nearly an entire region of our world in a perpetual fight against Islamic extremism, we have a president who is still afraid to even call the problem out by name.