Iran and Neda: Redeye's Gutfeld and McCotter on Iran, Neda and Liberty

Perhaps you watched the video tribute to Neda Soltran and liberty by Rep. Thaddeus McCotter on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Neda Soltran is the young woman...probably only one of the young women, killed on the streets of Iran as the people there protested the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to another term as President. Read background on Neda here and see McCotter's full speech here, as well as the lastest (according to reports) that has happened to her family since her death here. But first, watch the Gutfeld-McCotter video below.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter

The video below is a very serious segment of the usually wild and wacky Redeye with Greg Gutfeld. A short portion of McCotter's floor speech opens the segment and then turns to a live interview by Gutfeld with Rep. McCotter. Since "liberty" is one of Rep. McCotter's themes, and thankfully someone in Congress is talking about it, women living under Islamic rule have few liberties. By now you've no doubt heard that French President Nicholas Sarkozy's position on women wearing burkhas. This week he said:

...that he viewed the full-body burqa and niquab as a sign of the “debasement” of women and that it won’t be welcome in France. According to the glorious Sarkozy:

In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity … The burqa is not a religious sign, it’s a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement — I want to say it solemnly, it will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic.

By contrast, our President Barack Obama said this in his Cairo speech in early June:

Moreover, freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one’s religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.

What Obama doesn't want to admit, although he well knows it, is that many women would not wear burkha without being forced to do so...and who does the forcing? The men do the forcing. That's not to say that many, many women do not choose to wear the burkha because they want to for religious or cultural reasons, or simply because they feel safe and/or comfortable in doing so. Nevertheless, for these women who choose the burkha, they do not have a choice, so they might as well "choose" it because that is their lot in life. What about the women who do not want to choose the burkha? Where is their choice. Our President who seems to know so very much about the Muslim world, and so easily discounts the meaning of liberty, will never attempt to answer that question. Just imagine: put Michelle in a burkha and watch how fast his rear hits the ground. Well, I digress, but these issues are very important and they are all about liberty. Listen to a very wise and well-informed Congressman McCotter (and yes, even in this serious segment his wonderfully dry sense of humor shows up) talk about the most important issue to humanity, which is to live freely - no matter who you are or where you live. Here's McCotter and the early morning sensation, Greg Gutfeld. Redeye, Gutfeld and McCotter (Video)