Click on almost any of the political links at right, and you'll find that pretty much all my blogger friends and sources are up in arms about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. I understand where they're coming from and respect their passion, but I still agree with Hugh Hewitt's "third course."
Of course the thugs who threaten violence against the idiots are evil, and the reaction across radical Islam is every bit as chilling and outrageous as the 1989 fatwa against Rushdie. But I think the third course between the cartoonist provocateurs and the radicals waving guns at the EU employees in Gaza is to denounce without ambiguity or excuse the latter but at the same time to delineate a very bright line between what the West stands for and the churlishness of the caroonist provocateurs.
On the one hand, when all the free-speechers (Peace Be Upon Them) fell into ecstasies of self-congratulation for defending piss Christ and the Dung Virgin, I recall saying to various cronies that it didn't take much guts to attack a religion that claims cheek-turning as a central tenet. Let them do piss Mohammed and dung Fatima, I said, if they are actually brave and not just petulant. But I wasn't in earnest, and I don't actually think it's a good thing to deliberately blaspheme a religion just because you can. Not out of fear of what true believers might do, but out of decency and courtesy --virtues which become more, not less, necessary in a free society.
I understand --am even a little tempted by-- the desire to be defiant in the face of Islamist extremism. And now that they're printed, the cartoons have to be defended, as Hewitt says:
Of course each of them had the absolute right to publish their screed, and the Dutch (and now Norwegian) governments must reply to demands that these papers be punished with a steely refusal to be dictated to as to their culture of free expression and the protection of the vulgar and the stupid.
But that doesn't mean it's good to be vulgar and stupid. I feel the way I do when I see a handful of petulant pro-lifers calling women baby-killers. They might be 10 in a crowd of 300,000 at the March for Life, but you know the press will put them on the evening news. Glad you're pro-life, Dude, but you're not helping. These cartoons indiscriminately offend people like Prince Abdullah. In fact, since I take Abdullah to be a sincere person and bin Laden & his ilk to be opportunists, they're probably more offensive to "moderate" Muslims than to extremists who just enjoy finding reasons to hate and destroy. Do these cartoons make like easier for Abdullah and what he's trying to do? Do they help President Musharraf? Do they help the troops who are actually putting terrorism down?
I guess in a way I'm happy to see Europe awakening, drawing a line in the sand. But I wish they hadn't chosen churlish insult as the Western value they're finally ready to defend. What would show me that the Western press was serious would not be re-printing a bunch of juvenile cartoons. Want to do something brave, Die Welt? Write an editorial favorable to Bush, and persuade your countrymen to support the War on Terror. Or just spit on Muslims. Your choice.
UPDATE: U.S. Condemns the Cartoons.
