I am against the hypocritcal protestors but not "with" the idiot cartoonists

Submitted by Andy (Germany), Feb 7, 2006 at 18:37

Look, these cartoons are hardly something worth fighting for. I am forced to stand for freedom of expression simply because the alternative is unthinkable. But i don't shed too many tears for the morons who scribbled this stuff. They're not all that brilliant, really.

Freedom of expression is obviously allowed, but i don't buy this whole "I disagree, but I'll defend his right to say what he thinks". Take Ted Rall for instance. I would not lose a second -- not a nanosecond -- of sleep if a group of the soldiers that he has perennially insulted were to beat his wimp-a** into the ground. (think of the Chris Rock line "I ain't sayin' its right.....but I UNDERSTAND..."). Ted Rall's right to be a jackass is not what the constitution is about. Similarly, these euro-cartoonists -- like all leftists -- want to live in a consequence free world.

Words matter, and there ARE limits to free speech. For example, I don't see Daniel Pipes vehemently defending Holocaust deniers, or other anti-semites. There are consequences to words, and rightly so.

Death threats, however, go too far, and the one positive service the cartoonists have provided is to shed light on what the West is up against in the Islamic world. This militant strain of Islam is an intolerant, inflexible ideology that must be countered at all times. I just would rather face it down over the fact that there are mosques all over the western world, but not one Christian church in the Nejd, or over the indonesian Christian girls who were beheaded walking home from school, or the peaceful Christian worshipers in Bethlehem or Karachi who are harassed or bombed. THEY are heroes, not these euro-twit cartoonists.

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