Freedom of speech dies when no one is willing to defend it

Just heard about "the latest" surrender of freedom without so much as a whimper . . . much less a fight.

Forget "the land of the free and the home of the brave." Forget the attitude and commitment attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Apparently, Americans are now more inclined, simply, to turn tail and walk away.

And so our vaunted right to free speech is, I'm afraid, quickly disappearing. . . . And I think few Americans want to hear about it.

The Jewel of Medina, a debut novel by journalist Sherry Jones, 46, was due to be published [August 12] and an eight-city publicity tour had been scheduled. . . .

[However,] Jones said that she was shocked to learn in May, that publication would be postponed indefinitely.

Want to guess why it was postponed?

Yep. It touches on Mohammed.

The novel traces the life of A'isha from her engagement to Mohammed, when she was six, until the prophet's death. . . .

"I have deliberately and consciously written respectfully about Islam and Mohammed ... I envisioned that my book would be a bridge-builder," said Jones.

[But] Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry said in a statement the company received "cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, [and] also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

He added: "In this instance we decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel."

Jones, who has just completed a sequel to the novel examining her heroine's later life, is free to sell her book to other publishers, Perry said.

Random House is so nice, isn't it?

But then I find some additional articles.

The book is by no means "high literature" (fancy that!). But it appears well-structured. (You can read the prologue here.)

Some claim it is a trashy bodice-ripper. I do not know. I saw no "bodice-ripping" tendencies in the prologue. It is written in the style of most modern fiction: lots of real or implicit conflict and tension. Rather florid descriptions. But, if anything, Muhammad is portrayed as an astonishingly sensitive and considerate man--far more saintly and ready to offer grace and forgiveness than one might expect of a powerful man married to a wayward child bride.

But the real story, it seems to me, is all about the publishing process . . . and how the book came to be "postponed" in the first place.

It seems there was a certain professor from the University of Texas, a Denise Spellberg, associate professor of Islamic history, who had something to do with what happened. As Asra Q. Nomani wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

In April, looking for endorsements, Random House sent galleys to writers and scholars, including Denise Spellberg. . . . Ms. Jones put her on the list because she read Ms. Spellberg's book, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of 'A'isha Bint Abi Bakr.

But Ms. Spellberg wasn't a fan of Ms. Jones's book. On April 30, Shahed Amanullah, a guest lecturer in Ms. Spellberg's classes and the editor of a popular Muslim Web site, got a frantic call from her. "She was upset," Mr. Amanullah recalls. He says Ms. Spellberg told him the novel "made fun of Muslims and their history," and asked him to warn Muslims.

In an interview, Ms. Spellberg told me the novel is a "very ugly, stupid piece of work." The novel, for example, includes a scene on the night when Muhammad consummated his marriage with Aisha: "the pain of consummation soon melted away. Muhammad was so gentle. I hardly felt the scorpion's sting. To be in his arms, skin to skin, was the bliss I had longed for all my life."

Says Ms. Spellberg: "I walked through a metal detector to see 'Last Temptation of Christ,'" the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. "I don't have a problem with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate misinterpretation of history. You can't play with a sacred history and turn it into soft core pornography." . . .

Sorry. I have to stop the narrative, here, for a moment.

Spellberg says she herself "walked through a metal detector" in order to ensure she took the opportunity to watch a "soft core porn" depiction of Christian sacred history, but she feels the need to warn Muslims of potential offense before they can judge a similar work [or, based on what little I know of either the movie or the book, a potentially less offensive work] on its own merits?

Sorry. Something seems rather hypocritical, here, to me.

But back to the narrative.

We're told Spellberg doesn't have a problem with historical fiction, but, somehow (perhaps following a conversion at or shortly after having viewed "The Last Temptation of Christ"?), she does have a problem with the "deliberate misinterpretation of history" in the form of "play[ing] with a sacred history and turn[ing] it into soft core pornography."

And so, according to Nomani, . . .

After he got the call from Ms. Spellberg, Mr. Amanullah dashed off an email to a listserv of Middle East and Islamic studies graduate students, acknowledging he didn't "know anything about it [the book]," but telling them, "Just got a frantic call from a professor who got an advance copy of the forthcoming novel, 'Jewel of Medina' -- she said she found it incredibly offensive." He added a write-up about the book from the Publishers Marketplace, an industry publication.

The next day, a blogger known as Shahid Pradhan posted Mr. Amanullah's email on a Web site for Shiite Muslims -- "Hussaini Youth" -- under a headline, "upcoming book, 'Jewel of Medina': A new attempt to slander the Prophet of Islam." Two hours and 28 minutes after that, another person by the name of Ali Hemani proposed a seven-point strategy to ensure "the writer withdraws this book from the stores and apologise all the muslims across the world."

Meanwhile back in New York City, Jane Garrett, an editor at Random House's Knopf imprint, dispatched an email on May 1 to Knopf executives, telling them she got a phone call the evening before from Ms. Spellberg (who happens to be under contract with Knopf to write "Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an.")

"She thinks there is a very real possibility of major danger for the building and staff and widespread violence," Ms. Garrett wrote.

Sorry. Feel the need to interrupt once more.

Let's see. Why would Spellberg think there is such a real possibility of major danger? Is this just a "feeling"? Or . . . could she herself have played an integral role in spreading the flames?

"Denise says it is 'a declaration of war . . . explosive stuff . . . a national security issue.' Thinks it will be far more controversial than the satanic verses and the Danish cartoons. Does not know if the author and Ballantine folks are clueless or calculating, but thinks the book should be withdrawn ASAP." ("The Jewel of Medina" was to be published by Random House's Ballantine Books.)

That day, the email spread like wildfire through Random House, which also received a letter from Ms. Spellberg and her attorney, saying she would sue the publisher if her name was associated with the novel. On May 2, a Ballantine editor told Ms. Jones's agent the company decided to possibly postpone publication of the book.

On a May 21 conference call, Random House executive Elizabeth McGuire told the author and her agent that the publishing house had decided to indefinitely postpone publication of the novel for "fear of a possible terrorist threat from extremist Muslims" and concern for "the safety and security of the Random House building and employees."

And now, with that as background, Spellberg writes in a subsequent Wall Street Journal letter, "I Didn't Kill 'The Jewel of Medina.'"

No. I'm sure not! [Sarcasm.]

There is a long history of anti-Islamic polemic that uses sex and violence to attack the Prophet and his faith. This novel follows in that oft-trodden path, one first pioneered in medieval Christian writings.

The novel provides no new reading of Aisha's life, but actually expands upon provocative themes regarding Muhammad's wives first found in an earlier novel by Salman Rushdie, "The Satanic Verses," which I teach. I do not espouse censorship of any kind, but I do value my right to critique those who abuse the past without regard for its richness or resonance in the present.

The combination of sex and violence sells novels. When combined with falsification of the Islamic past, it exploits Americans who know nothing about Aisha or her seventh-century world and counts on stirring up controversy to increase sales. If Ms. Nomani and readers of the Journal wish to allow literature to "move civilization forward," then they should read a novel that gets history right.

What's this about a "right to critique"?

I think "Artemis," in response to the post Clueless Dhimmitude and Denise Spellberg, on the Stop the ACLU blog, has it about right:

Production on a book takes up to or over a year. This book was going to press and would be released in two months.

Spellberg was not asked for a critique, or to give advice on whether to publish or whether the book was factual enough to be deemed worthy of publication. She was sent an ARC (advanced reader copy) in the hopes of an endorsement for the cover.

Random House was committed. It had paid an advance, edited the book, designed the cover and sold it to booksellers by the time the ARC was sent to her. That is how a publishing timeline works. The text had been set in type already, or there would not have even been an ARC yet. The investments had all been made.

Random House had already decided whether the book was worthy of publication on the basis of style or whatever else might qualify under critiques like "trashy" or "literary" or even "historically accurate." They did not need Dr. Spellberg to advise them on that part of their job and it was too late in the process for them to request it of her. Since Dr. Spellberg has a book undergoing the same timeline, she knew this.

Dr. Spellberg says in her letter to the WSJ today that she merely critiqued. Hardly. She played the trump card of potential violence to get her way and to sidetrack this book.

She did not care for the book’s style or content? Fine. She should have declined to endorse and left it at that, and saved her true critique for reviews once it was published. But she did not want it published, so she pulled out the stops.

She continues to speak of the book presenting the history of Islam incorrectly, but she has not in any way itemized incorrect facts. The bottom line seems to be that she does not care for the author’s interpretation and presentation of history because it does not fit with her own view of how it should be seen. It does not, in her opinion, get history "right"--an odd concept coming from a professional historian. She deems it too trashy, not literary enough for such an important subject in the least. Or, I suspect, at most.

So now we are going to have people stopping the presses, speaking darkly of potential violence, marshalling intimidation tactics, based on dislike of an author’s vision and style?

And we will have [various commentators] basically saying "don’t get your knickers in a twist over this because the book is not well written and looks to me to be a bodice-ripper and popular fiction is less worthy of protection. Now if it were to MY literary taste, THEN you should have some concerns."

. . . And that, ultimately, is the real issue, isn't it?

It is the whole matter of how far a society will go in, as the title of a certain book I own says, Defending the Undefendable.

Are Americans willing to defend the principle of freedom of speech--which, obviously, only needs a real defense when the speech involved is offensive to some person (or group of persons) or another and not when it is wholly uncontroversial-- . . . or are we unwilling to defend it?

Finding a soul mate?

Robin Phillips and I have a little--very slight--history together. He has written a book, The Way of a Man with a Maid, available online, that critiques the "courtship" movement--a form of male-female relationship that was--and, in certain circles, still is--popular in homeschool circles. He mentions me and my book, Dating With Integrity, within his work. At one point, almost exactly five years ago, we engaged in correspondence on this subject of mutual interest.

And now, today, while surfing the web for some information about biblical and historical arguments concerning usury (the practice of charging interest on loans), I bumped into Robin once more. (The happy reunion, as it were, was the result of an extremely circuitous path which I will recount in a separate post, momentarily.)

Anyway.

So there I was on Robin's blog when, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but an article of deep--and ever deeper--personal interest . . . An article wholly unrelated to the subject of male-female relationships but, rather, free speech and, even, epistemology: Robin's Readings & Reflections: Thought Police article in HTML.

"And so we meet again!" I thought. [Apologies to Snoopy--or was it the Red Baron? ("Snoopy vs. The Red Baron" by The Royal Guardsmen, 1966)]

I was first intrigued by Robin's introductory remarks about the increasing restrictions on free speech being enforced by so-called "liberal" protectors against so-called "hate speech":

[T]he reign of Big Brother is being introduced to Britain from the liberalism of the far left, a tradition that has historically championed Orwell’s defence of civil liberties and free expression.

This observation is particularly germane when considering the new corpus of offences restricting speech, religion, public debate and, in some cases, even thought itself, to that cluster of ideas which the liberals have designated ‘politically correct.’[2] The State’s eagerness to function as Guardian, not simply of law and order, but also of the ideologies of its citizenry[3], was made patently obvious last year when New Labour tried to push through legislation as part of the Religious Hatred Bill which would have made it an offence to criticise different religious truth-claims.

Even without the impetus of such a law, UK police currently operate under ‘guidance’ that defines a ‘hate incident’ so broadly that it can include debating another person about their lifestyle.[4] Although this guidance has no statutory force, and has been called ‘pseudo-law’ by one distinguished constitutional lawyer, it can influence the policy of police constabularies provided it does not lead to an actual charge being issued.[5] The effect is that simply to express certain viewpoints is at least treated as criminal.[6]

It was this tendency to police beliefs that Dr. N. T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham, lambasted in an address to the House of Lords on 9 February, 2006. Dr. Wright referred to a new class of crimes which “have to do, not with actions but with ideas and beliefs.” He said:

"People in my diocese have told me that they are now afraid to speak their minds in the pub on some major contemporary issues for fear of being reported, investigated, and perhaps charged. My Lords, I did not think I would see such a thing in this country in my lifetime…. The word for such a state of affairs is ‘tyranny’: sudden moral climate change, enforced by thought police."[7]

From religious organisations that must now navigate the increasingly complex labyrinth of gay rights laws[8] to Christian Unions that are being forced to admit atheists into their ranks[9], it is clear that today’s liberals are making sure Big Brother does more than merely watch us: he’s checking out our credo.[10] Chesterton was surely prophetic when he conjectured that, “We may eventually be bound not to disturb a man’s mind even by argument; not to disturb the sleep of birds even by coughing.”[11]

But my eyes grew wider when I saw the second subhead within his article: "The Self-Destruction of Epistemology."

Wow! I think I may have found a fellow-traveler in the world of thought!

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I didn't really have any further purpose for this post than what I have written here. Just a desire to record my bemused astonishment.

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But, y'know, while we're on the subject of Big Brother and the problems of eroding freedom of speech, let me quote from Robin's footnote #11 concerning Chesterton's quote about disturbing men's minds and the sleep of birds. After attributing the quote to G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith (New York: Doubleday, 1908), p. 113, Robin continues:

Chesterton’s words are a pretty good description of the Protection From Harassment Act 1997. Worded so vaguely that almost any form of repeated conduct can become a crime, it gives the crown authority to prosecute anyone causing a person ‘alarm or distress’ if this involves ‘conduct on at least two occasions.’ Because such conduct ‘includes speech’, and because it is not necessary to demonstrate that the person causing distress has used abusive or insulting words, merely disturbing a man’s mind by argument could become a criminal offence if another person finds it distressing. The penalty is six months imprisonment or an order preventing the person from repeating the offence on pain of 5 years behind bars. It is now used routinely against peaceful protestors.

The anti-intellectual implications of the Serious Organized Crime and Police Act 2005 is equally disturbing. Although this Act is most known for removing freedom to demonstrate outside Parliament, it also includes a section on ‘harassment intended to deter lawful activities’. Under this act, it is an offence to cause alarm or distress to ‘two or more persons’ by ‘harassing’ them. ‘Harassment’ is defined as seeking ‘to persuade any person ... to do something that he is not under any obligation to do’. This means that if I try to persuade two or more people to change their philosophical views, then because they are under no legal obligation to do so, in theory I could be taken to court for harassment if the other person finds my axioms sufficiently distressing.

See George Monbiot's article 'I'm pleased the case against this ranting homophobe was dropped', The Guardian, October 3, 2006, available online at
www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1886185,00.html. See also my article ‘The Orwellian Legacy of Tony Blair’, available online at http://robinphillips.blogspot.com/2007/05/good-bye-tony-blair.html See also Peter Kitchens, The Abolition of Liberty (Atlantic Books, 2004).

Mark Steyn's America Alone, V--Part Two (Chapters 4 through 6), Cont'd.

A continuation of my comments from June 10.

More stuff in Mark Steyn's America Alone that shocks and bothers me.

Let me write up some of his stuff about "moderate Islam."

I'll start with the continuation of Miss Farooq's story (the young Canadian Muslim woman who hates Canada).

Miss Farooq's father is a pharmacist who fills prescriptions at a military base in Wainwright, Alberta, and says he supports the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry on their mission in Afghanistan. After the terror cell was cracked, Mohammed Umer Farooq told the press that his daughter's views--hating Canada, in favor of shipping homosexuals to Saudi Arabia to be executed or crushed, etc.--were new to him, but that she's always been "more religious" than he is. He described her as "100 percent religious" and himself as "30 percent religious."

Nada Farooq is typical of a significant minority of young Muslims raised in the West by "moderate Muslim" parents. . . . Unlike her parents, Nada Farooq has no natural Pakistani identity and she rejects her thin, reedy multicultural Canadian identity, choosing instead a pan-Islamic consciousness that trnscnds nationality. . . . Growing up in a Toronto suburb, she found recent Chechen history more inspiring than Canadian history, assuming she was taught any.

How many Nada Farooqs are there? On the first anniversary of the July 7, 2005, Tube bombings, the Times of London commissioned a poll of British Muslims. Among the findings:

• 16 percent say that while the attacks may have been wrong, the cause was right.
• 13 percent think that the four men who carried out the bombings should be regarded as "martyrs."
• 7 percent agree that suicide attacks on civilians in the United Kingdom can be justified in some circumstances, rising to 16 percent for a military target. [Compare those numbers to the May 23 report from the Pew Research Center about American Muslims! --JAH]
• 2 percent would be proud if a family member decided to join al Qaeda. 16 percent would be "indifferent."

If this is a war, then that is a substantial fifth column. There are, officially, one million Muslims in London, half of them under twenty-five. If 7 percent think suicide attacks on civilians are justified, that's 70,000 potential supporters in Britain's capital city. Most of them will never bomb a bus or even provide shelter or a bank account to someone who does. But some of them will. As September 11 demonstrated, you only have to find nineteen stout-hearted men, and from a talent pool of 70,000 that's not bad odds.

--America Alone, 75-76

Oh, let's keep going.

[A]ccording to one poll, over 60 percent of British Muslims want to live under sharia in the United Kingdom. Another poll places the percentage favoring "hard-line" sharia at a mere 40 percent. So there's one definition of a "moderate Muslim": he's a Muslim who wants stoning for adultery to be introduced in Liverpool, but he's a "moderate" because he can't be bothered flying a plane into a skyscraper to get it. . . .

If there were a "moderate Muslim" lobby--one that, say, believed that suicide bombing is always wrong, even against Israelis, or that supported the liberation of Iraq on the grounds that the Iraqi people are in favor of it--your average Western government would immediately be suspicious that such a group was not "authentically" Muslim. Whereas, if you oppose the occupation of Iraq and seek to justify the depravity of Hamas, you have instant credibility. And so government ministers in Western nations spend most of their time taking advice on the jihad from men who agree with its aims. You can pluck out news items at random: in London, a religious "hate crimes" law that makes honest discussion of Islam even more difficult; in Ottawa, a government report that recommends legalizing polygamy; in Seattle, the introduction of gender-separate Muslim-only swimming sessions in municipal pools. . . .

--America Alone, 76-78

Okay. Here's one for one of my pacifist friends. She wrote,

Yes, the Quran directs Muslims to use the sword against unbelievers. But most of them aren't getting out there and doing it. People everywhere are pretty much more willing to live comfortable peaceful lives raising their families, holding down stable jobs, looking after matters of education, and generally being normal than they are interested in engaging in warfare of any kind. And the vast majority of Muslims in the world are living normal lives and neglecting warfare. Even though their holy book commands it.

I think Steyn replies pretty well here:

The "moderate Muslim" is not entirely fictional. But it would be more accurate to call them quiescent Muslims. In the 1930s, there were plenty of "moderate Germans," and a fat lot of good they did us or them. . . .

We know, because Western politicians and religious leaders tell us so incessantly, that the "vast majority" of Muslims do not support terrorism. Yet how vast is the minority that does? One percent? Ten percent?

Here are a couple of examples that suggest it might be rather more.

Dr. Mahfooz Kanwar, a sociology professor at Mount Royal College in Calgary, went along to a funeral at the city's largest mosque and was discombobulated when the man who led the prayers--in Urdu--said, "Oh, God, protect us from the infidels, who pollute us with their vile ways."

Dr. Kanwar said, "How dare you attack my country," and pointed out to the crowd that he'd known this mean for thirty years, most of which time he'd been living on welfare and thus the food on his table came courtesy of the taxes of the hardworking infidels.

As Licia Corbella wrote in the Calgary Sun: "Guess which of the two men is no longer welcome at the Sarcee Trail mosque?"

Final score: Radical Islam 1, Moderate Muslims 0.

Here's another example: Souleiman Ghali was born in Palestine and, as he put it, raised to hate "Shiites, Christians--and especially Jews." After emigrating to America, he found himself rethinking these old prejudices and in 1993 helped found a mosque in San Francisco. As Mr. Ghali's website states: "Our vision is the emergence of an American Muslim identity founded on compassion, respect, dignity, and love."

That's hard work, especially given the supply of imams.

In 2002, Mr. Ghali fired an imam who urged California Muslims to follow the sterling example of Palestinian suicide bombers. Safwat Morsy is Egyptian and speaks barely any English, but he knew enough to sue Mr. Ghali's mosque for wrongful dismissal and was awarded $400,000.

So far, so typical. But the part of the story that matters is that the firebrand imams had a popular following, and Mr. Morsy's firing was the final straw. Mr. Ghali was forced off the board and out of any role in the mosque he founded. And, as the Wall Street Journal reported, Safwat Morsy--a man who thinks American Muslims should be waddling around in Semtex belts--is doing a roaring trade: "His mosque is looking to buy a building to accommodate the capacity crowds coming these days for Friday prayers."

That's Radical Islam 2, Moderate Muslims 0. . . .

At this point it's time to throw in another round of "of courses": of course most Western Muslims aren't terrorists and of course most have no desire to be terrorists. One gathers anecdotally that they're secure enough in their Muslim identity to dismiss the fire-breathing imam down the street as a kind of vulgar novelty act for the kids--in the same way that middle-class suburban white parents sigh and roll their eyes when Junior comes home with "Slap Up My B*tch" or "I'm Gonna Shoot That Cop Right After I F--- His Ho" or whatever the latest popular vocal ditty is. But, aside from the few brave but marginalized men like Mr. Ghali, one can't help noticing that the most prominent "moderate Muslims" would seem to be more accurately designated as apostate or ex-Muslims.

The pseudonymous apostate Ibn Warraq makes an important distinction: there are moderate Muslims, but no moderate Islam. Millions of Muslims just want to get on with their lives, and there are--or were--remote corners of the world where, far from Mecca, Muslim practices reached accommodation with local customs. But all of the official schools of Islamic jurisprudence commend sharia and violent jihad. So a "moderate Muslim" can find no formal authority to support his moderation. And to be a "moderate Muslim" publicly means standing up to the leaders of your community. . . .

And even if you're truly a "moderate" Muslim, why should you be expected to take on the most powerful men in Islam when the West's media and political class merely pander to them? What kind of support does the culture give to those who speak out against the Islamists? The Iranians declared a fatwa on Salman Rushdie and he had to go into hiding for more than a decade while his government and others continued fawning on the regime that issued the death sentence. The Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh spoke out and was murdered, and the poseur dissenters of Hollywood were too busy congratulating themselves on their courage and bravery in standing up to Bush even to mention their poor dead colleague in the weepy Oscar montage of the year's deceased.

To speak out against the Islamists means to live in hiding and under armed security in the heart of the so-called "free world." Meanwhile, Yale offers a place on its campus to a former ambassador-at-large for the murderous Taliban regime.

--America Alone, 86-88

Well. I've spent way too many hours typing up all these quotes. I get the feeling I'm not actually catching too many people's attention by engaging in this work.

I'll stop here.

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No. No I can't stop there.

One more. This cuts a bit too close to home.

Whatever the arguments for and against "gay marriage," there are never going to be many takers for it. But the justifications for same-sex marriage are already being used to advance the cause of polygamy, and there are far more takers for that. It's already practiced de facto if not de jure in France, Ontario, and many other Western jurisdictions, and government agencies, such as the United Kingdom's pensions ministry, have already begun according polygamy piecemeal legal recognition for the purposes of inheritance law.

Neither feminists nor homosexuals seem obvious allies for Islam, but lobby groups have effortlessly mastered the lingo, techniques, and pseudo-grievances of both. . . .

As someone who's called Islamophobic and homophobic every day of the week, I can't help marveling at the speed and skill with which Muslim lobby groups have mastered the language of victimhood so adroitly used by the gay lobby. If I were the latter, I'd be a little miffed at these Ahmed-come-latelys. "Homophobia" was always abroad: people who are antipathetic to gays are not afraid of them in any real sense. The invention of a phony-baloney "phobia" was a way of casting opposition to the gay political agenda as a kind of mental illness. . . .

On the other hand, "Islamophobia" is not phony or even psychological but very literal--if you're a Dutch member of parliament or British novelist or Danish cartoonist in hiding under threat of death or a French schoolgirl in certain suburbs getting jeered at as an infidel *****, your Islamophobia is highly justified. But Islam's appropriation of the gay lobby's forming of the debate is very artful. It's the most explicit example of how Islam uses politically correct self-indulgent victimology as a cover.

You'll recall that most Western media outlets declined to publish those Danish cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammed. [By the way: I have looked at them. They are mild. If you haven't seen them yet, you can find them here. The commentary that goes along with them, I think, is illuminating.--JAH] Thus, even as they were piously warning of a rise in bogus "Islamophobia"--i.e., entirely justified concerns over Islamic terrorism and related issues--they were themselves suffering from genuine Islamophobia--i.e., a very real fear that, if they published those cartoons, an angry mob would storm their offices. It was a fine example of how the progressive mind's invented psychoses leave it without any words to describe real dangers.

--America Alone, 84-85

May we not be left without any words to describe real dangers!

Really, truly, ultimately: aren't we talking about freedom of speech . . . or a lack thereof?