Apologists, from what I'm gleaning from various reports, are trying to suggest that the jihadi attempt in Garland, Texas, that was foiled heroically by an off-duty police officer, could have been avoided had the cartoonists not poke the Islamofascist bear by exercising their First Amendment rights. I'm stupified.
There very same apologists try to say, at the same time from the other side of their mouths, that they support the concept of Free Speech. Although there is a philosophical argument that can be made in a vacuum that the right to exercise one's freedom of speech includes the right to withhold said exercise, in reality the two are mutually exclusive.
To not engage in the freedom of speech intended by the cartoonists who were going to have a contest to see whose depiction of the prophet Mohammed was deemed the best would have been, necessarily, to curtail freedom of speech due to fear. Liberals love to declare freedom of speech when the speech they support bothers conservatives, but when speech such as this contemplated in Garland, Texas, is supported by conservatives, they make excuses for why it shouldn't be exercised.
The utter hypocrisy of the situation is galling. Where were these voices of restraint when Robert Maplethorpe was displaying his very graphic sexual photos that offended so many Christian people? Or when artwork was making the rounds involving a crucifix in a jar of urine. Where were the apologists suggesting that this artwork shouldn't be displayed? Nay, they were championing freedom of expression and lecturing the rest of us to restrain our impulses, the same impulses jihadis act on now.
Just because Christians don't put people to death whom they believe blaspheme what they believe doesn't make their offense any less valuable. Muslims may well take great offense to what the cartoonists were doing, but that doesn't entitle them to silence the cartoonists by killing them. And that the cartoonists' actions provoke howls of disagreement is beside the point; just as we Christians had to restrain ourselves when the other putative artists were poking at us, so too must Muslims behave in a civilized manner -- or leave the country.
Liberal apologists miss the point: The First Amendment especially protects offensive speech. The only limitations on free speech are those that time, place and manner impose because of the dangerous nature of the speech, e.g., yelling out Fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire. Just as Christians had to endure the blasphemous works of so-called artists, so too must Muslims -- and their liberal apologists -- sit on the sidelines and seethe quietly. As loathesome as the Westboro Baptist Church expressions have been, they are allowed -- with time, place and manner restrictions, but still allowed. The same must hold true for cartoonists and others whose speech offends a segment of society.
Muslims are emboldened by our failure to depend the Constitution. Their bellicose threats and transparently false grievances allow them to push an agenda that is unacceptable to the vast majority of people here. No bacon in restaurants because it isn't halal. Neither is it kosher for orthodox Jews, but no one sees them threatening Subway shops. It's ludicrous that we kow-tow to their demands in the name of political correctness unaware of what it's doing to the very essence of our Constitution.
Yet, I'm not surprised by this. The liberal mantra -- do as we say, not as we do -- underlies the liberal approach to all things constitutional in this country. So if the majority of this country is offended by their urgings of restraint of freedom of speech, we should just sit back and say nothing. If we're offended by someone else's free speech, we should sit back and say nothing.
Soon enough, with the imposition of sharia law, it won't be a question of choosing to remain silent.
We'll either be quiet or have our heads lopped off.
(c) 2015 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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