At the risk of alarmism, I feel compelled to note the rapid rate at which international newspapers and governments are acknowledging that God is indeed great.
The capitulation isn't terribly surprising; nor is the reluctance of American and British newspapers to take the obvious step of actually publishing the images that everyone is debating. If there is an institution more accustomed to focus-group cowardice than the American newspaper industry, I have yet to meet it. But consider this irony: If the violence currently escalating manages to bubble out of its Middle Eastern pot, then people are going to die over pictures that they have never seen.
You can avoid that fate now, but the more thoroughly frightening scenario is that the freedom to criticize ideologies is being swiftly eviscerated. The right to say all sorts of vile things about people is a necessary part of Western culture. But the right to insult and debate those people's beliefs? That is Western culture. And it is under threat so long as publishers and politicians keep taking their orders from the Central Committee in Tehran.
Posted by mesh at February 10, 2006 06:12 PM | TrackBack