A plea for knuckling under to fascism:

In a post-Sept.11 environment, where relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West are at best precarious, at worst distrustful, and above all central to everyone’s security, the Danish editors might have known that reprinting the cartoons would provoke destructive behavior rather than encourage peaceful dialogue.

The editors might have considered that respect for democratic traditions and values does not necessarily trump the need to tolerate religious communities that are particularly sensitive to safeguarding their Prophets, icons and scriptures.

Oh yes, it most certainly does. And should. And, in fact, must, if those democratic traditions are to continue to mean anything at all. Islam should not get any special dispensation from the kind of mockery Christians have put up with from effete Western liberals for years, without resorting to the kind of insane violent reaction which seems characteristic of fundie Muslims.

“Peaceful dialogue?” There is no possibility of such with savage, wild-eyed zealots who stand in unrelenting opposition to every principle Western civilization holds dear. There is only resistance or surrender, the latter of which will occur not wholesale but incrementally, by refusing to defend ourselves and our values against insidious encroachment by those who hold them, and us, in contempt as the libertine immorality of mere “infidels.”

Appeasers, as represented by the argument presented by Ali, prefer to avert their eyes from this fundamental reality with weak-sister tommyrot proposing a “dialogue” that does not, will not, and cannot exist until Muslim extremists either moderate their fanaticism or are convincingly, crushingly defeated, beyond all hope of redemption. It’s nothing more than prettified cowardice skulking behind the skirts of sophistication and “nuance,” and should be unequivocally repudiated.

Two sides, unreconcilable. As in any contest, there will be a winner and a loser. The losers will try to rationalize themselves and their defeat as something more palatable and, in fact, perfectly reasonable and acceptable, in the pathetic and inevitable tradition of losers throughout human history. They’ll still lose.

(Via Malkin)

Update! Just to highlight my point above about the abuse tolerated by Christians without resorting to a violent response:

CHICAGO — Six Iraq war protesters disrupted an Easter Mass on Sunday, shouting and squirting fake blood on themselves and parishioners in a packed auditorium.

Three men and three women startled the crowd during Cardinal Francis George’s homily, yelling “Even the Pope calls for peace” as they were removed from the Mass by security guards and ushers.

One Mass attendee, Mike Wainscott of Chicago, yelled at the anti-war protesters.

“Are you happy with yourselves?” he said. “There were kids in there. You scared little kids with your selfish act. Are you happy now?”

I’d've been just fine with a violent response in this case, I must say. Hauling them out to the street for a righteous beating would’ve been just what they deserved, just what they’re asking for, and just what sooner or later some group of arrogant, deluded, self-righteous, terrorist-supporting dimwits such as this is going to get. I’ll not be shedding any tears over it when they do.

I guess it’s somewhat of a comfort, in some small and strange way, to know that these insufferable twits still retain their capacity to shock and offend. They do more and more damage to their own juvenile, simple-minded cause with their every successive outrage against common decency…and common sense.

(Via GP)