The cartoon jihad reveals the truth about liberalism

The cartoon jihad rolls on, gathering force, and with it, the realization, unavoidable to any honest mind, that enjoying a state of peace with the religion of peace requires nothing less than abject submission to the religion of peace. Says the Pakistani cleric who placed a million dollar prize on the head of any cartoonist who drew Muhammad: “This is a unanimous decision by all imams of Islam that whoever insults the prophet deserves to be killed…” Given such statements, how do Western liberals such as Robert Wright keep pretending that “respecting Muslim sensitivities” means anything other than surrendering to Muslim death threats? Liberals, of course, have spent the last 50 years warning darkly about “chilling effects” on free speech, and about “slippery slopes” on the way to the loss of free speech. A death threat is not a slippery slope. A death threat represents the absolute, final death of free speech. Yet rather than calling, as they ought to do, for an absolute prohibition on death threats made in retaliation for supposed insults to Islam, the liberals are calling for the suppression of such insults. Rather than declaring that death threats against people practicing their free speech rights have no place in liberal society, liberals are saying that free speech offensive to Muslims has no place in liberal society. Liberalism thus turns out to be identical to sharia. Like the feminists after they defended the female-abusing Clinton, or like the democracy-spouting neocons after they began supporting “democratic engagement” with unreformed terrorists, the liberal champions of absolute freedom of expression can no longer plausibly claim to believe in the thing they claim to believe in. The apocalypse of liberalism rolls on.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 18, 2006 12:53 AM | Send