I don't read any opposition to Free Speech in the quotes. What I heard was a call for common sense. Printing inflammatory cartoons that are offensive to a militant and terrorist religion is only asking for trouble. We, the U.S, are too busy fighting terrorists in the Middle East to come to Europe's rescue when they piss of their resident Muslims.Thank you!
I've said the same thing in other threads.
Don't forget our troops. They have Muslim allies they are working with in the field. Don't stab our troops in the back to come to the aid of a bunch of euroweenie ingrates who will piss in our faces when it's all over anyway, whether we help them or not.
Please do noy resort to such a spurious argument. We stabbed our Christian troops in the back in 1991 when we ordered them to remove their crosses at the behest of our Muslim "allies" when they were posted those nations. It made a mockery of our supposed defense of "freedom" for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. It also made a mockery of our own values, in deference to the barbaric Sharia Law.
These cartoons are a crucial line in the sand for the West in its defense against a resurgent Islam. A line we must defend with everything in our power. We are ALL troops in that larger war. The cultural and religious war to preserve Judeo-Christian values against Islam is more important that the conflict in Iraq, and may last 100 years. But we MUST prevail. And if we give in to Sharia Law in our own nations over freedom of speech, we will have lost a critical battle in that war.
We need not piss on our Constitution so as not to piss off a few Moslems are are fighting with us, for what, for among other things, the right to Free Speech.
There appear to be a wealth of idiots of Free Republic you think we should fight all the Muslims right now.
Islam is a violent religion founded on conquest and oppression. That is not in doubt. Most Muslims are fence sitters. They don't want to do anything or have anything to do with the militants. If we give them a reason to keep their mouths shut about future operations, or push them even further into militant activism as to join the terrorists, terror cells will spring up like weeds in a garden, beyond our ability to control.
And if this happens, it would require drastic measures to contain them... Possibly resorting to mass deportations and concentration camps (not the killing kind). Drastic measures would only justify further alienation and militantism... All of it avoidable through the simple exercise of common sense. Avoiding inflammatory lampooning of Islam. Lampoon the terrorists... Feel free. Lampoon Islam and it isn't just the existing terrorists we'd have to worry about but the future terrorists wholesale mainstreaming of anti-Islamic cartoons, etc.
We gain nothing from picking a fight with a bunch of bystanders. We lose a lot by turning bystanders into enemy fighters and supporters. Strategy demands that we try and keep as many of the bystanders on the sideline while we fight the terrorists. That's the way I see it. So far the worst insult I've gotten is "coward."