Capitulating means not doing something you were going to do. It does not mean backing down from bullies trying to force you to do something you never wanted to do in the first place.
You did not like my comparison simply because you know you would not reprint a Jesse Jackson racist rant. It is just an example chosen because it was something I figured you would find repulsive. Replace it with anything of your own choice so long as it is something you do not want and never will want to print. That is the issue. No one is obligated BEFORE or AFTER to print or not to print. It is not the printing. It is the murder that is the issue.
“Capitulating means not doing something you were going to do.”
No, it doesn’t, so if your argument is based on that, you may need to go back to the drawing board:
ca·pit·u·la·tion
2 a : the act of surrendering or yielding
b : the terms of surrender
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/capitulation
capitulate
1.
to surrender unconditionally or on stipulated terms.
2.
to give up resistance:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capitulate
So, the Muslims demand that you do not depict their prophet, under threat of violence. If we accede to their demands, surrender to their demands, cease resistance to their demands, then that’s capitulation.
“You did not like my comparison simply because you know you would not reprint a Jesse Jackson racist rant.”
No. The situation where there is some organized conspiracy to suppress a racist rant by Jesse Jackson under threat of violence doesn’t exist, and there is no foreseeable set of conditions where a person would think it might come to exist. So it’s just a fantasy, and it is silly to try to compare a fantasy like that to the real world.
“Replace it with anything of your own choice so long as it is something you do not want and never will want to print. That is the issue. No one is obligated BEFORE or AFTER to print or not to print. It is the murder that is the issue.”
They aren’t murdering for the sake of murder, they are murdering in order to get us to surrender to their wishes, to do what they want us to do. That’s the essence of terrorism.
So, if you say “well, I didn’t want to do that anyway”, it may be true, but they will still claim victory and walk away believing that their terror tactics caused us to do their wishes. That’s why I think it’s important, if only as a matter of principle, to refuse their demand and show them the futility of their tactics. Besides simply hunting them down and exterminating them, I don’t know how else to discourage their barbarity, except by showing them that it will never work.