cartoons of Muhammad

It is a bad thing to purposely try to offend other people. The newspapers of Europe should not have published the cartoons of Muhammad. Again we see a small group of people who react violently in the name of Islam when there are other ways to express “outrage” which are available in the Islamic worldview.

That said, you can see how absolutely wrong the protesters are in the means of their expression of outrage. They are directly saying, “Whatever we say is right. You have to think like we do, or we will strike out at you violently.” You have arbitrarily set yourself up for an inability to live with other people if you violently respond to someone who disagrees with you. It doesn’t matter what the issue, you cannot function in human culture if you take this route. You cannot live in a society where you are not allowed to disagree peacefully. You cannot live in a society where you are not allowed to be offensive because offense is always in the mind of another. Ultimately, when someone takes offense it is beyond your control.

Calls for the Danish, Norwegian, German, etc. governments to apologize is a logical absurdity, A government cannot apologize for something a private newspaper publishes. An apology would be a valid issue when it is an official government publication like the extreme anti-Jewish literature and cartoons of governments like the Palestinian Authority, Iran, and Egypt, however.

I don’t know what the answer is other than to continue to be clear on how inappropriate violence is as a means of expression of viewpoint.

P.S. Good football game yesterday. I was hoping Pittsburgh would have kicked a field goal on that last drive and then Seattle have a quick strike touchdown which would have made the score, 24-17 as I predicted, except that they would have gone for two and so it would have been 24-18, or 24-16, so I’ll just quit talking sports now. At least until NCAA final four basketball.