The Cartoons

I've been on a fairly long stretch of Virginia only postings; when I started this blog last July I figured I would blog about arts and culture and Virginiana but I managed to get on a long tear of Virginiana-first posting with occasional lapses into arts and culture with Virginia angles. Anyway, today I read a piece of writing that caused me to abandon my Virginia-centrism. It is an article about the Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons that is brilliant. Read it before you read the rest of this post. A friend emailed it to me and I read it and this was my reply (expanded here for clarity):

A brilliant piece. 100% spot on. The author's stance as someone sympathetic to calls for diversity and tolerance who suddenly regrets it, in the face of violent idiocy, reminds me of the plight anti-McCarthy liberals who had to regret defending Hiss when it turned out that Hiss really wa a spy. Sometimes life teaches you that what you want to believe really isn't true-- to be a real grown up you have to learn that not everything is going to comport with your world views. If this thoughtful Englishman represents English thought, perhaps England will avoid taking the European "thank you sir may I have another" route of spineless, needless and fearful apology.

Finally, here is a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece that points out that the prohibition of depictions of Mohammed has never been very strenuously observed, even by Muslims.