A pack of smarmy creeps like the ones that produce The Daily Show mocked Muslims. Crazy Muslim fanatics went into their offices and shot them up. Apparently, the proper response to this is for all of us to publish attacks on the Muslim religion. At least that's what I'm reading on Twitter.
Um, why?
Look, I'm sorry the people got shot, but I don't see any need to follow their lead. Why do I need to get into the gutter with the writers at Charlie Hebdo to show that I don't like terrorism?
This blog started with a post about Danish cartoonists and threats of violence. I didn't think they were worth imitating, either.
So here we have a bunch of disrespectful creeps drawing cartoons that enrage a bunch of fanatical maniacs and we’re supposed to take sides? If, in 1940, Germany had declared war on Japan, just what would we have done? How about nothing at all and let them fight it out. It can’t be anything but good for us. Not every event in the world requires us to take sides.In a later post, I said supporting the cartoonists by repeating their slander against Muslims was like attacking Stalingrad.
For the most part, we have completely blown it with respect to the Danish cartoons. We have taken the bait and run headlong into the battle the Islamofascists wanted to fight: a frontal attack on Islam.I'm not a big fan of recreating Stalingrad from the German point of view. I'm sorry the people at Charlie Hebdo got shot, but I'm not going to join them in being ill-bred swine.
When (the Islamofascists) use (violence) to defend the Koran and the Prophet from Western libertines, they get recruits.
Let’s withdraw from Stalingrad before the trap closes around us all.
Charlie Hebdo is way too obscene for me, too. But of course it is liberty that is being attacked here, which must be defended at the farthest frontiers. Once they get around to bombing the offices of Redbook or some such, it'll be too late.
ReplyDeleteSorry, SI, but I just don't buy the slippery slope argument. If someone bombed our local Adult Emporium, I wouldn't rush out to plaster my house with porn pictures. I get that you can't publish Redbook in Afghanistan, but I don't see that coming here. This is fighting hornets by hitting their hive with a stick.
ReplyDeleteBecause inflicting death is not an acceptable response to finding something offensive.
ReplyDeleteWhen there's a hive of hornets in your house, hitting it with a stick is part of the process-- if hornets could think, then it would be an acceptable first step after they did something unacceptable.
On consideration, you seem to also be assuming that the "insults to Islam" were out of the blue-- this is like watching people in a bar, where a guy is trying to pick a fight, shoves people, steals drinks and generally is behaving very poorly is called a rude name, gets a gun and shoots the guy who called him a rude name...and blaming it on the guy who called the ass a rude name.
ReplyDeleteYes, the paper was being rude, with ideas. That is a proper response to objectionable ideas, and a restrained response to prior physical objectionable expressions of those ideas.
"I just don't buy the slippery slope argument."
ReplyDeleteReally? It seems to me that you've been ready enough to use variations on it yourself in the past, when it suits your purposes.
And in this case, the problem isn't that the "slippery slope" argument is invalid; the problem is that we have more than one slope. If we fail to react, or even blame the victim, then the terrorists figure that things are going their way, so why not ratchet things up? React too much, and muslims who weren't even involved get harassed so much that they decide to throw in with the terrorists too.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a slope, it's a ridge. Try not to fall off of either side.
Along those lines, I think that this is useful reading:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html
Sorry, I'm still not buying it. Gangs of Nazis and communists duked it out in the streets of Berlin in the 30s. The best side to take was ...
ReplyDeleteHow about neither?