Lars Vilks, the cartoonist who drew Mohammed as a dog, has been attacked while lecturing on free speech. He was not seriously harmed. There is a video clip showing the attack, the chanting spectators, and the police quelling the mob.
The YouTube video is below.
I am a Liberal and so first and foremost, I have to stand up for free speech. If some folks are offended by the image of Mohammed with a dog’s body, then there are other ways to respond more in keeping the values of liberal democracy. Assaulting the cartoonist isn’t on that list. In further news, it turns out that an Al Qaeda front group is offering $100,000 for someone to murder Vilks!
Maybe not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but at *some* point we’re going to have take a stand and assert that free speech is valuable enough to US to risk offending the sensibilities of Muslims. If we can’t, if we do not value free speech even that much, how can we call ourselves liberal at all?
Meme (n): an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp. imitation.
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