>Benjamin Franklin addressed that issue "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
I'm simply stating a fact, not making a judgement call. The main thrust of my comment was the lack of plain speaking in that article. It's not a very comfortable fact, but there it is: society often makes practical, rather than principled, choices about stuff like this.
So, more about how I personally feel about it:
I think it sucks that people get so infuriated when their religious figure or texts are abused or insulted. But it seems more practical to accept that the group has a mental problem, and to treat them with special care, than to provoke and punish when they act out. And what, after all, is so hard about not insulting Mohammad? Frankly, I think it's a genrally bad idea to insult anyone anyway, and while it's annoying in some abstract way that there is ONE GUY I really shouldn't insult...well, honestly, I don't feel all that oppressed by the prospect.
>Sometimes, I wonder what's the next target after free speech.
Well, first you're kind of tacitly assuming that all free speech has been destroyed by the islamists. It hasn't. A very narrow sliver of it has, and that's a shame, but let's not overstate the impact. The impurity of free speech is abhorrent - but what does this impurity get us? Attacked less? Saves some mentally unstable people some stress? Saves some lives maybe?
What if something like the world being flat or everything revolving around the earth or any important scientific theory was that one thing you weren't free to express a viewpoint on, the problem would remain as no one would ever convince people that conventional wisdom is wrong.
I think these protections around religion will mean that they will be the dominant thoughts on a lot of topics long after they otherwise would be relevant to those topics.
I'm simply stating a fact, not making a judgement call. The main thrust of my comment was the lack of plain speaking in that article. It's not a very comfortable fact, but there it is: society often makes practical, rather than principled, choices about stuff like this.
So, more about how I personally feel about it:
I think it sucks that people get so infuriated when their religious figure or texts are abused or insulted. But it seems more practical to accept that the group has a mental problem, and to treat them with special care, than to provoke and punish when they act out. And what, after all, is so hard about not insulting Mohammad? Frankly, I think it's a genrally bad idea to insult anyone anyway, and while it's annoying in some abstract way that there is ONE GUY I really shouldn't insult...well, honestly, I don't feel all that oppressed by the prospect.
>Sometimes, I wonder what's the next target after free speech.
Well, first you're kind of tacitly assuming that all free speech has been destroyed by the islamists. It hasn't. A very narrow sliver of it has, and that's a shame, but let's not overstate the impact. The impurity of free speech is abhorrent - but what does this impurity get us? Attacked less? Saves some mentally unstable people some stress? Saves some lives maybe?