"The Hate Behind the Rightwing Blogburst"

They, yes, do seem to hate our freedoms:

Well that didn't take long.

While Muslim religious extremists are rioting in the streets of Beirut, Gaza City and Kabul, Scandinavian embassies are being torched and Jordanians are deprived of their Danish feta over cartoons that were never actually published in any legitimate newspaper, the right-wing blogosphere has been staging its own "blogburst": the act of reproducing the offending depictions of the Prophet Muhammad.

It's a "simultaneous, co-ordinated posting by a large group of webmasters and bloggers on a given topic," says Israpundit who, along with Michelle Malkin, who is like Ann Coulter but not as funny and not so skinny, are leading the cartoon crusade.

Follow their politics and you'll understand why they're on this particular blogwagon: they hate Muslims. In fact, if they were to write about Jews the way they sometimes do about followers of the Prophet Muhammad, they'd be denounced as anti-Semites or Holocaust deniers.

So it isn't surprising that some of their more eager acolytes have gone far beyond denigrating the fanatical rioting, which has, at deadline, claimed six lives and left hundreds of wounded.

No doubt, the Kartoon Karnage Kapers are inexcusable, and threaten to escalate into even more senseless death and destruction. That's why the absolute glee with which this has been received by the online cons strikes me as so puzzling. Do they enjoy the blood sport of watching out-of-control Muslim mobs in the streets?

It's also bemusing to see how they have suddenly declared solidarity with the heretofore "appeasers" of Europe for republishing the cartoons.

(Interestingly, one explanation for the sudden resurgence of these offending drawings after their initial appearance last September was that a so-called Christian magazine in Norway republished them. Why it chose to do so is unclear.)

Gee, I don't know. Perhaps it has something to do with the rather central tenet of liberal democracy that all ideas, no matter how offensive to some, should be responded to peaceably. Bad speech should be countered with good speech. Not with arson and rioting and murder and calls for terrorism.

As for the charge that Holocaust deniers would be called anti-Semites: well, yes, they would be, and they are. But again, the distinction that seems to elude this apologist for murder is that offensive speech should be met with more speech, not with molotov cocktails.

Thanks to Newslinker.

posted by Ace at 02:21 PM

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