Pat Buchanan versus the Secularists
. For this was an in-your-face declaration by the secularist media of the European Union that it will exercise its right to insult any God, any Prophet, any faith, whenever it so chooses.
It’s a show of what little it takes to ignite a firestorm with the religious fundamnetalists, I guess. I’m not going to go around drawing the image of Mohammad, but I’m not going to go out of my way not to draw the image of Mohammad to please their religious dictates.
European governments are wringing their hands over the rage and violence unleashed, but they seem paralyzed. What is the matter? Why cannot they denounce press irresponsibility while defending press freedom? Even friends of the West like Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey have denounced these cartoons as insults to Islamic values and deeply damaging to Western interests.
It’s a bit curious to see Pat Buchannan as the voice of Political Correctness and understanding other cultures. BUT…
Nor are we all that different. Sen. Trent Lott was ousted as majority leader for a birthday-party compliment to 100-year-old Strom Thurmond. Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker was almost lynched for saying he considers New York a social pigsty. There were demands that Rocker undergo psychiatric counseling.
We have “speech codes” in colleges and “hate crimes” laws to protect minorities from abusive remarks. But newspapers that hail these codes throw a blanket of “artistic freedom” over scatological art that degrades religious symbols – from putting a figure of Christ in a jar of urine to a “painting” of the Virgin Mary surrounded by female genitalia and elephant dung that hung in a Brooklyn museum.
What has happened in Europe is that the secular press, which loves to mock the beliefs and symbols of religious faith, has now insulted a deadly serious religion that answers insults with action.
I’m going to be honest. He’s fighting our culture war here. Muslims upset by the drawing of Mohammad have as much to be upset about as fundie Christians upset about the “War on Christmas”.