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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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SO, HAVE YOU SEEN “THE CARTOONS”, YET?

Well, HERE THEY ARE. Pretty mild stuff if you’re used to a free press in a country that enshrines the right of free speech in the first amendment of its constitution.

Offensive to some folks? Sure. ‘Most anything published is offensive to somebody. Don’t get me started on MY list…...but if we are going to live together in peace, then each of us cedes a little bit of our “right to outrage” to the collective—at least that’s one way of putting it.

I know that some are wondering why it’s necessary to publish and republish these cartoons, when they outrage the religious sensibilities of so many people…..well, THE INTELLECTUAL ACTIVIST makes the case.

The real issue at stake is not just censorship versus freedom, but something much deeper: the need to recognize the real essence of the West. The distinctive power and vibrancy of our culture, the source of our liberty, our happiness, and our unprecedented prosperity, is our Enlightenment tradition of regard for the unfettered reasoning mind, left free to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

And this controversy has given our minds plenty of evidence to follow, and plenty of fearless conclusions to draw.

It was not the West who made these cartoons an issue—they were first published by an obscure tabloid in Denmark, received (maybe even read, although I doubt it) by perhaps 30,000 people. It was a couple of radical Danish imams who carried them to the Middle East, where Islamists and dictators in Syria and Iran (over a three-month period) arranged and stage-managed the “spontaneous demonstrations” against the cartoons.

As I wrote earlier, we can either defend the western tradition of liberty, or get used to dhimmitude. You don’t believe those are the choices? Well, CHECK THIS OUT

Pakistan, meanwhile, is seeking an internationally applicable law against blasphemy.

This at the end of a story describing how our good friends in Pakistan have blocked a big blogging site to protect their citizens from seeing the cartoons.

Wake up, folks!

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/04 at 07:53 PM

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