AllahPundit, subbing for Michelle Malkin while she takes a mini-vacation, notes the following while discussing the ubiquitous "Mohammad Cartoons":
In the spirit of, ahem, free inquiry, I went to NYU last night to attend the Objectivist Club's controversial panel discussion about the cartoons ... NYU gave the Objectivist Club a choice: either it could show the cartoons, in which case the event would be limited to NYU faculty and students, or it could skip the cartoons and open the event to the general public. In light of the public demand, the Club chose the latter. And so it was that an event billed as a presentation of the Jyllands-Posten images featured a row of panelists seated before four blank easels.
... On a night when many trenchant points were made, the most trenchant belonged to Peter Schwartz of the Ayn Rand Institute, who noted that the goal of Islamists isn't merely to intimidate the west into censoring itself. It's to have the west accept self-censorship by dressing up its fear as something principled, like "tolerance" or "respect for religion." (emphasis added)
Which is precisely the point I made some weeks ago in this post.
Criticism, self-examination, and reformation are all good and well, and have benefited Western civilization greatly during the last 500 years. But when these things become dogma that trump basic morals and values, the danger that they pose is catastrophic.
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