Also, none of the Muslims I know personally are violent or intolerant people.  But (and this is crucial) I only know Muslims who have made the effort to come to America.  Unlike GUYK, I have not been overseas where the experience may be very different.

The moderate Muslims have made themselves a bit difficult to find, because they’re either complacent or scared.  They ought to be speaking up and trying to preserve their own religion from the crazies.  Time is getting short and scared people aren’t good at making fine distinctions.

All right, now everybody just take a deep breath…

No need to apologize, Websie, disagree all you want.  It’s a free country, so far.

Essentially all you’ve said is that your friend is really, really offended.  Nobody is asking the Muslims not to be offended; we’re asking them not to kill people, burn down embassies, or condone those who do. 

If your Muslim friend is not permitted by his religion to make or view drawings of his prophets, then he should refrain from doing those things.  For him to insist that non-Muslims refrain from things specific to his religion would be analogous to the Amish insisting no one else use electricity. (Insert goofy image here of Amish terrorists blowing up electrical substations and making a getaway in their buggies) A pluralistic society simply won’t work if people can insist – on threat of violence – that others adhere to their own taboos.

If he doesn’t like the association of Muhammed with violence, again, he is free to be offended.  But he should ask himself how that association came about.  He had also better look squarely at the hypocrisy of the Arab press which decries the Muhammed cartoons while printing unbelievably vicious cartoons about Jews.  You can’t have it both ways.  Allow one, you must allow the other.

It doesn’t really matter why the Muslims are pissed off.  Lots of things about Islam offend me – does that give me any right to violence?  If the answer is ‘no’ then the same applies to the rioters around the world and Imams encouraging violence.

Adlai Stevenson said a free country was one in which it is safe to be unpopular.  The newspaper, and the cartoonists were making the point – and they turned out to be exactly correct – that Denmark was no longer a free country by that definition, and that furthermore the oppression came not from the government but from thugs who didn’t “get” what free speech is all about.

GUYK, I think that’s a pretty broad generalization.  If all Muslims felt that way – there are a billion of them – who would be left alive?  Most Muslims, like most other people, are moderate.  But they’d better wake up fast and stop condoning extremism.  Terrorism hides inside concentric circles of sheltering agreement.

The argument about abortion; ‘it isn’t in the constitution’ won’t fly.  You don’t need to be an activist of any kind to discover a right to be left alone in the constitution; it is the single thread running through the while document.  And an ‘activist judge’ is simply any judge who does something you don’t like.

What Roe has done to this country is prevent a real debate on when, for legal purposes, life begins.  Since this is a secular country, the debate can’t be religion-driven.

That said, I wouldn’t mind seeing Roe overturned and politicians take the heat.  Let ‘em step up or shut up.  I have a feeling it wouldn’t turn out like the pols think it would.

I agree about Irving. He is and has been an ass. It is best to expose him for what he is-a bumbling fool of a neo historian—of which most seem to be…

I hope the abortion question does hit the courts again and Roe vs Wade is overturned and the various states as well as the crooks in the house and senate have to put their ass on the line to vote either pro or con on it. If the majority of the public wants to legalize abortion then the law makers should make it legal. But it is not the call of a activist court to make that decision. It damn sure is not in the constitution. One thing about it. It will not be the first decision ever overturned