from Rick Esenberg's column...

Rarely do I find much of value in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but today liked this:

Regarding the whole uproar and upset over the Danish cartoonist depicting Mohammed in an unfavorable light and the Danish Gov't's "failure" to move against the publisher of the cartoon, coumnist Rick Esenberg writes about a strange shift in tolerance and what that word is taken to mean...

"Part of the problem resides in our ever-expanding notion of tolerance. In our private lives, when we claim to merely "tolerate" something, we mean that we "put up" with it. Thus, I may tolerate the fact that an adult child smokes, but I do not hesitate to tell him that I disapprove.
The meaning of tolerance in public life, however, has moved beyond simply "letting something be" to include the notion that tolerance of a person or an idea means acknowledging that she of it is "just as good as" anyone or anything else. If a person opposes criminalization of homosexuality but nevertheless condemns it as sinful, he is said to be intolerant.
If my freedom of speech is limited by your offense, we are left with the censorship of the thin-skinned. What we wind up doing is formally insisting upon the freedom of speech, while supressing speech in practice.
CNN and other networks refuse to show the cartoons. An editor of a French paper who ran them gets fired. Former President Clinton likens the cartoons to anti-Semitism.
We wind up with civil peace, I suppose. At least for a while. But we get it on the terms of the intolerant. In the end, they shut us up."



pretty well worded I thought.

on the same page there was a letter to the editor from some reader, which stated:
"In Islam, any represnetation of the prophet is considered blasphemy. How would Christians, especially fundamentalists, feel if Arab political cartoonists depicted Jesus in an irreverant way? Anger and resentment are two words that come to mind"

To this woman I simply say, do you REALLY think Christians don't put up with free-speakers who bash, blaspheme and desicrate Jesus or God on a daily basis? Why should Mohammed be set above and beyond political satire or criticism from outside of Islam if no other religious figures are? The argument makes no sense.

anyway just me sounding off a bit. I can't believe sometimes the steps backward that so many people seem so eager to take!