The State Department has decided to give its opinion of free speech as it applies to the publication of cartoons satirizing Islam and Mohammed in Europe. Surprisingly, the department that represents America and its ideals of freedom abroad has decided to take this opportunity to scold the publishers rather than the angry mobs calling for violence:

Washington on Friday condemned caricatures in European newspapers of the Prophet Mohammad, siding with Muslims who are outraged that the publications put press freedom over respect for religion.

By inserting itself into a dispute that has become a lightning rod for anti-European sentiment across the Muslim world, the United States could help its own battered image among Muslims.

"These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims," State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said in answer to a question. "We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable."

Is that how free speech works? We have the right to say and print whatever we want ... until it offends someone, and then it's unacceptable? I'm not advocating that the State Department should have endorsed the cartoons themselves, but one would expect America to at least stand for the right of publication and the necessity of sometimes offending people in order to produce the necessary change for progress.

Would the State Department have apologized to Nazis in 1938 for depictions of Hitler as a lunatic? It would have offended millions of German fascists. Have they demanded an end to artists' depictions of Jesus and Mary in elephant dung and urine? No, and they shouldn't. Let the Christians protest these artists and boycott those who exhibit their wares, but America should at least acknowledge the rights of the artists to produce and others to privately publish these images.

If this is some sort of lame attempt to win credibility among Muslims, it's pathetic on two counts. First, it simply won't work -- we've interceded on their behalf before (in the Balkans, for instance) and it didn't win us any brownie points at all. More importantly, it sells out a critical component of what makes America and its freedoms so compelling. Volunteering for dhimmitude does nothing but encourage the Islamist lunatics, something we'd hoped that the State Department had learned by now.

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