Shameful appeasement

Columnist Kathleen Parker has been in the forefront of those speaking up recently for western civilization. Excerpts from her most recent column:

The past several days of mayhem throughout the Muslim world — all thanks to a handful of mild cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed — have provided a clarifying moment for those still uncertain about what the West faces from radical disciples of the Islamic faith.

What's clear is that East and West are not just cultures apart, but centuries, and that certain elements of the Muslim world would like to drag us back into the Dark Ages.

What is also clear is that the West's own leaders, both in Europe and the USA, as well as many of our own journalists, have been weak-spined when it comes to defending the principles of free expression that the artists in Denmark were exploring.

Instead of stepping up to passionately defend freedoms won through centuries of bloody sacrifice, most have bowed to ayatollahs of sensitivity, rebuking the higher calling of enlightenment and sending the cartoonists into hiding under threat of death.

Many U.S. newspapers have declined to reproduce the cartoons out of respect for Muslims, setting up the absurd implication that an open airing of the debate's content constitutes disrespect.
...

Of course, one can always justify being offended because taking offense is always a subjective act of volition. What is appalling, meanwhile, is appeasing crazed radicals in betrayal of moderate Muslims courageously trying to speak truth to insanity.

Appalling is our official genuflection to an irrational horde that has no interest in compromise or reason but only in submission. Ours.

Parker has much more to say. I hope you read it all.

Parker ends with this:

These are the fascist thugs, not the artists who draw cartoons in the service of democracy and truth. And those who out of a misguided sense of cultural sensitivity and niceness try to justify Muslim outrage over a cartoon are, frankly, lending aid and comfort to the enemies of civilization.