Jonathan Last upbraids me as a craven squish for the following passage in my weekend column:

I certainly sympathize with the general proposition that not all encounters with the constabulary go as agreeably as one might wish. Last year I had a minor interaction with a Vermont state trooper and, 60 seconds into the conversation, he called me a “liar.” I considered my options:
Option a): I could get hot under the collar, yell at him, get tasered into submission, and possibly shot while “resisting arrest”;
Option b): I could politely tell the trooper I object to his characterization, and then write a letter to the commander of his barracks the following morning suggesting that such language is not appropriate to routine encounters with members of the public and betrays a profoundly defective understanding of the relationship between law-enforcement officials and the citizenry in civilized societies.
I chose the latter course, and received a letter back offering partial satisfaction and explaining that the trooper would be receiving “supervisory performance-related issue-counseling,” which, with any luck, is even more ghastly than it sounds and hopefully is still ongoing.

Mr. Last left out everything after “the latter,” and then responded:

What strikes me here is how analogous this response is to how the left viewed the Danish Mohammed-cartoon crisis. Sure, they said, free speech is nice in theory. But it’s rude to purposefully provoke another religion. And when Muslims the world over riot and kill people well–what do you expect? That’s just what they do. Better to keep your voice down, make nice, and never offend them.

Just to be clear: I believe in resisting the intrusions of officialdom at every opportunity — and being “purposefully provoking” of them. I am especially hostile, at least in my own all-but-crime-free neighborhood, to adversarial policing. I oppose SWAT teams and incremental paramilitarization at every opportunity. My first response to requests for information is “Why?” If the official replies that it’s in the Patriot Act, I ask for chapter-and-verse. And if, as invariably follows, it proves not to be in the Patriot Act, I say sternly that false invocations of national security are themselves a national-security threat, and file an official complaint.

An hour before my encounter with the Vermont trooper, I was returning from Quebec via the border crossing at Derby Line, Vt. My rule with Customs & Immigration is that the moment it becomes clear you’ve got some bored inspector who wants to jerk you around I call for the supervisor and raise hell. In free societies, the citizenry do not cower before minor functionaries of the state.

Nevertheless, on a deserted patch of road in the wilds of Vermont’s North-East Kingdom with no one around but me and a state trooper behaving very oddly, discretion is the better part of valor. Just for the record, as his commander noted, the tape shows me rebuking the trooper coolly and calmly, and the cop walking away unable to respond. I don’t recall the lefties doing that over the Danish cartoons. That said, although I’m a notorious Islamophobe all in favor of standing up to radical Islam, if I chanced to be strolling alone through Waziristan and ran into a mob torching Old Glory and shouting “Death to the Great Satan!” and was asked my opinion of the Motoons, even I might say, “Golly. What cartoons? First I’ve heard of it,” and slowly back away, smiling blandly. You have to pick your spots.