Andrew, I hate to keep quoting my own book, even if it does come out in paperback on Monday, but it does include this passage re the Alberta Government’s investigation of my friend Ezra Levant for publishing the Danish Mohammed cartoons:
Halfway through his ordeal, Mr Levant observed that one day the Danish cartoons crisis would be seen as a more critical event than the attacks of September 11th 2001. Not, obviously, in terms of the comparative death tolls, but in what each revealed about the state of western civilization in the 21st century.
After the slaughter of 9/11, the civilized world fought back, hit hard, went on the attack, rolled up the Afghan terrorist camps, toppled the Taliban. In the battle cry of a soon forgotten man called Todd Beamer, “Let’s roll!”
After the Danish cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and apologized, and signaled that we were willing to trade core western values for a quiet life. Let’s roll over! It’s a lot less effort.
The disgraceful statements of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo (before the mob attacked) on the very anniversary of September 11 make Ezra’s point explicitly. And it’s pitiful to see at home the same cocky swaggering secular triumphalists who reserve the right to jeer gleefully at Mitt’s “magic underwear” and sneer at the Catholic clergy as career pederasts turn on a dime and argue that Islam should be uniquely deserving of “respect.”
The mob of “Islamic rage boys” gets mad about all kinds of stuff — cartoons, dogs, teddy bears. You can never make a long enough list to satisfy them. So you might as well tell them you’re not going to start.