$1 Million To Kill "The Cartoonist."

Hitch gets around to commenting on the Danish cartoon fiasco.

The preposterous person of Karen Hughes is quoted in the same New York Times article, under her risible title of "Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy." She tittered outside the store she was happily giving away: "The voices of Muslim Americans have more credibility in the Muslim world frankly than my voice as a government official, because they can speak the language of their faith and can share their experience of practicing their faith freely in the West, and they can help explain why the cartoons are so offensive." Well, let's concede that almost any voice in any world has more credibility on any subject than this braying Bush-crony ignoramus, but is the State Department now saying that we shall be represented in the Muslim world only by Muslims? I think we need a debate on that, and also a vote. Meanwhile, not a dollar of Wahhabi money should be allowed to be spent on opening madrasahs in this country, or in distributing fundamentalist revisions of the Quran in our prison system. Not until, at the very least, churches and synagogues and free-thought libraries are permitted in every country whose ambassador has bullied the Danes. If we have to accept this sickly babble about "respect," we must at least demand that it is fully reciprocal.

He is on point and on fire.

There is no permissible moral relativism here. Freedom of speech trumps religious sensitivity. It's that simple.

Religions are required to subject their beliefs to robust public scrutiny. This means Kanye West can pose as Christ, South Park can mock the Mormons, The Family Guy can show God calling Bush on the phone, some artist in New York can make a portrait of the Virgin Mary out of cow crap... A confident modern religion shrugs, lets its believers believe and lives with the fact that everyone else can make all the damn noise they want.

The followers of Islam, by killing people and burning down stores in response to a simple cartoon, are showing their religion to be weak and midieval. And they are the only ones who should be apologizing.