Muslims and the murderer's veto

Sen. Lindsey Graham is a fool who knows not the First Amendment or recent history. Though he is an officer in the Air Force reserves, Graham still doesn’t even know why we fight.

I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy.

That’s Graham on the subject of the obscure pastor who burned a Koran, and the deadly riots that ensued in Afghanistan (but so far, only Afghanistan) after President Karzai and the Taliban stirred them up. Graham’s brand of thinking gives mad murderers a world away a veto over our precious right of free speech right here at home. No matter what happens, we cannot give them that right — it’s one of the core reasons we’re at war in the first place.

In the pantheon of “Why do they hate us?” free speech is at or near the top. These people would rather be right than be free. In 2004, film maker Theo Van Gogh made a short movie criticizing the treatment of women in Islamic society. For that, a young Muslim murdered him in cold blood on the streets of Amsterdam. Likewise Ayaan Hirsi Ali criticizes Islam and had to leave Europe for America, or face the same fate as Van Gogh. From the dishonest Islamist campaign against the Danish Mohammed cartoons (demonstrating conclusively that if something isn’t sufficiently offensive on its own, the Islamists will lie until the murdering starts), to the murderously insane reaction to Newsweek‘s false Koran-toilet story, to the Mark Steyn free speech trial in Canada, to this latest business in Afghanistan, there is no satisfying the totalitarian Islamist drive to destroy our fundamental rights. And we should not attempt to satisfy it, ever. We should stand for our values, fight for them and if need be die for them. Anything less is a disservice to the founders of this country and to every single American who has ever given their life to defend our way of life.