By now you have surely heard that Capitulation Central, which was formerly known as Comedy Central, censored the ostentatiously irreverent cartoon show South Park because a group called Revolution Muslim issued a veiled death threat against the show’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. If you sense a deficit of the surreal in your life, I recommend checking out the web site of this home-grown wacko group: it is something special. Imagine warning that Messrs Parker and Stone would “probably wind up like Theo van Gogh,” i.e., murdered in the street, because . . . because why? Because they dared to portray Mohammed in a bear suit. (Connoisseurs of the surreal will especially want to savor the “clarifying the South Park Response” posted on the Revolution Muslim web site.)
To his credit, the left-wing comic Jon Stewart recently devoted part of his his show to lambasting Capitulation Central for cravenly capitulating to the insane threats issued by an American-born Muslim convert. It would be difficult to improve upon the simple but cathartic response to this malignant nonsense that Stewart recommends at the end of his skit.
Still, opposing Muslim intimidation — and, what is part of the same task, opposing Western capitulation to Muslim intimidation — is a large task that requires many hands and many different sorts of initiative. The Seattle-based cartoonist Molly Norris is to be congratulated for suggesting another fertile response, “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” Put the date in your calendar: May 20, the first “Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor” — CACAH, pronounced, Ms. Norris informs us, “ca-ca.” In anticipation of “Everybody Draw Mohammed” day, Ms. Norris supplied this advertisement:
“As a cartoonist,” Ms. Norris wrote, “I just felt so much passion about what had happened I wanted to kind of counter Comedy Central’s message they sent about feeling afraid.” Good thinking, Molly! Too bad the commissars at the organization that used to be called Comedy Central lack your courage.
What’s at stake here? Ms. Norris and others have mentioned the First Amendment, i.e., freedom of speech. But the episode reminds us that even more is at stake. It is not just freedom of speech, it is freedom tout court. Aristotle once observed that courage is the most important virtue because without courage you cannot practice the others. In the face of the threat of radical Islam, Western cultures have increasingly taken refuge in the false prudence that is a blind for timorousness. They lack any conviction about the vitality of their own tradition and the values that nurture it, so they are thrown back on the liberal mantra of “tolerance.” Tolerance is a great virtue when practiced from a position of strength. As an excuse for taking the path of least resistance, it is indistinguishable from cravenness and cowardice.
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