Off Topic: Those Damned Cartoons

I've been holding my tongue on the violence, controversy and whatnot about the publication of the Prophet Mohammed cartoons, but enough of that. You know the story of their appearance and subsequent public and media responses. Although I am tempted to say a pox on both their houses (extremist Muslims grossly overreacted, the Western media continued to post the cartoons, the extremists overreacted some more, etc.), I must lay the blame for this on the extremists. These are people who make extremist Christians and extremist Jews look like nursery-schoolers. They are killing people over cartoons? They demanded--as an imam did in Saudi Arabia--that Westerners be put them on trial for running the cartoons? Jesus H. Christ.

If Muslims want to move to countries in Western Europe and come to America, then there are certain things they are going to have to accept. This includes freedom of the press, association, thought and so on. If they have a problem with these freedoms, then they need to go back from whence they came. They have no cause to try and change our cultures to conform to theirs. Western cultures have worked pretty damn well for centuries. That's why the extremists and other, more peaceful Muslims moved to them in the first place, right? Hell, I remember thousands of Iranians moving to this country in the mid-1970s to escape the brutality of the Shah and I remember many thousands more making the same move to avoid the brutality of the Islamic Revolution in their homeland. America has worked out well for them. Their coreligionists ought to keep that in mind before freaking out over a batch of cartoons.

And so should the bozos at CNN and other mainstream media outlets, print and broadcast, who refuse to run the cartoons or pixelate them so that they don't offend Muslim sensibilities. OK, so while fanatic Muslims trash our culture, you guys just sit back and play along? That's bullshit. How do you figure your press freedoms will fare under sharia?

Thank god for the blogosphere. Speaking of which, the best tracking of this whole crazy matter can be found at michellemalkin.com or just do a Google search.