Sarah Pays the Intellectual Jizya

Sarah Chayes's heart has always been in the right place, and more than anyone else, she warned the general public about the Karzai problem years before others in her book The Punishment of Virtue.

Especially for an author and journalist, her latest article is a great disappointment, and she is as wrong as a person can be.

... "Innocence of Muslims," the film whose video trailer indirectly led to the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens among others, is not, arguably, free speech protected under the U.S. Constitution and the values it enshrines.
...
The point here is not to excuse the terrible acts perpetrated by committed extremists and others around the world in reaction to the video, or to condone physical violence as a response to words — any kind of words. The point is to emphasize that U.S. law makes a distinction between speech that is simply offensive and speech that is deliberately tailored to put lives and property at immediate risk. Especially in the heightened volatility of today's Middle East, such provocation is certainly irresponsible ...

Is Monty Python now illegal? Do we put Andres Serrano and Chris Ofili in jail?

No, of course not. Freedom of speech as defined by our Constitution is specifically designed to protect the politically provocative - and Islam is as political as religions.

We have the right to be offensive; we don't have the right not to be offended.

To support Sharia-by-proxie, as Sarah suggests, is to back away from the fruits of The Enlightenment and to slide back towards the retrograde forces of the Dark Ages.

Aggressive Islam is, in a fashion, a bully - a fascist movement. There is only one response that works with both; lean forward and hit them back harder, don't go submissive with them - it only makes them worse.

Sarah, freedom isn't free, it isn't painless, and it isn't easy - but it beats the easy passivity of dhimmitude.