Blogging has been light today because I’m out of the office, in Boston for “The Jihad Against the West: The Real Threat and the Right Response,” a conference sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute.
I am writing this during an absorbing panel discussion conducted by Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute, Daniel Pipes, and Flemming Rose, culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which first published the notorious cartoons of Muhammad. I spoke earlier today, following a magnificent and bracingly politically incorrect address by John Lewis, assistant professor of history at Ashland University, and followed by an excellent talk by Daniel Pipes.
I believe that the addresses will be made available in some format, and will be well worth picking up — all have been first-rate.
Brook is saying right now that when lives are threatened for speaking freely, the government should protect them. The newspapers that published the Muhammad cartoons should have been protected, and the principles involved defended. Instead, the government punted.
It is refreshing and heartening that we can have this kind of open discussion, despite increasing pressure on freedom of speech in the West. May there be many more.