Texas: two gunmen shot dead after opening fire at Mohammed cartoon contest

[Potus]

This isn't a conversation about what one is "allowed" to find offensive and acceptable. This thread has been dominated by questions of what is the "appropriate" use of free speech.

That's not what the conversation needs to be about. The fundamental backing behind a liberal democracy's right to free speech is its inalienable and universal nature. There is a reason that we criticize nations that imprison political opponents for speaking out against their government. In those contexts, we don't call them constitutional rights or First Amendment rights, we call them human rights. For all of humankind, there is a right to inalienable to free speech.

It has been a pillar of Western Civilization that any limitation of free speech by the state must be extremely measured (i.e. shouting "fire" in a movie theater) but there are no cultural protections for ones use of free speech. The state is the state because it has a monopoly on force. By permitting others to use force, they are bizarrely condoning the violence that ensues.

This creates a mandate for the state to protect those practicing their freedom of speech from harm as a result of their speech. That's a major point in this discussion. There is absolutely no room for the kind of feckless, "They had it coming!" talk when we are discussing Islamic fascism.

Islamofascists seek to destroy the fundamentals of Western Civilization with attacks on things like free speech and free expression. These attacks are outrageous and very, very disproportionate . I used the example of Piss Christ in another. Not only was no one shot over the vulgar work, no one was shot over the government funding that vulgar work. There was no armed rebellion or shooting on the artist's home.

Whether or not the rhetoric of the event went "too far", this was a horrible act of violence. It is clearer and clearer with each act of political violence that Islamic fascism is the greatest threat posed to liberal democracy in the 21st century.