Number of guns increasing by 'double digits' sounds very small. I figure they mean percentages but it comes off, to me, that there's like 40 more guns.

I love how the solution to gun violence in the mind of Adios is more gun freedom.

DVault has like I said been in top form, but tomd is just going over the top with an expert ice cream-based analogy.

Guns will not solve any problems, peoples mentality needs to change.

This post is much more sensitive than your vile musings about Jews.

I think your point here accurately describes a lot of people, but there are others who just don't like the idea of being a dhimmi in the West.

That was mostly tongue in cheek and I did apologise (and will do again). That said I do think that the best (if least feasible) solution would be everyone stopping believing in imaginary beings and ignoring the magic books those beings are supposed to have written, both jews and non-jews (to borrow from thekid ).

What would you say the odds are of this happening in the next few decades? Not a lot of domination going on in the age of nuclear weaponry I'd wager, and if there were I'm not certain that satirical cartoons would swing the balance.

As a Jew with a chip on his shoulder who clicked that link ready to be offended, meh. Obviously tongue-in-cheek. I'm sure insensitive to many people, but certainly not vile. Pretending it meant you have absolutely no respect for any Jewish right to live in Israel/Palestine because of that comment would just as disingenuous as a lot of other posting in these politics forums.

It bothers me that the news coverage makes it look like the victims were rabid anti-islam militants. I'd rather see tributes to their work in general (most of it having nothing to do with islam) than seeing their islam stuff everywhere. It would explain the shock in france better and would make it less of a occident vs muslims thing.

I think they should draw these cartoons on every public toilet wall. I think they should make comics and post them to the pope and the Queen of England.

I hope they draw these types of cartoons in every blackboard of the schools. On every students desk. I hope they draw these type of cartoons in every cloud.

Extremists would love this idea.

Can we all just let religion go? Lets stick to science, math, and poker haha.

Of course. It's not so hidden though. I mean if you poke the Douthat's of the world, not even very hard, they're quite candid that these cartoons are basically what the internet kids call trolling, purposefully publishing inflammatory things to bother people and get an emotional response. That I suppose is the purpose of alot of good political satire and comedy.

Which is why I spent a bunch of time refuting Douthat specifically (although others have made a similar point) is that once that emotional response is provoked, the task has suddenly taken on a grand significance in the defense of democratic ideals sounds to me like alot of post-hoc justification and self-aggrandizement. It's unfortunately and apparently preposterously easy to get Muslim mouthbreather types foaming and picking up their assault weapons to wage war on cartoonists or whatever. Let's not pretend trolling is some high-art form necessary to buttress the gates of freedom against the uh, totalitarian despotism of two angry idiots and whatever help they got from friends. I think trolling has its place but let's admit its a form of low-brow entertainment. Getting two angry idiots to ragetilt and go ham on an office building is not like the height of the exercise of free speech. I think we can aspire to something slightly grander than like drawing a bomb about to detonate on Mohammed's ass or Mohammed making out with a dude or whatever. And when met with deranged idiots firing off their weapons into scores of people as a result, we shouldn't put the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists on Tiananmen Square or next to Thomas Paine. These guys didn't speak truth to power or expose high crimes and misdemeanors; they tilted some unstable looney tunes. See my point earlier about political nihilism: we can use free speech to veritably scream in each others' faces until someone losers their **** and shoots up the joint; it's definitely a use of free speech. I don't think that's what we ought to aspire to or hold up as the principled ideal of the thing.

Standard caveat: that the cartoons are intentionally meant to bother people above in no way defends these attacks, or the attackers, who are awful, nor does it suggest the cartoonists did anything egregious or out of bounds. I'm not a Muslim so I guess it's not my place to say what they ought to take offense to, but I'd reiterate again these cartoons seemed more absurd than some really biting satire or takedown of Islam or whatever.

That is furthering their cause. Radicalising moderates on both sides is what they want and need.

What we want to do is convince people who don't believe in free speech to believe in it. Widely distributing the worst examples (from their POV) of free speech isn't going to do much to convince them, and probably pushes them in the opposite direction.

Like if you lived in the 1960s and were trying to get pornography legalized, publishing 1001 Close-Ups of Anal Sex would probably be counter-productive. It might be satisfying as act of protest, though.

But can you link me to all the Muslim leaders affirming that in free countries people have the right to draw whatever pictures of Mohammed they like and say whatever they like about him? revots linked earlier to a poll in the UK in the wake of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons (which were, recall, a lot tamer than the Charlie Hebdo stuff) where 78% of UK Muslims polled believed that the cartoonists should have been prosecuted for their work.

The equation goes like this:

1) Insulting Mohammed is enraging to Muslims and a very serious crime in Islam (punishable by death in Pakistan, for instance)
2) There is no distinction drawn in Islam between religious authority and the authority of the state (recall the 78% who wanted the Jyllands-Posten cartoonists prosecuted)
3) Muslims are called to struggle against wrongdoing and injustice in this world (cf. Christians who are called to forgive and to abstain from judging)

To my knowledge, mainstream Muslims do not disagree with any of this. I haven't seen any statements saying that insulting Mohammed is not a crime, or that the beliefs of Islam ought to be ignored in secular justice systems, or that Muslims should leave it up to God to judge people. Condemning the use of violence is rejecting the conclusion without having rejected any of the premises.

As Islam apologists are fond of saying, there are extremists in every religion. The question that needs answering is: why do the ones who happen to be Islamic do things like shoot people for drawing cartoons?

This. There must be a declaration for the Muslim community that violence and the constraint of free speech is more offensive than depictions of the prophet.

I will believe that they are sincere when I see a poster of the prophet adorning my local mosque.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

What do these "muslim leaders" answer when you ask them about the punishment for Apostasy? I will tell you, either they agree or they won`t answer the question.

So tell me who are the true followers?

You are way off base here with a lot of this, IMO. By declaring what they do as trolling, you are essentially saying that their comedy is relatively worthless and exists solely to irritate. You can try and qualify that all you want, but that's the heart of your argument.

I think it's pretty clear that the purpose of the cartoons is to be provocative and make you think about whatever the subject is. You may not agree with the message, but that doesn't make it trolling. This is like saying some abstract art is worthless because it doesn't mean anything to you. I don't think you would put forward that argument (I could be wrong) and this is basically the same situation.

P.S. The cartoon of Mohammad kissing a Charlie cartoonist is IMO a pretty ****ing smart satire of the entire situation. These people faced all kinds of threats and that was their response.

Seems like a non-sequitur. I'll take it on its face Muslims are by-and-large satisfied prosecuting for apostasy and dislike insulting Mohammed. It's a pretty large leap to them say from there they explicitly or tacitly support shooting people for drawing cartoons. Which as you and I both agree is the question at hand. Since I'm pretty sure the number of Muslims who shoot cartoonists in say the past decade numbers less than 10, and the total number of Muslims exceeds 1 billion, and the number of Muslims who denounced the violence specifically includes like literally all other Muslims, we have the answer to your question ("some absurdly small statistically insignificant percentage of Muslims shoot cartoonists such that the question is fallacious") and identified the non-sequitur fallacy that crimes against apostasy in Saudi Arabia necessarily suggest support for assassinating cartoonists in France.

Most of these posts about what cartoons should be published belong in the Good Manners forum, as they have no political angle.

Getting back to politics, France has disgraceful laws against "incitement to religious hatred" that have been used to persecute Charlie Hebdo in the past. These laws should be immediately repealed in honor of these free speech martyrs.

I said I thought trolling had its place but is a low-brow form of entertainment. I'd love to hear all the deep thoughts seeing a naked Mohammed bent over seemingly ready to take it up the ass produced in you.

I'm not sure what to say otherwise. This doesn't require a lot of navel gazing about the intent of the cartoonists dude. I'm not like some intense connoisseur of art but Mohammed makin' out with some other dude doesn't require *that* much critical thinking to conclude the main intent of the author is probably just to tweak Muslims.

Pretty explicitly political and it's not hard to see why. Did you read any of the posts? Politics is more than just like what laws we craft, it's about power and how we structure those relationships in society and yes, up to and including how we treat each other collectively. A newspaper publishing provactive cartoons meant to offend an aggrieved religious minority is explicitly political, of course the response to shoot up their office is too, it's absurd and laughably naive to suggest otherwise. Charlie Hebdo is like patently anti-religious and left-wing, it's a satirical paper with a strong political bent, discussing what they choose to publish is entirely within the realm of a sensible political discussion.

It doesnt look like it's even Mohammed in that one. Just a random islamist.

Before this thread goes into full "muslims are out to get us" mode, it's worth reminding that the overwhelming majority of the victims of islamist attacks are muslims. On the same day the attack in Paris happened, Al Qaeda killed 33 persons and injured 62 in a car bombing in Yemen. No one talked about it because it's just business as usual.