February 07, 2006
Alan Dershowitz on the Danish Cartoons
Alex has long been arguing to me (offline) that Alan Dershowitz is not like us--that he does not share our worldview, the dedication to an open society and open markets that we do--and I've been long disagreeing with him.
But a video I saw last night--of him being interviewed on a Finnish TV station about the Denmark cartoon crisis--made me agree with Alex more than I ever had.
His key point in the interview is that the fundamental problem with how the Muslims are responding is that "there is no symmetry" -- that they publish deeply anti-semitic cartoons in the Middle East, so that they are being hypocritical in their demands. His argument is that a world where everyone mocks everyone else's religions is fine; or a world in which no one mocks anyone else's is fine--but you can't have it both ways.
Alex, you're right: he's not like us. I want to live in a world where we can publish these sorts of innocuous cartoons about any religion. I don't want to live in the world where no one can mock anyone else's religion--as symmetrical as it might be.
(I'll update this post with a link if I'm able to find it again later.)
UPDATE: added some verbiage in the first paragraph for clarity!
Posted by Morgan at 03:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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