February 08, 2006
Getting serious about the Cartoons, with all due respect
1) The Seattle Danish Cartoon poster is wrong.
Yes, nations, individuals and religions have the right to *demand respect*. The problem is that the demanding party should *earn respect*. They should earn it by *manifesting respect* toward others in general, and in the manner of making the demand. (I think this framework really clarifies the situation.)
2) Andrew Sullivan is misguided.
Alex, you and Andrew Sullivan may note with benefit:
China WAS in that position a few months ago (protesting Japanese textbooks’ understatement of Japanese colonial oppression, etc.), and most Islamic gov'ts are in the same position -- they are not sponsoring the demonstrations, and indeed have little use for them, but the purveyors of discontent have cleverly forced them to earn their street cred by expressing offense (to the Japanese and Danes, respectively) and permitting SOME demonstration and at least a smidgen of violence which can then be used as the excuse to shut the demonstration down and perhaps even denounce the excesses of the
demonstrators. China-Japan relations, like Western-Arab gov't relations, are strained, but not destroyed.
Talk of “toppling dictatorships” is totally inappropriate here.
3) Sorry Morgan, I’m with Dershowitz.
See #1 above.
Posted by Matt at 06:05 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.spareink.com/mt-tb.cgi/196
Comments
Another template for the China/Japan scenario would be what happened after the US bombed the Yugoslavian Embassy. As I recall, there were mass protests, the US embassy in Beijing was stoned (but not stormed), and a friend of mine in China at the time described the lengths which the state-run media had gone towards stoking the cause of Chinese nationalism all during it.
Posted by: ooghe at February 9, 2006 09:32 AM
Post a comment
E-mail this entry to a friend!
