On the Danish Cartoons


If, as the news reports, some clerics really believe that the editors and cartoonists of Jyllands-Posten should be beheaded or have their hands cut off, we need to reacquaint ourselves with the attitude of the British general Charles James Napier. Assigned to Britishcontrolled India, Napier was told he just didn’t understand that wife-burning was a revered custom in India. He responded, in effect, that he understood completely. “My country also has a custom,” he said. “We hang people who burn women.” He proposed building the gallows next to the pyre. The wifeburning stopped. In American culture, we don’t put up with violence and arson in response to speech. We’re a funny people that way.

NJO: Originally posted on the blog Feathers of Steel at liberabit.blogspot.com.