My personal belief is that people can practice what they like, but with the following caveats: no harm to others, animals or the planet. I don't belong to any faith, but see myself as more 'Christian' then many practising Christians. People get lost in doctrine or the mob, and forget to question for themselves. Natural law is far simpler.
The web provides an outlet for many voices, who's authority do you trust? Moderation requires some form of censorship. I'd rather it all open. I can't stand pruned forums, they feel like rigged referendums. It's just incredibly difficult wading through it all. As usually the average Joe, hasn't really anything much interesting to say.
So is it fear or learned sensitivity?
In a free society there should be no line. A person should be free to say absolutely anything. There is certainly a possibility of causing harm by way of your speech, but this should be handled post hoc, with a court determining damages.
America partially observes this with a watered-down doctrine of prior restraint, but it's got enough exceptions that it's not worth so much.
It's true that we in the West have the right to offend, but being a troll doesn't make you a righteous defender of freedom.. Those cartoons weren't some type of brilliant artwork, they were simple trolling.
While I'll stand up for someone's right to be a troll, they certainly shouldn't expect my support and respect. Instead, that is reserved for the millions who fought and died to establish and protect our freedoms in the first place.
And frankly, having seen the cartoons, anyone who thinks the cartoonists deserve to either die or face attempts on their lives is a nutcase who we should be willing to stand up to.
If they want to condemn and denounce in no uncertain terms those cartoons or any other kind of expression, fine. But we must never tolerate acts of violence as an acceptable response to an act of speech.
Do you like that now punk?
Thought not.
You see, it stops mattering that they're puerile and reprehensible prats the moment you start to threaten physical violence.
By saying: "I will make you stop saying that even if I have to use force" you have guaranteed two outcomes:
1) They will _definitely_ not stop saying the thing which is making you so mad.
2) Any responsible person hearing this would start dialing 911 before you do something you will regret for the rest of your life.
Given that these threats, in recent years, are all to often starting to turn to action it becomes quite important to ask how much of this behavior we can tolerate before our society too ceases to be civil?
I don't think we are tolerant of fundamentalist religious movements; we certainly would not excuse Christians for threatening artists [1]. We are tolerant of bad behavior by non-westerners because we feel that criticizing them makes us racist.
[1] For an example of this, witness the reaction when Guiliani suggested defunding a museum over the "Piss Christ" exhibit.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Indeed it could be argued that allowing him to be persecuted for his trolling in such an excessive way is doing a dis-service to those who died protecting this freedom.
"Piss Christ" (look it up) has been lauded as a legitimate work of art. And cartoons that are much more intentionally harmful toward Christianity or Judaism are printed on editorial pages every day in the western world.
The Mohammad cartoons were very mild in comparison to the standards of criticism in the western world. If we cannot support criticism of Islam because we lack the balls to set Muslims straight when they throw violent tantrums then we do not have freedom of speech anymore. And it's only a matter of time before Muslims make greater and greater use of this new power they've discovered. And too it's only a matter of time before every group realizes that threats of violence are an effective means of exercising influence over others.
Trick question: am I a troll or not?
Is to troll to be deliberately malicious? Does this really help the debate? Digg and Youtube have just become a forum for immature witticisms and derogatory put downs - trolls.