The Good Doctor Agrees
Victor Davis Hanson has his own take on the Cartoon wars. The good doctor urges that the west rise up to defend its values--at least intellectually:

We are seeing an escalating clash of civilizations — against a tense backdrop of the Iranian government's call for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth, the election of Hamas terrorists in the Palestinian territories, and Western efforts to protect the new democracies in Afghanistan and Iraq from jihadist bombers.

There is a great asymmetry in all this. Western notions of cultural tolerance and liberality are the benchmarks Muslims employ to condemn insensitive European journalism. Meanwhile, the Islamic Middle East is given a pass, as anti-Semitic state-run papers there daily portray Jews grotesquely.

As the controversy heated up, the word globalization came up a lot, with many banally noting that "we are all interconnected now" — and that what a small newspaper prints in a small country like Denmark can affect the entire world. But that is only half-true.

Globalization is, in fact, mostly a one-way process. Western technology, democracy, freedom, capitalism and popular culture continue to infect the non-West. Once there, they often bulldoze time-honored culture. That resulting clash leads to a radical divergence of perceptions. The cocky West assumes non-Westerners wish to emulate it. They often do, but also soon resent deeply their newfound dependence and appetites for what is often antithetical to traditional life.

Europeans and Americans rarely demonstrate when Jesus Christ, the pope or the Jewish faith is lampooned abroad. In contrast, the insecure and touchy Middle East is hypersensitive about any affront to its religion — or honor. Thus the mere possession of a Bible is felonious in Saudi Arabia, while mosques typically operate without scrutiny in once-Christian Europe.

As usual, a partial quote doesn't do the piece justice. Read the whole thing.
- posted by Base10 @ 9:08 AM