How many times throughout the course of your day or your week or your life have you been offended by the actions or words of others? If you were privy to the disgusting display by members of the radical Leftist group Code Pink dressed up as giant vaginas at the Republican national convention a couple of weeks ago, did you feel a sense of offense?

If you are a traditionalist or a Christian in the United States today, you are subjected to all sorts of offenses in today's culture and society. This offense goes back to the Seventies with the first running of Jesus Christ Super Star, and it continues to this very day with shows like Robot Chicken or Boondocks and Broadway musicals like The Book of Mormon. And yet in the face of all of this purposeful, hurtful offensive material there are not calls for the writers or producers of such media to be prosecuted or put to death. There are not mass acts of violence that cost the lives of foreign three Americans and one US diplomat.

Over the past week Americans have been treated to massive uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Nigeria, and Indonesia, among other places across the Middle East and North Africa. The trouble started in Egypt on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 ostensibly over a brief “movie” on YouTube that depicted the Islamic Prophet Muhammad in a very negative light that no one has seen until the uprisings when curiosity compelled people to go see it. On the same day, yet a bit later, in Libya the US consulate in Benghazi was stormed and three people and the ambassador were killed. The subsequent days that followed saw uprisings spread pretty much throughout the Muslim world. Why? Again, this is supposedly due to a very obscure movie that no one saw.

Now, the source of concern in light of all of this is not that Muslims are acting like spoiled brats who have been told they cannot have one more cookie, but rather it is the response of US officials in the State Department and the Oval Office that should have you scratching your head. The response to this violence and act of savagery was not to condemn those who are perpetrating the violence but to castigate the makers of an obscure little film who were doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights.

In Egypt, before things got out of hand, the US embassy there put out a statement saying that they are against anyone who deliberately hurts the religious feelings of Muslims. In two statements the following day by both the State Department and the White House said that they deplored the “intentional effort to denigrate” Muslims. Secretary Clinton said the next day after the initial violence:

“The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.”

During Friday's press briefing, White House spokeskid, Jay Carney, stated that the uprisings were not against the United States but this YouTube film. And Google Inc. has now rejected a request by the White House to pull the video from its search results. All in a response to Muslims being offended.

The picture that has been painted by the events of the past week is that the sensibilities of the Muslim world are more worthy of protection from the US government than the free speech of Americans who happen to disagree with them. Again, I go back to the barrage of offensive insensitivity that people of faith in the US face daily, depending on what cable channel you might be watching. The funding of “artistic” videos that offend Christians by the National Endowment of the Humanities is deemed as important and protected by Free Speech, yet the private production of a short flick that allegedly pokes fun at Muhammad is deemed as not helpful and the actual cause of death of four Americans in a Muslim country.

What should offend every American is the notion that the federal government would blame Americans for the actions of barbaric Muslims supposedly over free speech. Our freedoms are not the problem; their lack of plurality in thought and speech is the problem. Their adherence to Sharia law is the problem and now they are attempting to pressure our government to enforce their backwards vision of society.

My fellow Americans, the actions of the past week were not due to a stupid movie that has been on YouTube for months prior to 9/11. But if it was, so what? The culprits of the violence should not be the people who exercised their rights to say whatever they want about Muhammad. The culprit is a society that has been telling its people for half a century that they are better than the infidel West, that their God is better -- Allahu Akbar!! -- than the infidel West, and that they are going to bring Islam to the infidel West either through force or persuasion. The outcome of this is what is called Dhimmitude. That is the relegation to second class citizenry of those who do not profess that “there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.”

We are not governed by Sharia in the United States. We are not Dhimmis to the barbarity of Islam. We are a free and rational people who can have people make fun of us and move on. Why? Because even in the United States the stupid and moronic also have a right to their voice. Just go ask the producers of Jersey Shore or the artist known for Piss Christ, Andres Serrano.


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