Provoking, offending, and freedom

I can say with 99 percent certainty I’ll never draw the Islamic prophet Muhammad as a parody or as a serious depiction, but I have criticized radical Islam and will continue to do so. I don’t go out of my way to offend, but, as a Christian and a conservative with published opinions, I end up offending someone.

On Sunday night, two offended Muslims armed with guns and wearing body armor showed up at a draw Muhammad event in Garland, Texas, and opened fire outside the building. Before a police officer killed both men, they shot a security guard, who suffered non-life-threatening injuries. McClatchyDC tweeted this: “After Texas shooting: If free speech is provocative, should there be limits?”

Was the news service merely being provocative to draw page views and retweets? (Language warning for the responses.) If not, perhaps the writers should re-read and contemplate the First Amendment’s “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” language. While these freedoms aren’t absolute, limits on “provocative” expression would result in limits on the press as well. Some people might be provoked to murder because of a published news story. Then again, the way mainstream media fawn over liberal politicians, its members apparently don’t understand why maintaining a free press is vital. If drawing a parody of Muhammad provokes certain Muslims to violence, the problem lies with those Muslims, not the person drawing.

Reasonable people know this, of course. Thank God our founders believed free expression was important for the new country. In a land with no king, they didn’t have to worry about reprisals from the offended sovereign. The First Amendment was created to protect unpopular speech and religious expression, and American Christians truly are blessed to live in such a place. But with the granting of special rights to homosexuals, our freedom is under assault.

Freedom doesn’t protect us from the consequences of our actions. If a Christian business refuses to participate in mocking God, people are free to boycott. The First Amendment bars the government from encroaching on the owner’s right not to provide service on religious grounds. But the group with the special rights has a strong lobby and prefers to use government power to get their way.

The American experiment has succeeded so well, with the populace so over-fed and comfortable, being offended is reaching newer and sillier heights. There are “microaggressions” to invent, “racism” to uncover under every rock, and “trigger warnings” to broadcast. All of this is politically correct nonsense that too many reasonable people endure with straight faces. And all of this would be funny if not for the fact that political correctness is now trampling on actual rights that Americans have died to protect.

This country is on the verge of outlawing opinions that fall outside the degenerating mainstream. Nobody worries about offending Christians, but everybody—including the most hardened atheists—should worry about the government weakening our First Amendment rights.