The Importance of Blasphemy

Don’t have time to read all this article now, but it seems to have some good points:

Something terribly important has been missing from discussions orbiting around the Mohammed cartoons. It’s a simple point, but one whose recognition is utterly crucial to the functioning of a healthy democratic society. The avoidance of it is, I’m afraid, even by those libertarians who defend the cartoons’ publication, a measure of extent to which theocracy has advanced both in the US and abroad.
What’s been missing has been an acknowledgment that blasphemy isn’t just something that must be tolerated. It’s something that possesses a special political value of its own. Blasphemy, in short, is a good thing. It’s something admirable, noble, and, yes, even respectable. Why have we forgotten this?
The dominant response to the cartoons in the corridors of respectable opinion in the West has been a predictable two-track affair organized around craven calculations of interest. One track has laboured to quell the rage, minimize the damage to the struggle against Islamic jihadis , and prevent more violence. The other track has worked to affirm the principles of free expression—in principle.
The result has been something like a defence of the ‘right’ to publish the cartoons qualified by condemnation of this particular exercise that right. While one has a right to break wind in a crowded elevator, actually doing so is obnoxious……

I’ll try and read it all romorrow.