Yesterday, I began to see a disturbing reaction to the faux outrage over what probably ranks as one of the worst youtube productions I have ever personally attempted to watch. This reaction is dangerous for Four reasons, and I am not entirely certain which reason presents the greatest potential for the destruction of our national fabric. After it came to be known that the reason for the Muslim street once again throwing a mob induced temper tantrum, which has, as it usually does, resulted in the loss of innocent life, was some person's use of free speech from half a world away, several of my fellow citizens suggested that our First Amendment be either repealed or curtailed in some manner to prevent further insult to a group of people who are perpetually insulted. Perpetually insulted I might add to the point of wanton violence and psychotic mob behavior.

Suffering insults is part of the human experience. In the entire world of people, there is only one group of people anywhere who react to supposed insults by rioting, pillaging, mob violence, and parading the slain through the streets like wild animals, and it ain't the Quakers, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Rastafarians, Zoastrians, Druze, Jews, Aztecs, Mayans, Atheists, or even those beady eyed Unitarians. Our first Amendment rights are what we should be defending here, because at some point, people, even if they are swept up in the fervor of being part of a mob, should be accountable for their own actions. Yes the video was cheap and stupid, so much so, that I refuse to believe that it could have actually caused all of this.

There is a long list of small things that have caused faux outrage on the part of these savages sufficient to be the blamed for mass rioting and generally abhorrent behavior. Examples include the Danish Mohamed cartoon, Salmon Rushdie's novel, a missionary teacher naming a class mouse Mohamed, Jimmy Carter allowing Shaw Reza Pavlavi to receive cancer treatment at the Mayo Clinic, Bibi Netanyahu visiting the Western Wall during Yom Kippur, and believe me, this list could go on for hours. Freedom of Speech is our most basic freedom granted by our creator, right from birth. Curtailing it lest some hyper sensitive group become enraged is far worse than what ever terrible deed they might wish to blame on their outrage, even the senseless killings.

Here are my four reasons, and I am keenly aware that you may have your own, and quite possibly, they may be much better than my own.

One, Freedom of speech is at the very core of who we are as a people. Being able to say anything we wish, without fear of a government agency arresting us, is something that is unique to our nation, and it was one of the very principles that we were founded upon. For years, we have all heard the famous line, "I might not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it with my very life." That is one of the things that American Exceptionalism means, that we hold this principle, of our people being free to express themselves worth fighting for, and even dying for, to be so important that we can not be coerced through terrorist actions into giving it up. For the first time in my 50 odd years, I have heard my fellow Americans give in to the concept of allowing fear to dictate what kind of a society we will be going forward. What's our next freedom to give up, the freedom to own property, to worship as we wish? Bear in mind that legislating into law that insulting religion is forbidden will eventually bring about the end of that vaunted separation between church and state, which is not actually in our Constitution anyhow. If all it takes to strip away our basic freedoms is a violent and vocal group of people feigning insult, which of our basic freedoms would possibly survive this?

Two, it sends a signal to the world that we are officially a nation of sissies. If we will no longer defend ourselves against people, who quite frankly have only the flimsiest of complaints, then we will be subject to being perpetually subordinated to the most bizarre intrusions into our lives. We will have in effect, given up and accepted our subjugation of any group who is momentarily the best at intimidation. Our, and consequently the other nations around the world that we either defend totally or merely help to defend will suffer the loss of national sovereignty. With being the world's lone super power, and establishing ourselves as a force for good comes a heavy burden of responsibility. No amount of moral equivalency can make that go away. For decades, America has been the beacon of freedom for the rest of the world, and accepting the loss of that freedom because someone, somewhere, feigns insult is truly a dangerous thing. Further, there is no guarantee that those morally superior beings that we enlist to organize our society for us after we subordinate our freedoms voluntarily to that benevolent centrally planned society, will not also venture into the realm of insult, when the mood strikes them to do so. After all, when despots ruled feudal societies, they found no problems in behaving like men and women driven by the worst traits man kind had to offer. The only difference then was the fact that the remainder of those societies had no freedom to take what ever recourse that we find so readily available to us.

Three, where will it possibly end? Today the Muslims find a way to be insulted by just about everything. What happens when people born on Mars discover that this works for the Muslims, what about them? Which of our basic freedoms will be safe from the insult police? With 7 Billion people on the planet, it is literally impossible to engage in any activity that isn't going to upset somebody honestly, let alone when faux outrage is thrown into the mix. I can tell you from personal experience that living life on egg shells sucks. Personally, I refuse to spend another moment of my life attempting to walk on them. I am not going to go out of my way to upset my neighbors, but if one of them comes over to my grill the next time I am cooking outside and states, "I'm a vegetarian and I find it insulting that you are grilling a steak," I will invite them forthwith to seek shelter from the sight of me eating meat in their own yard. You can bet your bottom dollar that I will not become a vegetarian so as to not upset their sensibilities about the dietary habits of the world at large.

Four, it completely removes culpability of abhorrent behavior from where it belongs, which is with the people exhibiting that behavior. Make no mistake about it, the mobs in Cairo and Benghazi that were spurred on by the Muslim Brotherhood, the very people our President thought should be in charge in those nations, are responsible for the violence there. Equating their murderous behavior with the asinine video posted two years ago on facebook is not even an example of plausible moral equivalency. The video is literally too stupid to be considered insulting, but if it were well done, that would not really change anything. Putting aside for the moment that many people in this world feel that exposing the Jihadists as murderous thugs who desire to subordinate all of mankind to their rule is simply a matter of self preservation, it also happens to be true. Since when is being honest a bad thing? The Muslims, in response to being labeled as murderous thugs have gone on a rampage of murderous savagery, and proven everything said about them to be correct. Outlawing truthful statements for fear of upsetting those who were exposed to the sunlight will only allow evil to grow, and to become even more powerful.

Well, so much for my reasoned response, in which I attempted to remove emotion from the equation and to logically state what I had to say. Please enjoy a much more eloquent Michelle Malkin passionately explain her position.

Cross Posted from Musings of a Mad Conservative.