Talk politics.

Libya and Afghanistan aren't really part of the Mideast, whereas Israel is. In any case you're advocating punishing people for their speech, the death penalty no less but letting someone else do it.

Yelling fire in a theater isn't expressing an opinion or criticism, and it can lead to immediate injury/death. What you're advocating is that certain things not being criticized or mocked.

The "fire in a crowded theater" analogy is cute, but not used anymore for a reason. The modern legal test is whether the speech will cause imminent unlawful conduct (say, telling a mob that the target of their anger is RIGHT OVER THERE!). The guy who made the film is a douchebag, yes, but I don't think that we as a society should, or that I as an individual could, agree with shipping him off to face brutal mob justice.

I'm also okay with shipping the maker(s) of this film off to a Middle Eastern country

Is this America, or not? What happened to "if we don't protect offensive speech, no speech is safe?"

You know what also offends Muslims?

Pornography.

So, just so we're clear, "first they came for the no-talent ass-clowns who made shitty and offensive anti-Muslim "movies," but I said nothing because I am a connoisseur whose harddrive is full of images of barely legal cooze because it empowers women by allowing them to claim their sexuality,... etc, etc."

> What I'm saying is BOTH sides on this issue are wrong, and to pretend otherwise is foolish.

Also, to pretend that making an idiotic and insulting movie is as bad as killing people is foolish.

I recognize that Nakoula is doing ill rather than good. I recognize that both he, and many Islamic leaders which he would vehemently claim to oppose, are (as Sagan said about opposing millitaries) "locked in some ghastly mutual embrace, each needs the other ". They mutually exploit each others' behavior to inspire and radicalize their base. They use each other, in the lowest sense.

So I have no respect for Nakoula and his silly movie. But I can't pretend that talking about something is as bad as killing people. I do not accept that because such riots have indeed become predictable, that the participants are somehow devoid of choice in the matter, and thus absolved from responsibility. I chafe at the idea that what I can or can't talk about has anything to do with someone else's propensity to be offended by it, or the lengths they will go to if offended by it. I'm worried that any moral equation that contains Nakoula's movie and the murder of diplomats as its terms, and does not stress the gulf of moral distance between talking, and killing, risks an inferred equivalency where speech acts are 'as bad' as killing, and thus as legitimate a target of compulsion.

Quick! Somebody burn the houses of Mel Gibson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_the_Christ#Controversy) and Bill Maher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religulous)! (Although a liburl like the latter would definitely be living in a shack, I have no doubts).

I've not seen anybody give the murderers of the Ambassador and two others in Libya "a pass."

And as much as I dislike what I've seen and heard of the film, this notion of handing a filmmaker over to a hostile mob of any kind is repugnant.

If nothing else it is one more reason we need to bring our soldiers home and just leave those countries alone.

Hell, what can we do, this preacher man isn't going to stop and he has the right to do what he does. And you know every time he does it more of our enlisted men and women overseas are going to die, if not ambassadors etc.

I disagree quite vehemently. They have an absolute right to make inflammatory films like this one. What they do not have a right in is expecting this to happen without the consequences of antagonizing people known to engage in murderous, homicidal, barbaric violence.

I don't think you understand how the First Amendment works.

But then, I'm no free speech absolutist myself.

I don't buy the media narrative that the protests are in response to this film. They've given no indication that it's true, I've only seen media people making the claim with no quotes or sources that would give evidence supporting it. As far as I can tell, someone made the connection after the embassy attack and they've all run with it since then, even though it's clear that the attack was unconnected.