But we also have responsibilities: to make informed decisions (including, especially, in voting), to respect the rights of others, and so on. That’s gone out the window, and America and the world are far poorer because of it.

And in the end this silly film business is all just pretext anyway for people to do what they wanted to do in the first place.

The government doesn’t get to choose. 

We, as a society, don’t make people “do the time” unless they are pariahs in some way not usually connected to their crime, like failing to be wealthy or Caucasian. This is unequal application of justice, and it’s wrong.

Hate speech is speech that is intended to provoke violence against real, living, human beings.

Making fun of mythological figures – who can be harmed by no one – is not even -close- to “hate speech” in my book.

Where’s the ACLU!?

Monitoring the whole thing very closely, as one might expect.

You mean the people whose feelings were hurt? 

I’m a little more concerned for the people that got bullets shot into them than the ones whose magical deity was offended.

In my country you can make a movie with Jesus, Krishna, Thomas Jefferson and the Buddha having a good old fashioned circle jerk. Muhammed can watch. No one has to die.

Muslims in other countries offend my values every day of the year (oppression of women, human rights abuses, etc.) and those offenses are far worse than making fun of some mythical being.  And yet here I am, not storming any embassies or killing anyone.

What if “Sam Bacile” is an Islamist agent who deliberately made an allegedly anti-Muslim movie while doing something otherwise arrestworthy for the purpose of convincing Muslims in general that rioting is an effective means of getting people they don’t like jailed?