Cartoons and the clash of civilizations

Some excerpts from George Weigel's latest:

I have no brief for the cartoons, any more than I had a brief for the far more vulgar “Piss Christ.” And yes, there was something ironic about passionate defenses of “free speech” in countries like France, where a parliamentarian was recently sentenced to a heavy fine because he had publicly proposed that “heterosexuality is morally superior to homosexuality.”

The West cannot acquiesce supinely to the demand of radical Islamists that their standards of the appropriate are to be imposed in the West – or else. Nor can the West acquiesce to the Islamists’ defense of violence, assault, and murder in the name of “rage.”

More at the Denver Catholic Register.