Last Wednesday, Charlie Hebdo, a French satire magazine, published cartoons that nastily mock the Prophet Muhammad, and European governments immediately feared more violence like the murder and arson at U.S. diplomatic installations that followed the appearance of a crude video about Muhammad. France closed 20 embassies as a precaution; the French foreign minister chided the magazine for pouring "oil on the fire." Germany's foreign minister used the same phrase.
I say: One cheer for Charlie Hebdo. I doubt that its cartoons are either laudable or responsible. In fact, I'm sure that they are neither. But if free speech means anything, it's the right to say and publish things that other people find objectionable and irresponsible, even blasphemous.
Censorship is an affront to freedom, whether imposed by official decree or through a rioters' veto — as the Middle Eastern mobs and those who set them in motion seem to want.
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