Echnide also noted: Flemming Rose on The Cartoons, but she had a commenter, Mark from Ireland, who lives in Denmark and reads Danish.

Mark filled in some background on the newspaper involved and the political situation. You should read it for yourself and make up your own mind. My Danish isn’t good enough to say from my own reading, but this isn’t the first time I’ve heard what Mark is saying.

It would certainly explain the way this was handled by the Danish government. Refusing to meet with ambassadors from Muslim countries is a FEMA level screw-up.

British historian David Irving has been found guilty in Vienna of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry and sentenced to three years in prison.

He had pleaded guilty to the charge, based on a speech and interview he gave in Austria in 1989.

First, people like David Irving and Fred Phelps, the professional haters, deserve anonymity. Any and all reference should be eliminated from memory. Their existence pollutes thought.

Having said that, the Austrian law is wrong. The existence of this law in Austria and a similar law in Germany are understandable, but they are an exemption to free speech, and they provide fuel for Muslim extremists and anti-Semitic elements. These exceptions are the reason for the call for Holocaust cartoons in Iran.

Free speech has to be just that. If you are not willing to defend your enemy’s right to say hateful things, you don’t really believe in free speech on a practical level. This is why the ACLU will defend Nazis and Rush Limbaugh, they believe in everyone’s rights, not just those that agree with them.

On an intellectual level I believe in free speech. On a personal level I wouldn’t be unhappy if certain people fell face first into a fire ant mound.