The last week or so has provided abject demonstrations of the freedom to offend.  In the New Yorker Salman Rushdie chronicled the arc of his last 23 years of living under a death sentence declared by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini; Russia’s political vanguard, Pussy Riot, received prison sentences for their demonstration against the collusion between Russia’s latest tyrant Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church; and a wave of violent protests erupted in Muslim countries over a pathetically awful anti-Islamic film.  Each example differs from the others, but all illustrate an abjectness.  Rushdie wrote a novel worthy of critique but instead Read more