Where freedom of expression meets bigotry

It's still a radical document, the U.S. Constitution, no part of it more so than the First Amendment. Almost everybody's for freedom of speech - particularly for themselves and people who agree with them. However, the part about "no establishment of religion" vexes True Believers of every persuasion. How can government possibly remain neutral in matters of faith?

But what really confuses people is an episode like the recent failed terrorist attack in Garland, Texas. Does our commitment to freedom of expression require that we condemn Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, the two self-proclaimed ISIS jihadists who got themselves shot to death during an abortive attempt to massacre participants in a well-publicized contest to draw ugly cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad?

Absolutely it does.

But are we therefore also required to admire Pamela Geller, co-founder and president of Stop Islamization of America, the organization that sponsored the cartoon contest? No, we are not. The right to free speech does not include the right not to be criticized.

I'm glad nobody shot her. However, Geller's actions were deliberately and characteristically provocative, coarse and contemptuous of others' beliefs; in short, the very definition of bigotry. In the final analysis, those actions are also damaging to this country's ability to prevail in its long twilight struggle with radical Islamic terrorism.

The amazing thing is how observers find this hard to see. Writing in his Washington Post media column, the normally sensible Erik Wemple takes issue with Geller's critics. "And who's being treated as the public enemy on cable?" he asks incredulously. "The woman who organized a cartoon contest."

"To her enduring credit," Wemple adds, "Fox News' Megyn Kelly has been screaming all week about the folly of the 'too-provocative' crowd."

Indeed she has. Interestingly enough, the lovely Ms. Kelly's antagonists include Fox News luminaries Bill O'Reilly and Donald Trump, along with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, CNN's Jake Tapper, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and others Wemple characterizes as "folded into a crouch of cowardice and rationalization."

Kelly's thunderous rebuttal to O'Reilly was couched in melodramatic terms Geller herself would find appropriate: "You know what else the jihadis don't like? They hate Jews. Should we get rid of all Jews? That's the path we're going to go down catering to the jihadis. There's no satisfying them."

Holy false dichotomies. So the choices are deliberately offend the religious sensibilities of millions of peaceable Muslims or get rid of Jews?

This kind of black-and-white thinking is pretty much the stock in trade of propagandists like Geller, who are intent on persuading Americans that not only ISIS and al-Qaida extremists, but Islam itself and Arabs in particular, are terrorist enemies of the United States. All Arabs, everywhere.

Astonishingly, after extreme right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik murdered 70 people at a Norwegian Labour Party summer youth camp in 2011, he credited Geller with inspiring him.