Peace, Love, and Lutefisk: Adventures i Norge

The rage over the Muhammed Cartoons continues and today we had a very interesting discussion in our class hearing input from all over the world. As a Westerner I have a natural bias towards free press, but I think in this case the newspapers were out of line. The intent seems very important for me. They obvious didn't publish the cartoons to showcase their right to free press, they did it as an ignorant joke. People would never get away with doing that about blacks or Jews. They do have the freedom to if they wanted, but they have ethics and are educated enough to know that it would be devisive and harmful. Where are the ethics and education in this case? Why at the very moment when we should be trying to bridge the divide between the Christian and Muslim worlds do we have to further stratify it? The newspapers do have the right to publish the pictures if they want. But they also need to be ethical in their editorial decisions. And to make these decisions they need to be educated, and so do we. Let's worry less about defending our right to free speech and more about learning about the world.