Cartoon Intifada?

We've been calling the Danish cartoon flap "Cartoon-gate." But perhaps we're being too parochial, too inside-the-Beltway. Power Line is calling this the "cartoon intifada." And this superb post explains why. Much of this flap, as we have been learning, has been a put-up job by radical mullahs always eager to stir up trouble. Which is easy in the Middle-East where corrupt governments ensure poverty for the masses. With little else to do, the masses are easy to recruit for a little poster-making, yelling and screaming, and occasional embassy trashing, particularly if you slip 'em the Arab equivalent of a fiver.

While we crusade relentlessly against the ACLU for exterminating religion from the realm of public discourse in this country, we fully understand the concept they're twisting and exploiting: the disestablishment of religion. The U.S. is simply not allowed to establish a state religion. Which is quite different from wiping religion out. Religious influence on society and politics can be a beneficial thing. Religious control of society and politics is something entirely different.

When you witness the latest "scoundrel time" in the Middle-East, you really begin to appreciate the absolute brilliance of the concept of the separation of church and state that the Founding Fathers (not "framers") enshrined in our Constitution. The only way to defang the murderous mullahs is to spread this same concept into the governments and constitutions, such as they are, of the Middle East. The more you see of this "cartoon intifada," the more you appreciate the genius of our Founders, probably the most enlightened band of thinkers since the glory of ancient Greece.