JEFF GOLDSTEIN looks at Identity Politics, Free Speech, and the Future of Worldwide Liberalism.

UPDATE: Interesting email from reader Edward Tabakin, with an (unfortunate) “Army of Davids” angle. Well, as I say in the book, technology empowers bad people, as well as good ones. Click “read more” to read it.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Backlash?

Tabakin writes:

A couple of thoughts about the protests over the Danish cartoons:

1. In earlier times, one way that a great power could flex its muscle was to send the fleet, make a show of force. I’m currently reading Alan J. P. Taylor’s Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848 — 1918, and there’s a description of how making a fleet demonstration, or even the threat of doing so, worked in Great Power diplomacy. In 1856, following the Crimean War and the Congress of Paris, France and Britain were looking for a way to “open” the Italian question, the unification of Italy.

Cavour [the prime minister of Sardinia] was not yet ready to challenge Austria; the only opening therefore seemed to complain of misgovernment in Naples . . . . In October 1856 Great Britain and France broke off diplomatic relations with Naples and threatened to follow this up with a fleet demonstration. Since neither of them was prepared to go beyond this and since the British, in addition, were afraid that a revolution in Naples might end up with Murat, Napoleon’s cousin, on the throne, the fleet demonstration never took place. But enough had been done to provoke a Russian protest.

It strikes me that the angry protests about the cartoons is a modern day equivalent to a fleet demonstration, a projection of power. And judging from the reaction, a very effective fleet demonstration: the cartoonists are in hiding, in fear for their lives; and confusion and anger abounds in Europe and America. Some newspapers in Europe have reproduced the cartoons in support of free speech, while here, CNN says it won’t show the cartoons out of respect for Islam; and bloggers report angrily on what MSM newspapers are saying and doing about the cartoons (mostly report about them, but not show them). The US State Department issues a statement, you call it appeasement and Reason Online condemns it as “a craven condemnation of an affair that is none of their business.” Gene Volokh responds that the State Department statement “is a good deal more assertively pro-free-speech than the Reuters account suggests.” To which you grouse that “this is not a time for nuance.” Confusion reigns, to our enemy’s delight.

2. In the 19th century, fleet demonstrations were the province of Great Powers; but this jihadi fleet demonstration was built on “army of Davids” principles. Mark Steyn hit on this in his speech at the Claremont Institute this past December. He said:

[W]ith a couple of airline tickets, an ATM card and some crude explosives, the jihad can project itself from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan to Paris, to Brussels, to Berlin for little more than a few hundred bucks; whereas most NATO militaries by contrast simply got no way of projecting themselves to Saudi Arabia or Pakistan at all.

What went into arranging these demonstrations across Europe and the Middle East? E-mails, phone calls, postings on a few web sites; probably even some suggestions as to what provocative messages to write on the signs.

3. Looked at this way, the cartoon protests as a projection of power, it’s significant that the protest started in Gaza a few days after Hamas won the election. Hamas is tight with Iran; at least as tight as Great Britain and France were in 1853. And the cartoon protests coincide with the IAEA referral of Iran to the UN. The Danish Embassy in Syria was set ablaze; something to draw the population closer to that country’s unpopular government, in the face of western pressure against the government? Perhaps the goals of the cartoon protest are as specific as the threatened fleet demonstration in 1853; or perhaps it’s simply a general statement of power to the world, akin to Theodore Roosevelt sending out the Great White Fleet. Looked at this way, the State Department message might have been aimed at specific troublesome governments; and maybe they’ve hit just the right note. I’m not a diplomat, so I can’t say one way or the other. Just don’t ask Joe Wilson for an opinion.