Speech impediment.

BECAUSE there is nothing a free press likes to kvetch about more than freedom of the press, the American media have become fixated on the dumbest part of the Danish-cartoon brouhaha: the "right" of a newspaper to publish offensive material. This is an incandescently stupid topic to concentrate on. Not because freedom of the press isn't important, but because we already know everyone in America believes in it. Imagine if coverage of the Tiananmen Square protest had been dominated by long debates about the freedom of assembly, and you get a sense of what I mean.

Part of the confusion stems from an odd intersection of conservative and liberal political correctness. Some conservatives adhere to the commandment "Thou shalt never bash religion." And the spines of a great many liberals--who regularly bash religion in America--suddenly turn to sausage when it comes to offending the sensibilities of non-Western cultures. So freedom of the press is a nice safe harbor that allows everyone to trot along condemning the overreaction to the cartoons on First Amendment grounds. "I may disagree with what the Danish newspapers say, but I will defend to the death their right to say it." This is nothing more than cliched preening.

The problem is that, while the cartoons themselves were pretty mediocre, the content was fundamentally accurate. Oh, I don't mean that Muhammad is up in heaven--that's certainly not what Dante tells us--turning away suicide bombers because they're flesh out of virgins. But the larger message of the cartoons is obvious for everyone: Islam's got a huge problem and a massive chip on its shoulder. The cartoons were intended to demonstrate that, and they succeeded.

Obviously, this is a sweeping generalization and there are plenty of moderate Muslims who are mortified by all those who call for beheadings and massacres. But the concentration on the specifics of these cartoons, and even the cries of "hypocrisy" aimed at reams of violently anti-Christian and anti-Semitic fare in the Arab world, miss the larger point: This is a cultural conflict, a clash of civilizations if you will. Whenever you have such contests, there will be specific issues aplenty to debate and discuss. If it hadn't been the cartoons, it would have been--and will undoubtedly be--something else. Just as it's easier to talk about the lack of affirmative action in France as the source of the Paris riots, we find it easier to argue about trees rather than forests.

The West needs to get over its panty-twisting paroxysms of guilt every time it sees a riot. "The street" is not a source of moral authority and never has been. If, as the news reports, some clerics really believe that the editors and cartoonists of Jyllands-Posten should be beheaded or have their hands cut off, we need to reacquaint ourselves with the attitude of the British general Charles James Napier. Assigned to British-controlled India, Napier was told he just didn't understand that wife-burning was a revered custom in India. He responded, in effect, that he understood completely. "My country also has a custom," he said. "We hang people who burn women." He proposed building the gallows next to the pyre. The wife-burning stopped.

In our culture, we don't put up with violence and arson in response to speech. We're a funny people that way.