If Geller is so tone-deaf that she cannot understand the likely effect of her antics on unstable individuals, then she compounds her insensitivity with stupidity. She says she did not intend to provoke a reaction, but her actions speak to the opposite.

I am unclear as to who, exactly, she is opposed to. All people who follow the Muslim faith? Or is she only opposed to the fundamentalist radicals who have committed highly publicized violent crimes? If the latter, she has good company because the vast majority of Muslims also oppose the radicals. But Geller does not partner with any Muslims, as far as I have seen. Instead, she goes out of her way to insult them. Their response was to ignore her. Only a couple of unstable individuals reacted violently, and they were condemned by other Muslims. Perhaps Geller's, and your, understanding of how the vast majority of people practice Islam is flawed.

All religions have their fringe. There is a Jewish fringe in Israel that has openly advocated and justified the killing of non-Jews. Fringe Christians have used the Bible to kill doctors who perform abortions, or kill Jews who they believe are decendents of those who killed Christ. These individuals do not define Judaism or Christianity, nor do the two gunmen in Dallas define the tens of thousands of Muslims in Dallas, not one of whom so much as protested Geller's gathering. Geller, on the other hand, rounded up a few hundred people to protest a peaceful gathering of Muslims at the same place a couple of months earlier.

Geller is not defending freedom. She attempted to use government force to prevent Muslims from building a community center and a mosque in NY. She mouths the words of freedom, but she acts very differently.

wellsir, I didn't see that on Fox. -- j
.

good. . that's the kind of muslims I have known --
I used to ride bikes with one and ate lunch with
another several times -- fine people!!! -- j

p.s. things have sure become heavily stratified
in several areas -- religion, politics, race, wealth.......
.

you are unusual, Jan, in putting your money where
your words are. . Character. . Integrity. -- j
.

we certainly are importing them, by the hundreds
of thousands, from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. -- j
.

The reaction she properly seeks is to obliterate the Islamo fascist threat. They have already proved that they are.

Accusing Pamela Geller of begging to be attacked is dishonest and outrageous. As she stated on the infamous CNN interview, in response to the same depravity, who promotes to get himself killed [other than Islamic suicide bombers]? http://therightscoop.com/cnn-hosts-actua...

Public rejection and defiance of savages running around trying to behead innocent people over religious accusations of "blasphemy" and threatening civilization is not "crass and insensitive". This is America, not the Land of Dhimmitude. They deserve to be obliterated back to the 7th century they came from and where they want to be.

As Pamela Geller's NY subway poster on behalf of defending Israel put it: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man" (which apparently came from a similar statement by Ayn Rand). The CNN interviewer displayed a big smirk when she "accused" Pamela Geller of saying that, illustrating once again the depravity of those who pander to the savages.

She isn't walking in a "bad part of town". The islamo-fasicists attack people everywhere. This is supposed to be a civilized country where the rights of the individual are protected, not a permanent state of cowering and fear before savages as if it were one big seedy back alley in a giant coast to coast slum. Standing up to that mentality is courageous and necessary, not foolish and obnoxious. The worst part of the danger long term is the craven cowardice of multiculturalists pandering to the savages as we are accused of "provoking" them for defying their demands for self-censorship and dhimmitude.

mozlems are leaving the 57 Moslem dominated hell-holes to force a global kalifate down our Western freedom-loving throats.

It is not enough to politely say "no thanks".

~1400 years of ignoring the gangrene infecting the middle east and supporting the Nazis 70+ years ago.

The violent psychotic mozlems using the superficial mozlems(mozlems that have been taking advantage of the West's hospitality, and not voicing the improvement in living standards they have gained by living in the INFIDEL created CIVILISATION) for camouflage and materiel support.

Agreed. I hope I made clear that the attackers are in the wrong. Period.

Prudence and common decency says that we don't go out of our way to offend. We don't use the term 'n-gger' because we know it upsets some people. We don't call Hell's Angels 'p-ssys' because it could lead to broken bones.

Frankly, Pam Geller could have drawn pictures of Mohammed all day long and it would not have been an issue...except that she made sure it WAS an issue by putting out a very public call for participation and sweetening her abrasiveness with a $10,000 award. Nothing could have been more in-your-face that what she did.

She had every right, legally and morally, to do what she did. But it does not change the fact that she was crass and insensitive. As with yelling "p-ssy" in a biker bar, she could reasonably expect a reaction. That doesn't forgive the attackers, but it makes Geller a lot less sympathetic as a victim. She was virtually begging to be attacked.

It is for her calculated intention to provoke that I don't like her. She is NOT interested in live and let live, as witnessed by the fact that she protested an entirely peaceful gathering of Muslims at the same venue in Dallas a couple of months earlier.

Pam Geller is most similar to Ragnar Danneskjold. She is stealing back stolen concepts used to exploit the foundations of reason and liberty. Stand with Pam.

"While I defend her legal right to be obnoxious, just as I defend the right of a woman to dress in skimpy nothing, get drunk, and walk through a bad part of town at night, alone, it is imprudent for her to do so and I do not take it as my responsibility to protect her from her foolishness. "
I agree with you, but we're not protecting her from her foolishness. We're protecting the right to be an obnoxious idiot from criminals. I believe the right to be an idiot or wear revealing clothes is absolute. Exercising those rights does not mitigate the guilt of someone who commits a crime against them.

Good, finally I can rant on some of the MSM fictional dramas I've seen:

I don't watch often, but occasionally the police dramas. Post-9/11, I saw quite a few plots involving terrorists who had committed violent crimes, and were of course foiled or apprehended in the end. Fine, But then there was always the final scene wrap-up, and it almost always turned out that the terrorist had a town bombed, or a loved one etc.killed by a US bomb strike or something similar. Never really motivated by ideology, of course. These types of wrap-ups were strangely missing in the shows about your plain, vanilla murderer or rapist.

I am so tired of the ridiculous meme that we (the US) are creating these guys. C'mon...if I want the "abuse excuse" I'll tune into Oprah, Montel or Dr.Phil...

Agreed. The police, except for intervening in the occasional "robbery in progress", perhaps triggered by a silent alarm, are virtually never "in the right place at the right time". nor is that their function. There job is primarily to apprehend the perp after the crime is done.

All the more reason for the 2nd Amendment, and why Pam Geller (and all citizens) have an absolute right to self defense.

But, no, she is not entitled to special protection at my expense.

Your reference to the "piss Christ" is apt. I am (thanks to AR) a former devout Christian, but being so I can very much understand why Christians were outraged. But all I recall was a lot of talking, and yes harsh talking, by prominent Christians against the artist, and perhaps a misguided attempt to have it "banned in Boston". But I don't remember anyone calling for the death of the artist, although there may have been, but not a significant number of people, and certainly no one tried to kill him.

Not so with Muslims...

With all due respect to your opinion, I don't understand how in any way, shape or form she is a bigot. To me, a bigot is someone who hates, rails at or promotes violence against someone or some group without any rational justification, e.g., the KKK against blacks or Nazis against Jews or Muslims against just about everybody, including other Muslims who don't fit their particular bigoted view of what a "true" Muslim is.

Geller has more than ample evidence on her side that her opinions are actions are more than reasonable and well thought out. While "Nazis marching in Skokie" well fits your description of "ugly, provocative and unpopular speech" that yes should be protected speech, I don't think that describes what Pam Geller is saying and doing, nor the general public reaction to it.

No direct comparison intended, but I'm pretty sure that when Patrick Henry exclaimed "Give me liberty or give me death" he was damn well being provocative, and rightly so. And a lot of his contemporary fellow citizens did not

I like her, and admire her.

Apologies in advance for ranting against a very minor part of your post. The rest is excellent.

I sure as hell would not have attacked Iraq, as they had nothing to do with attacking us, and I would not have invaded Afghanistan to get one man and his henchmen. I would have done as the Taliban had requested: given them the evidence that OBL did the attack so they would extradite him. Bush's administration refused.

And your response to 9/11 would have been . . . ?

And I think I understand them, too. Provoking them with blasphemy is the only obvious way to tell the few dangerous ones apart from the moderates.

I do not believe that's what she contends. . it was not
what she said on Fox when I saw her. . twice. . now,
Ayaan Hirsi Ali does include all of Islam -- but she
was cut when she was young, and has experienced
awful things. . Pam is not quite that inclusive. -- j
.

Please read the following. Muslims understand your concerns.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20...

Muslims agree. See article below.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20...

Pam Geller has expressly said that she intends to get a response in order to prove that Muslims are a threat. That's not me surmising, that's her express strategy.

I deal with a wide variety of people from many parts of the world. I don't ask what their religion is, and they don't bother to tell me. If there are Muslims among them, they act just like everyone else. What is most important to me is how they treat me and whether or not they are honest partners in business. Their religion, like their skin color, is of no consequence.

I'm aware there are many strains of Islam. Your explanation is a nice concise overview. I'm also aware that until our military response to 9/11, the radical Islamists were fringe. We helped push part of the moderate Muslim world into the radical camp by our aggressive foreign policy of manipulation and domination that was a disaster for the Muslim world. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced. It would not be hard for many of them to conclude that the U.S.'s primary policy was anti-Muslim.