I double dare you!

Unsurprisingly, there's lots of moral confusion regarding how to respond to the jihadist attack in Garland. The kneejerk liberal response is that the organizers of the event are to blame because they incited Muslims to violence.

Of course, this treats Muslims as if they have no impulse control. If, in fact, that's the case, then Muslims are dangerous. You can't have a functional society in which a significant block of adults lack impulse control. 

Then you have Christians who are conflicted because they think it's wrong to give unnecessary offense. But that's confused.

i) To begin with, there's an elementary difference between what I might do, and defending the right of somebody else, even if what he did isn't something I'd do. 

It's not a question of whether he should do it, but whether he should be free to do it. 

ii) Relatedly, if somebody draws a line in the sand and dares you to cross it, sometimes it's necessary to call his bluff. If we don't do that, we embolden people, empower people, cede power to people, who will abuse that usurpatious power to dictate to the rest of us what we're allowed to say, think, or do. 

If they dare us not to do something, and we capitulate, we've given them power over us. Power to tyrannize us.

So, yes, sometimes it's necessary to make them back down. Sometimes it's necessary to force the issue. They need to lose. 

iii) That doesn't mean we do it all the time. We should pick our battles.

Suppose I don't normally frequent Chick-Fil-A. Suppose, though, the power elite declares a day in which customers should boycott Chick-Fil-A to protest its adherence to Christian sexual ethics. 

In that event, I might go out of my way to patronize Chick-Fil-A on that day to express soldarity with the beleaguered business and foil the boycott.