It would be hard to find a better illustration of the fruits of the Obama Doctrine of apology and appeasement than what occurred September 11^th  inCairo. First the American embassy — in a statement marking 9/11 — took the opportunity to react to Muslim outrage over a movie produced in theU.S. that portrays Muhammad as a fraud:

“The Embassy … condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions…. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

And then after that statement was issued an Islamist mob stormed that very embassy’s sovereign American soil pulled down the American flag  — which it then ripped to shreds and burned — and tried to hoist al Qaeda’s banner in its place. So much for where our touching concern for Muslim feelings gets us.

The embassy’s statement — later disavowed by the White House — was in one sense surprising and in another not surprising in the least.

The blithe disregard it conveys for the foundational American right of free expression is entirely consistent with the liberal worldview which fervently believes in “free speech for me but not for thee.” The opposition must be shouted down denied tenure — whatever it takes to stifle dissent.

The evidence for this is everywhere one turns in the worlds of politics culture and academia; but here’s an example I came upon just today: New York Times opinion columnist Stanley Fish a moderate liberal recently reviewed a highly popular documentary by conservative thinker Dinesh D’Souza which is highly critical of Barack Obama. Fish’s review in turn was critical of D’Souza’s film but you see his unpardonable sin in readers’ eyes was that he even paid D’Souza any attention.

Fish then wrote a follow-up column in which he posed some of the readers’ critiques – filled as it happens with vitriol like this: “leave it to the … dark-skinned immigrant [D’Souza is Indian] to do the dirty work for the racist faction of the conservatosphere.”

Fish began:

“99% of the more than 500 readers who responded to my [review] objected both to D’Souza’s arguments and to my taking them seriously…. [Fish continues] I was chastised repeatedly for having you as a friend … and for giving your ‘crackpot’ arguments the time of day….The idea is that you should choose your friends … by applying a political litmus test. Have the right (in this case left) views and you can be my friend.”

But the premise of theCairoembassy’s statement that religious feelings should trump free speech was — in another sense — quite surprising because if taken seriously it creates many problems for the Democratic Party.  Enacting ObamaCare regulations after all that force religious groups to violate their core religious tenets hurts their religious feelings. State Department castigation of Israel for banning egalitarian services at the Kosel hurts Orthodox Jews’ feeling. And for the Democratic Party to cut G-d’s name out of its platform and only reinstate it after two voice votes on the matter failed and a third falsely portrayed as having passed hurts the feelings of believers of all faiths.

What’s that you say? All religious feelings are created equal but some such feelings — Muslim ones — are more equal than others? Okay then: Never mind.