There's an avalanche of op-eds, columns and other opinions dealing with the cartoon crisis and it is impossible to link or comment on them all. Moreover, I am planning my own piece. However, here's one of interest at NRO, where Andrew Stuttaford points to the fork in Europe's road:

The first, and better, alternative is to recognize that, to many, freedom of speech is a value as important as religious belief may be to the faithful, and to give it the protection it deserves. Reestablishing this badly eroded principle will not be easy, but to fail to do so will be to empower the fanatic to legislate for all.

The second alternative is, broadly speaking, for Europe to attempt to buy social peace by muddling along as it does now, muzzling a little speech here, rooting out a little liberty there. But this approach isn't working now. There's no reason to think that doing more of the same will prove any more effective in the future. Besides, at its heart, this is a policy of surrender, submission and despair. It is a refusal to accept that people can agree to disagree, and it is a refusal to confront those who cannot. It foreshadows an era of neutered debate, anodyne controversy, and intellectual stagnation. It will lead, inevitably, to societies irrevocably divided into immovable blocs of ethnicity and creed, carving up the spoils, waiting to take offense and thirsting for the fight, which will one day come.

Stuttaford is pessimistic and believes option two will prevail for now. Given the political apathy in which much of the continent is stuck, I tend to agree. That conclusion however comes with disappointment and a measure of fear, fear that the journey to a very uncertain future has become irreversible.