Today the cartoon crisis moved into Canada following the Western Standard's decision to publish the cartoons. Here's their editor, Ezra Levant:

The Western Standard has no explaining to do. We're a news magazine, and these cartoons are news. The publishers, editors and TV producers who are behaving as if they live under sharia law, not the Charter of Rights, have explaining to do -- to their readers and viewers.

Levant goes on to explain that he is a little afraid of the possible repercussions of his decision, but that he will proceed regardless. Dealing with fear will increasingly become part of certain editorial decisions but at least the Western Standard is safely located in Calgary. This video from Antwerp taken this weekend is, well, scary.

The consensus among those that support publishing the cartoons is that it is the left-liberal approach of appeasement and tolerance that is ultimately betraying what that very left-liberal tradition fought for during the 1960s and 1970s. Here's a fascinating essay in the Observer by Andrew Anthony:

And the press in Britain has chosen not to publish it or any of the 11 other cartoons that first appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten back in September.

The overwhelming consensus of liberal Britain is that this was the right decision. Almost everywhere one looks there is a sense - half-anxious, half-smug - of satisfaction at the delicacy of our media. This sentiment is often accompanied by a series of further received wisdoms: the Danish nation, and in particular Jyllands-Posten, was right-wing, stupid, and racist; the European papers that republished the cartoons are xenophobic provocateurs; British Muslims are rightly distressed, even though the cartoons were not published in this country; and the police acted with commendable sense in not preventing the Islamic militants who called for murder from marching in the streets of London.

And Andrew Sullivan in The Times strikes a similar note:

In fact it is their job to prevent you from fully understanding this story. As of this writing no major newspaper in Britain has published the cartoons; the BBC has shown them only fleetingly and other networks have shied away. All have decided not to give you this critical information, without which no intelligent person can construct an informed and intelligent position on the matter. You’re on your own.

The reasons given are conventional enough: the press doesn’t want to inflame matters further; the cartoons are indeed offensive, and no editor has to publish images that would appal readers; reprinting would merely play into the hands of extremists, and so on.

The one argument you haven’t heard is the one you hear off-camera. Many editors simply don’t want to put their staffs at risk of physical danger.

There was a time when our freedom meant freedom from fear, now it is freedom and fear.