South Park and Mohammed

The latest episode of South Park had an interesting point. It's effectively illegal to publish a cartoon picture of Mohammed. No mainstream media corporation executives will publish it, because they fear violent retaliation.

This illustrates a problem with the State police monopoly. If you make a violent threat against the President, police will visit you and correct you. If you make a violent threat against the authors of a cartoon, that's OK.

Imagine if someone published a picture of JFK getting shot and wrote "Look what happened to the last President who attempted real financial reform!", that might be treated harshly if interpreted as a threat. It's OK to publish pictures of someone else getting murdered because he published a picture of Mohammed, with the implied threat of violence against South Park's authors.

State police do a notoriously bad job at providing protection, when a non-insider is threatened with violence based on their beliefs. The President has a huge security team. Non-insiders threatened with violence are SOL.

However, it's pretty obvious that the episode was intended to be censored. Otherwise, the joke about Mohammed's "censored" box being transferred to Tom Cruise doesn't make sense. Also, they probably knew that "Mohammed" was going to be bleeped out, because they juxtaposed "Mohammed" with other censored words. Censoring those speeches at the end probably gives them an opportunity to air the "uncensored" or "less censored" episode later.

There also is a religious double standard. South Park ridicules Jesus. Nobody threatens violence for that. Even if someone did that, State leaders in the USA would say "That's wrong!" Why don't some Islamic leaders question this policy? Why doesn't someone say "Threatening violence against people who make cartoons of Mohammed is wrong!"?

One advantage of the USA compared to other countries is that it's acceptable to question or ridicule leaders. In other countries, the slaves don't get that perk. Less freedom of thought leads to lower economic productivity.

The State police monopoly does a bad job of protecting people who are threatened with violence based on their non-mainstream beliefs. As another example, I read someone debunking "Unions and corporate greed led to violence, before unions were regulated." What really happened was that State police didn't enforce laws protecting property and individuals, when there was a union dispute.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have a valid point. Why is it forbidden to ridicule Mohammed? Why should a tiny violent minority be allowed to impose censorship? The State police monopoly is bad at handling situations like this.