Hitchens on Yale

Christopher Hitchens has a good column on the disgraceful cowardice of Yale University Press. His point is that not only have deliberately censored themselves, but have said that they would have been culpable for any violence resulting from their publication of Danish cartoons:

But now the rot has gone a serious degree further into the fabric. Now we have to say that the mayhem we fear is also our fault, if not indeed our direct responsibility. This is the worst sort of masochism and it subverts our language as well as our concept of moral responsibility. ...

What a cause of shame that the campus of American hero Nathan Hale should have pre-emptively run up the white flag and then cringingly taken the blood guilt of potential assassins and tyrants on itself.

This craven behaviour is eating away at freedom. If you are not prepared to stand up for your rights you don't deserve them.