From David Keyes, at the Daily Beast, "The Sony Hack and America’s Craven Capitulation to Terror":
Americans are giving in to North Korean blackmail — and it will only get worse.Heh, a little dramatic (although not necessarily disagreeable).
If the noble experiment of American democracy is to mean anything, it is fidelity to the principle of freedom. It is to champion the idea that all men and women are endowed with certain unalienable rights—free to think our thoughts, speak our minds, associate with whom we want and express our feelings without fear that a tyrant will silence us. Slavery is not only the physical restraining of the body. It is also the imprisonment of the mind—the instinct to quiet one’s thoughts in the face of terror.
This is a degrading and shameful state which no man or woman should be forced to endure.
Yesterday, Americans not only endured it—they enabled it. Anonymous hackers, possibly associated with the North Korean regime, made unspecified threats to conduct a 9/11-style attack on theaters that showed “The Interview,” a feature comedy film which pokes fun at Kim Jong Un. Major theaters announced they would not show the movie and Sony pulled it.
On Christmas weekend, a North Korean tyrant has decided what American teenagers will see on the silver screen. Some sympathize with the theaters. Who can blame them? Why would any business expose their customers to potential terror?
This is wrong, dangerous and shameful.
By giving an artistic veto to a madman, we submit to the mindset of a slave. We are no longer sovereigns of our thoughts, comedy and art. If anything is worth fighting for, it is this...
More, at the New Republic (safe link), "Why Aren't We Retaliating Right Now for the Sony Cyberattack?"
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