>Now that the whole world is my neighbor, my immediate Internet neighbor, do I make any concessions at all, or do I uphold the ancient tradition of satire at all costs? And again, is a culture that takes mortal offense when an image it holds sacred is mocked a second-rate culture that needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, my twenty-first-century that is?

The answer to this question is quite simple: France is a nation-state, if you wish to be part of the French nation you need to fulfill its two most fundamental clauses:

- the desire to adopt a common history, in its glory and its shame

- the desire to live and thrive together: "to have achieved great things and achieve more, together"

France is an assimilationist country and the French state takes its sovereignty from the Nation i.e the People. If you wish to come here, if you wish to be part of it, then you need to uphold its principles and traditions.

And of course, it should be needless to say that no one is forced to come here and that on the contrary, they are urged to leave as soon as possible if they find out that they have a burning desire to murder journalists- cartoonists when those draw their prophet the wrong way. That is non-negotiable.

I find it remarkable that the "multicultural crowd" fails to adjust their views so they can be sound with their moral principles when switching their country-wide frame of reference to a global one. If you sincerely believe that cultural minorities have a right to govern themselves and that moral monism is "oppressive" then how come haven't you figured that the French are an underwhelming minority at the world-scale and that their conception of the good life (eudaimon) - not only differs than yours - but includes protecting their public space from religious interference.

So to reply to your question and playing to your rules, dear author:

>And again, is a culture that takes mortal offense when an image it holds sacred is mocked a second-rate culture that needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, my twenty-first-century that is?

Mutatis mutandis, this apply exactly to your disdain for the French tradition of satire that you hold in perspective with your globalised view of the world.