Earlier this year, 15 political cartoonists from the United States, Denmark, the Middle East and various other points of the compass gathered at that renowned bastion of liberty and monument to freedom and free speech, the United Nations.

Yes, I'm being facetious.

They were there for a program titled "Cartooning for Peace: The responsibility of political cartoonists?"

In the opening remarks for the program, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was quoted by wire services as saying cartoons "can encourage us to look critically at ourselves, and increase our empathy for the sufferings and frustration of others, but they can also do the opposite. They have, in short, a big responsibility."

The gathering came on the heels of Islamic riots touched off by the publication of cartoons in a Danish newspaper that depicted the Muslim prophet Muhammad, a deed some say is prohibited by the Quran.

"We have a job to be more sensitive," said Jean Plantu, a cartoonist for the French newspaper Le Monde. "It is a new challenge for us."

That is an impossible standard and one that self-emasculates. Being supersensitive to the supercilious is a recipe for blandness and a road map to endless appeasement.

"The trouble with 'those damned pictures' is that they're a universal language, much as they were to the illiterate voters during Boss Tweed's era," says Jim Day, the Review-Journal's staff political cartoonist and frequent tweaker of bent-out-of-shape noses. "Today a cartoonist doesn't need to speak Farsi or Swahili to make point to an Arab or an African. They can unintentionally stumble across that proverbial fine line. I'm almost certain that most American cartoonists, who routinely incorporate drawings of God or St. Peter in at least half the obituary cartoons they draw, did not know that caricaturing Muhammad was so offensive to Muslims until those Danish cartoons were used to spark protests around the Islamic world."

I'm not sure it is the responsibility of cartoonists, editors, reporters, politicians and common citizens to meekly run around inquiring of every unwashed, illiterate savage and his shaman, yearning for the marauding glories of the 13th century, as to whether some word, sketch or gesture might be so offensive as to evoke barbarism.

Even Mike Luckovich, a cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal Constitution whose work often adorns the op-ed pages of the Review-Journal, joined the politically correct chorus.

"I don't think you should incite people, just to incite them," he said, "and I think that's what the Danish cartoonists, or editors, did."

I doubt the Danish editor who solicited the cartoons could have imagined the insane level of violence, mayhem and pillaging his exercise of freedom of speech and press would engender.

Day doesn't totally disagree with Luckovich and Plantu, as I do. He sees his job as "insight versus incite -- a cartoon should have a message, should make a point, should offer insight. Cartoons drawn merely to incite trouble, to needlessly stir people up, fall into two categories: graffiti or propaganda."

"Nobody's insisting that a cartoon's punch shouldn't hurt, but the cartoonist should keep the blows above the belt."

Jim is right, of course, but that applies only when the other guy also subscribes to the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Benjamin Franklin is often credited with sketching the very first political cartoon in the Americas. It depicted a snake cut into several pieces, each labeled as a colony. The caption read: "JOIN, or DIE." Propaganda? Certainly, and for a just cause.

A contemporary of Franklin expressed some ideas that I'm sure would've been labeled offensive and hurtful by those gathered at the U.N. today.

"Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?" he asked in a public speech.

Just how much cowing to the whims and obscure foibles of those who wish to kill us is necessary?

Or as that contemporary of Franklin said, "Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace -- but there is no peace. ... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?"

The call for sensitivity toward one's enemy doesn't ring quite like Patrick Henry's conclusion, "I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Yes, we have a responsibility, and it is to freedom first.

Thomas Mitchell is editor of the Review-Journal and writes about the role of a free press. He may be reached at 383-0261 or via e-mail at tmitchell@ reviewjournal.com.