This being that anniversary, it’s a good day to recollect how much passion, honor, and gritty philosophy went into those old Westerns, how much they can still teach us today, and how much good the American Western has done not just for America, but for the world: the image of Cooper walking alone down that dusty black and white street is a reminder that sometimes when you do good, you have to do it alone.

So God Bless all those brave Polish souls who twenty years ago dared to defy their communist overlords and do the right thing, setting in motion a chain of events that liberated millions, and will yet liberate millions more. And God Bless America, and God Bless Gary Cooper. And damn, what a great hat.

In another notable understatement (considering that the Islamist foothold in England is so great that it gave rise to the expression “Londonistan”), BBC arts correspondent Lawrence Pollard said recently that the Rushdie controversy galvanized “a stronger sense of Muslim identity in Britain.”  Nothing like having a blasphemer to behead to bring some people together, I guess.  “Until that time there had been assumed support for the broad principle of free speech,” Pollard adds.  “The Rushdie affair introduced the question of how far free expression should be limited to avoid offending religious feelings in a multicultural society.”

No, it introduced the question of how far expression should be limited to avoid the hysterical, worldwide, lethal mob violence of Muslims, since no one in the media, especially the BBC, gives a second thought to offending the religious feelings of Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, animists, Satanists and especially Christians, because none of those groups will kill you for it.  Indeed, taking pop culture potshots at Christianity is such a common pastime for the Western media that Christians can barely even muster the energy for an angry e-mail or two.

To name just two examples: An episode of Cold Case in late 2007 depicted a group of devout Christian teens in an abstinence club (don’t feel bad, I didn’t know such things exist either, but I want to know where I can sign up my future teenagers), who stoned a girl to death for breaking her vow.  In a 2008 episode of the BBC’s Bonekickers, a Christian extremist beheads a Muslim.

Christians committing stonings and beheadings?  The reason such perversions of reality can be aired is that the entertainment industry knows that any horror, no matter how ludicrously false and offensive, can be attributed to Christians without fear of retribution, and that no horror, no matter how demonstrably true, can be attributed to some Muslims without incurring a fatwa and violating the Prime Directive of multiculturalism, which holds that all cultures must be equally valued and respected – except Western culture, which is inherently evil, racist, imperialist, exploitative. . . et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as Yul Brynner might say.

(Let me stop right here and insert the standard, ubiquitous disclaimer that the majority of the world’s Muslims, especially in America, are themselves offended by and reject such pre-medieval horrors.  This would seem to be so obvious that it doesn’t need stating, but apparently it does, because any criticism of Islamist behavior is immediately met with loud protestations that not all Muslims are terrorists.  Of course they aren’t; what reasonable person ever said they were?  And while I’m at it, let me deal with the other kneejerk objection that always arises in discussions of these matters: “What about the Crusades?  Christianity’s just as bad!”  The blindingly obvious answer is, that was 800 years ago.  Christianity’s moved on, fundamentalist Islam hasn’t.)

Speaking of moving on, how far we haven’t come in those 20 years since the Rushdie affair.  Last week Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders (about whom documentarian Michael Wilson has written more on Big Hollywood here) was refused entry into England, the epicenter of European Islamic extremism, because his short film Fitna, which graphically links violence carried out in the name of Islam to the inciting proclamations of radical Muslim clerics, is denounced by some as “hate speech.”  That’s right – it’s okay in Europe for Islamists to spew the foulest incitements to bigotry, hatred, murder and mayhem, and then act them out, but it’s unacceptable to point out that they’re doing it.

Wilders, whose name is invariably preceded in media reports by the dismissive label “right-wing” (media-code for “a racist crank who is not to be taken seriously and who deserves a good beheading”) has replaced Rushdie as the newest (last year it was the brilliant Mark Steyn) and most visible lightning rod of the assault on free speech currently being waged by Islamists.  Groups like the fifty-seven member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference are pushing hard to make such “Islamophobia” as Wilders’ film an international crime.  Indeed, the OIC condemns Islamophobia as “the worst form of terrorism.”  No doubt the Rabbi and his pregnant wife, who were horrifically tortured and murdered by rampaging jihadists in the recent Mumbai attacks, would beg to differ if they could.

But back to Christianophobia and the double standard in the media.  Recently I saw a repeat episode of Family Guy in which God was depicted farting the universe into existence.  If Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane had depicted Allah at all, much less expelling gas, he would now be living as Geert Wilders has for years, under 24-hour security to avoid being butchered by a self-righteous fanatic, as was his former countryman, controversial film director Theo van Gogh.  But MacFarlane knows he has nothing to fear from, say, right-wing Christian evangelicals, despite the fact that liberals consider them a more dangerous and imminent threat to America than al Qaeda.

Only the religion of global warming environmentalism enjoys as much freedom from media criticism as radical Islam – and strangely, global warming too is considered a more terrifying threat.  I have news for Al Gore and his devotees: when we’re all living under sharia law, global warming will be the least of our problems.

As for Islamophobia, an “irrational fear of Islam” does not even exist; it is a trumped-up charge designed to bully us into silence and deflect criticism from the Islamists as they go about plotting terrorism and trying to shoehorn sharia law into our culture.  A perfectly rational concern about the demonstrable threat of Islamic extremism does exist, however; that’s what Geert Wilders’ film expresses, and that’s what the Western media must be willing to throw a spotlight on.  The media and entertainment industry has had plenty of practice offending Christian religious sensibilities; it must now take the lead in pushing back against our Islamist enemies who are free speech’s most serious threat.

I’m not holding my breath.