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Doing all we can do
Egypt's Prime Minister Hisham Qandil has said the US must do all it can to stop people insulting Islam.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19612408
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19612408
The government of the United States has, in fact, done "all it can to stop people insulting Islam."
What the government of the United States can do is not defined by how many bullets the military has, or how much prison capacity we have.
It is defined by what the government can do within the framework that makes it the government of the US.
The US government is, by definition, "a thing that cannot proscribe blasphemy."
And if we change "stop" to "discourage within the boundaries of its proper function," then we have still done about all we can do. No US official I know of has been encouraging blasphemy. We don't issue government grants for blasphemy. A lot of officials have even stated disapproval of blasphemy, which is already pushing the envelope pretty hard.
