BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Cartoonists were helping integrate Muslims into Dutch culture of religious satire by bashing Islam.

On February 19, Flemming Rose, Jyllands-Posten's culture editor, commented in the Washington Post. "The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point: We are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims."
Hateful and harmful representations of Muhammad are illegal and should be censored.

While it may be legal to publish images of Muhammad that are respectful, it is not legal in Denmark to publish hateful and denigrating images of Muhammad. The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons were hateful and denigrating, particularly the image depicting Muhammad with a bomb in his Turban. The images can be seen, therefore, as illegal and warranting of government censorship.
The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons were legal.

On October 27, 2005, a number of Muslim organizations filed a complaint with the Danish police claiming that Jyllands-Posten had committed an offence under section 140 and 266b of the Danish Criminal Code, relating to blasphemy and degrading insults.[1] On 6 January 2006, however, the Regional Public Prosecutor in Viborg discontinued the investigation as he found no basis for concluding that the cartoons constituted a criminal offense. His reason is based on his finding that the article concerns a subject of public interest and, further, on Danish case law which extends editorial freedom to journalists when it comes to a subject of public interest. He stated that, in assessing what constitutes an offence, the right to freedom of speech must be taken into consideration. He stated that the right to freedom of speech must be exercised with the necessary respect for other human rights, including the right to protection against discrimination, insult and degradation, but no apparent violation of the law had occurred.[2] The Director of Public Prosecutors in Denmark agreed.
Muslims have the right to protest the publishing of images of Muhammad.

While it may be legal and within the bound of free speech for a newspaper to publish images of Muhammad, it is also legal and within the bounds of free speech for Muslims to protest the publishing of these images. Just as journalists have a right to criticize the Islamic faith, so do Muslims have the right to criticize journalists. The protests that followed the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons, it should be noted, did not call for government intervention, but simply criticized the motivations behind these cartoons. This is an acceptable protest, and should be respected.
The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons were damaging to inter-faith harmony.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in 12 October 2005, in order to discuss what they perceived as an "on-going smearing campaign in Danish public circles and media against Islam and Muslims" - "We deplore these statements and publications and urge Your Excellency’s government to take all those responsible to task under law of the land in the interest of inter-faith harmony, better integration and Denmark's overall relations with the Muslim world."[6]
Denmark's prime minister inappropriately avoided meeting with Denmark's Islamic ambassadors in October 2005.

On December 20, 2005 twenty-two former Danish ambassadors sent an open letter to the prime-minister criticising his decision not to open a dialogue with the international representatives.[7] Clearly, there was frustration with the prime minister's decision to avoid dialogue on the controversy. Indeed, dialogue would have been an appropriate step to diffuse tensions, reduce long-term relational damage, and actually save lives.
Publishing images of Muhammad helps combat self-censorship.

Self-censorship is a major concern, particularly in relation to coverage of Islam, where journalists avoid coverage of a particular subject area because it is seen as too contentious and potentially risky for them, their careers, and even their lives. The Danish Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons were published explicitly to combat this problem. It read, "We are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end. That is why Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him."[7]
The cartoons violated Danish blasphemy and degradation laws.

On October 27, 2005, a number of Muslim organizations filed a complaint with the Danish police claiming that Jyllands-Posten had committed an offense under section 140 and 266b of the Danish Criminal Code.[25] Section 140[26] of the Criminal Code, known as the blasphemy laws prohibits disturbing public order by publicly ridiculing or insulting the dogmas of worship of any lawfully existing religious community in Denmark. Section 266b[28] criminalises insult, threat or degradation of natural persons, by publicly and with malice attacking their race, color of skin, national or ethnical roots, faith or sexual orientation.
The "bomb in turban" cartoon was aimed at extremists, not Islam generally.

On February 26, the cartoonist who had drawn the "bomb in turban" picture, the most controversial of the twelve, explained: There are interpretations of it [the drawing] that are incorrect. The general impression among Muslims is that it is about Islam as a whole. It is not. It is about certain fundamentalist aspects, that of course are not shared by everyone. But the fuel for the terrorists’ acts stem from interpretations of Islam. [...] if parts of a religion develop in a totalitarian and aggressive direction, then I think you have to protest. We did so under the other 'isms.
Man-made life poses unimaginable risks

"And man made life." The Economist. May 20th 2010: "Have scientists got too big for their boots? Will their hubris bring Nemesis in due course? What horrors will come creeping out of the flask on the laboratory bench? [...] Such questions are not misplaced—and should give pause even to those, including this newspaper, who normally embrace advances in science with enthusiasm. The new biological science does have the potential to do great harm, as well as good. “Predator” and “disease” are just as much part of the biological vocabulary as “nurturing” and “growth”. But for good or ill it is here. Creating life is no longer the prerogative of gods."
Artificial life worsens specter of biological war

Devinder Sharma. "Artificial Life Is Simply Not Another Breaking News, It Has Grave Implications for Humanity." Ground Reality. May 23rd, 2010: "The day is also not far away when biological warfare will acquire a new meaning, with human, animal and bacterial clones and chimeras roaming the planet. The latest version of Avtar will be a reflection of the more deadly and sinister forms that synthetic life can create. This time, the creator of the world, the ultimate power (if religious scriptures are to be believed) will not come down on the Earth to get rid of this evil force."
Synthetic life will result in an artificial race amidst us

Devinder Sharma. "Artificial Life Is Simply Not Another Breaking News, It Has Grave Implications for Humanity." Ground Reality. May 23rd, 2010: "It is the beginning of a Grave New World. The day is not far away when we will have a parallel form of life, another living race amidst us. Whenever man has tried to imbibe genetic engineering from Gods, as is evident from Ramayana and Mahabharta, the two great Indian epics, he has only turned into an evil force."
Risks of artificial life could outweigh benefits

Fiona Macrae. "Scientist accused of playing God." Daily Mail. June 3rd, 2010: "The potential is huge - but so are the dangers. An artificial species, created in the lab, might not 'obey the rules' of the natural world - after all, every living being on Earth has evolved over three billion years, when a myriad of competing species have had to share the same increasingly crowded environment. [...] It is possible to imagine a synthetic microbe going on the rampage, perhaps wiping out all the world's crop plants or even humanity itself."
Humanity always "played God"; synthetic life no different

Ken MacLeod. "Humanity will thank heaven that this creator of synthetic life is playing God." guardian.co.uk. May 21, 2010: "But there are no new ethical problems here. Humanity has been playing God with animals and plants since the invention of agriculture, and our domesticated species are already the most prevalent (of their kind) on the planet. Venter has, in a neat reverse application of the precautionary principle, promoted bioethical debate about each step of his programme well before he carried them out."
Artificial life risky if released into environment

Laura Hake, professor of biology, Boston College, Jesuit Research University, said on BBC: "I think that the synthetic cell that has just been created is a very exciting basic science breakthrough. I have concerns though that there will be a rush to release it into a natural environment. [...] There are many disturbing examples of other types of artificial constructions, like GEO crops and over-use of pesticides, that are leading to very significant problems in the balance that needs to be maintained in our ecosystem - for maintaining a healthy planet."[9]
Humans wouldn't have to "play God" if God wasn't so unfair

John Harris. "Promise and risks from ‘life not as we know it’" Financial Times. May 26 2010: "The claim to have created synthetic life has been characterised pejoratively as playing “God”. This is a poor substitute for an argument. One obvious consideration is that we would not have to play God if the deity herself had not made such an abject mess of things."
Synthetic life is part of "God's creativity"

Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Vatican's chief astronomer and scientific adviser to Pope Benedict, wrote in the Vatican newspaper, L'Obsservatore Romano, in 2008 about the possibility of extraterrestrial life: "Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on Earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom."[12] From this, it can be extrapolated that man creating life is also part of "God's creativity". Why limit God's creativity to exclude acts of man. Are not humans creatures of God and are not their actions (generally) part of God's design?
Synthetic organisms unlikely to survive out of lab

Ken MacLeod. "Humanity will thank heaven that this creator of synthetic life is playing God." Guardian. May 21, 2010: "Some conjure a scenario where synthetic organisms to which there's "no natural resistance" run amok. This seems misconceived. The biosphere comes up with natural resistance to entirely new organisms every day. Unless deliberately designed for survival, synthetic organisms that are released or escape into the wild will shortly be another organism's lunch."
Synthetic organisms no greater risk than natural ones

David Ropeik. "Synthetic life: Perhaps all we have to fear is fear itself?" Guardian. May 26th, 2010: "People are generally more fearful of human-made risks, and less so of natural ones. Nature can indeed be red in tooth and claw, but new versions of plants, animals and microorganisms that evolve via Darwinian evolution don't upset us half as much as hybridisation by genetic engineering. That a bacterium can spontaneously evolve into a new version that can resist our arsenal of antibiotics doesn't seem to bother people as much as the possibility that we can now manufacture such mutants."
Synthetic biology can help fight climate change and pollution

Rep. Henry Waxman (Democrat, California), Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a May 2010 hearing on the topic of synthetic biology: "Synthetic biology also has the potential to reduce our dependence on oil and to address climate change. Research is underway to develop microbes that would produce oil, giving us a renewable fuel that could be used interchangeably with gasoline without creating more global warming pollution. Research could also lead to oil-eating microbes, an application that, as the Gulf spill unfortunately demonstrates, would be extremely useful."[3]
Artificial life rightly questions concept of soul

"Synthetic life zaps 'the soul'." Japan Times. June 13, 2010: "The idea of vitalism and the soul — anyway long ignored by most scientists, but which survives among theologians — is now discredited, dead. [...] A century ago, the French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson stated that there was 'elan vital,' a 'vital force,' that animated living things. You could never take inorganic things (such as DNA molecules) and somehow imbue them with this vital force, Bergson said. [...] Venter's remarkable breakthrough shows that Bergson was wrong."
More good synthetic biologists can outwit malevolent ones

"And man made life." The Economist. May 20th 2010: "Thoughtful observers of synthetic biology favour a different approach: openness. This avoids shutting out the good in a belated attempt to prevent the bad. Knowledge cannot be unlearned, so the best way to oppose the villains is to have lots of heroes on your side. Then, when a problem arises, an answer can be found quickly."
Synthetic biology rightly refutes "divinity of life"

Ken MacLeod. "Humanity will thank heaven that this creator of synthetic life is playing God." Guardian. May 21, 2010: "It's a tremendous achievement of human ingenuity and skill. And there's something wonderfully confirmatory of mechanistic materialism in the building of a genome from chemically synthesised molecules, that genome running a cell, and that cell replicating to a point where no trace of the original cell's cytoplasm is left in its descendants. This lays to rest, with a satisfying finality, the ghost of vitalism – the spooky, whiffy doctrine that there is some essence of life not captured by "reductionist" biochemistry."
Synthetic life needs regulation, but should be allowed

John Harris. "Promise and risks from ‘life not as we know it’" Financial Times. May 26, 2010: "The dangers of making organisms that have never before existed (which already happens every day in biotech laboratories) will always be largely unknowable in advance. This is not a good enough reason to hold back if the expected benefits are significant. But it does mean we need robust regulation and licensing. The message is this: welcome the outstanding science, ensure good regulation in plenty of time and question an international intellectual property regime that can, disastrously, militate against fair access to the fruits of science."
Govt makes longer-term investments than free markets

Mark Pash, CFP with Brad Parker. "Progessive Economic Principles: Creating a quality economy." Progressive Economics: "There is the obsession with immediate - short-term - maximization of profits - “The Quick Buck.” Private capital and management are constantly expecting relatively quick and high rates of return. Government capital is more long-term and not profit oriented, so it works more for the benefit of society, including business. We see this clearly in the investments in infrastructure, education, research and other necessary projects. Government regulations and tax policies should always encourage more long range planning in the private sector."
Dems harm minorities through affirm action, welfare

"Why am I a Republican?" Early Riser. February 7th, 2006: "Today, Republicans preach, and largely practice, the idea of meritocracy (i.e. Dr. King's idea that people should be judged by the content of their character) versus the Democrats tendency to confuse unequal outcomes (a fact of life in a free society) with unequal opportunity (racism). [...] Is Trent Lott an idiot? Yes. Are Republicans hatching a secret plot to keep minorities in the under-classes? Absolutely not. I would argue that the welfare state (which financially supports a culture of teen mothers with disinterested fathers) is the single biggest inhibitor to minority success in America."
Republicans believe govt most effective when decentralized

"GOP vs. Democrats." Arizona Republican Party: "Republicans believe governmental power and resources should be kept close to the people, through their state and community public servants, rather than centralized in distant big government. [...] Democrats believe a centralized power in Washington should control and direct our lives, with secondary consideration for the rights of individual citizens and communities. This has led to increasingly more federal controls and regimentation, often in the hands of un-elected bureaucrats, causing a severe erosion of local government power across the country."
Democrats wrongly bash Republican minorities

"Why am I a Republican?" Early Riser. February 7th, 2006: "African-American Democratic leaders have acted so hurtfully and negatively toward fellow African Americans that have chosen to be active Republicans. Claiming that Rice and Powell are 'house slaves' (Belafonte) and throwing oreos at Ohio Republican Michael Steele are indicative of the fear that African Americans may not be a solid Democratic voting block and, god forbid, some may even find an ideological home in the Republican party. Even in the blogging world, Republicans who happen to be minorities, get chastised by left leaning bloggers as being stooges who have been tricked by evil Republicans into selling-out their race (eg. attacks against Michelle Mallkin)."
Dems are optimistic about progress as a society

Oliver Willis. "Oh. That's why I'm a democrat." Huffington Post. September 8th, 2008: "The Democratic party, for better or worse, believes in a Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart view of the world. It says time and time again that through our collective might we can improve the nation, and as a byproduct the world. It is optimistic to the point of being almost corny. The party looks as the world as it is, and says 'Gosh darn it everyone, let's roll up our sleeves and clean up this mess.' It is no coincidence that the current leader of the party, Barack Obama, is the sort of guy you can imagine saying 'by golly' and not in an ironic way. [...] By contrast to the Democratic sunshine, the Republican party is night. Their view of the world is one in which everything is just a shade of negative, and that is the cold heart underlying the cynicism of speakers like Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney. They see a world of despair and depression and they wallow in it. The Republican party and the conservative movement that supports it is all about being the snarky guy in the corner playing the angles and making a buck off the foibles and failures of others. For a few it promises the spoils of war - both ideological and real war - but for the rest it just offers a way of wallowing in darkness without any optimistic movement towards a better day."
Democrats appreciate nuances; Republican think black/white

Jonathan Haidt. "What Makes People Vote Republican?" AlterNet. September 16, 2008: "conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity" -- a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world."
Democrats oppose death penalty because it is socially unjust

"Why I'm a Democrat." Time. June 12th, 2007: "I've got a problem with the Death penalty. It's not a faith-based view but one that comes under social justice and economic fairness. I don't believe there is equality in our judicial system. A wealthy guy and a poor guy go to the same courtroom for the same offense. Who are you betting on to walk? I am obviously Pro-Civil Rights. That definitely comes under social justice."
Dems just as good as Reps historically on low taxes

"Should fiscal conservatives vote Republican." We Op-Ed. March 5, 2008: "tax rate on those individuals from the highest tax bracket has been dropping precipitously since the end of WWII, regardless of which party held the white house. In fact, the rates began to fall under Kennedy, a Democrat, and continued through Johnson, another Democrat. The tax rate held steady through Nixon, Ford, and Carter, before tumbling further under Reagan. The tax rate bottomed out in 1989, under Bush I, at 28%- less than a third of its modern peak of 94%, under Truman. Bush then raised taxes from their absurd low, and they have been bouncing around the 30s every since. So from this graph it seems pretty clear: Keeping taxes low for the wealthy has been a bipartisan effort for the last sixty years."
Most Democrats believe torture is always unjust.

Many Democrats are opposed to the use of torture against individuals apprehended and held prisoner by the U.S. military, and hold that categorizing such prisoners as unlawful combatants does not release the U.S. from its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Democrats contend that torture is inhumane, decreases the United States' moral standing in the world, and produces questionable results. Democrats largely spoke out against waterboarding.
Republicans have discipline and authority of football coaches

Steve Kornacki. "Why your coach voter Republican." Wall Street Journal. September 2, 2009: "There's no evidence that coaches with a conservative bent are better coaches or more likely to get jobs. Football coaches aren't the most diverse group, which may help explain their political similarities. [...] Still, could it be that football coaches, just by the nature of the job, are more comfortable on the right end of the political spectrum? [...] 'I'd say that sounds likely—very likely,' said Bobby Bowden, the longtime Florida State coach and an outspoken Republican. Mr. Bowden, a 79-year-old native Alabaman, describes himself as a lifelong conservative who—like many white Southerners of his generation—migrated from the Democratic Party to the GOP a few decades ago. There is, he says, a natural connection between his political and coaching philosophies. 'In coaching, you've got to have more discipline and you've got to be more strict and just conservative, I think. It fits with the Republicans,' he said. Mr. Holtz, who coached Notre Dame to its last national championship in 1988, draws a parallel between the standards and rules that most coaches set for their players and the Republican vision of how American society ought to operate. 'You aren't entitled to anything. You don't inherit anything. You get what you earn—your position on the team,' Mr. Holtz said. 'You're treated like everybody else. You're held accountable for your actions. You understand that your decisions affect other people on that team…There's winners, there's losers, and there's competitiveness.'"
Dems believe in ensuring equal opportunity through social programs

Paul Shlesinger. "Democrat vs. Republican: Political philosophies." Helium: "They believe that the role of the Federal government is to ensure equality. This which translates into support for tax increases, particularly on the wealthy and big businesses, which can be used by the government to fund social programs designed to help the poor and middle class. Labor unions and minority groups are often attracted to the party based on its fiscal philosophy prompting equality."