Secretary of State Clinton went before the cameras to “take a moment,” as she put it, “to address the video circulating on the internet that has led to these protests in a number of countries. Let me state very clearly, and I hope it is obvious, that the United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video.” But try this for a thought experiment. What would be the position of Mrs. Clinton, of our government, of our courts, if the United States government had turned out to have had something to do with the video? What, just for the sake of argument, could it do if it had subsidized the making and distribution of “Innocence of the Muslims”?

Well, recall what happened here in New York in 1999, when the Brooklyn Museum put up a now-notorious art show called “Sensation.” It featured a painting that mocked the image of the Christian saint, Mary, mother of Jesus. The painting depicted Mary surrounded by photos of genitalia cut out from an off-color magazine, and the artist, Chris Ofili, splattered his painting’s image of Mary with elephant dung, which he had used in other works. The painting became known as the Elephant Dung Splattered Madonna. It was so offensive to New Yorkers that their elected representatives, Mayor Giuliani and the city council, tried to . . . . to do what?

It turns out they didn’t riot. They didn’t fire any grenades. They didn’t burn down any embassies or museums. They did, in typically civilized fashion, try to stop their funding of the Brooklyn Museum. But they got nowhere. In the event, a federal court forbade the city taxpayers from halting their funding of the Brooklyn Museum, no matter how much it offended their religious sensibilities. Having started funding the museum, the hapless New Yorkers were prohibited from cutting back their funding unless they also cut back on the funding of the other museums in the city that didn’t offend them.

This is the meaning the genius of a federal judge in the case discovered in the First Amendment, which forbids Congress from making any law respecting an establishment of religion or restricting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press. And guess who defended the proposition that the city’s taxpayers should be forced to continue funding the religious sacrilege? A senate candidate named Hillary Rodham Clinton, who, according to a dispatch of the BBC, said “It’s not appropriate to penalize and punish an institution such as the Brooklyn Museum.” All we can say is that we hope whoever made “Innocence of Muslims” stays away from the National Endowment for the Arts.