A tale of two books and of two circumstances. Both due to fear of books.
A nutjob pastor in Florida wants to burn the Koran. While I'm not a fan of any religion, I would equate this to burning a flag. Protected speech? Definitely. Stupid? Absolutely. This action is not going to make people like us. Supposedly the pasta doesn't want the Muslim version of a YMCA to be built in NYC.
That's a separate issue, but something I need to discuss there. This is not a "ground zero Mosque". It is literally like a YMMA. It even has Jewish and Christian people on its management board.
One book burning deserves another right? Enter the Pentagon. One of our soldiers who fought in Afghanistan has published a book, which supposedly has attracted the ire of the CIA and others. They are now trying to buy the 10,000 copies of the book already printed and destroy them. Too bad for them, copies of the book were already distributed for advance reviews, and some of them are even on eBay. I would also argue that his book is protected speech.
At the end of the day, what we can learn from this lesson is that people who want to burn or destroy books are probably not good people. I would go so far as to call a book burner an asshole. And as we can see, there are assholes both in the church and in the government. Thankfully we have separation of church and state.
2010-09-10
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3 comments:
The Pastor is asking for trouble. I think the Mosque should be built in a different spot though. No religious place of any demonination should be on Ground Zero.
Its actually going to be built about 2-3 blocks away, which is a pretty significant distance in NYC. There are strip clubs just as close.
That makes sense then.
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