In a play off Animal Farm's most famous line: Some sacred objects are more sacred than others. The kind soul in the above photo appears to be holding the remains of an American flag. But woe betide any infidel who threatens to burn a Koran. Mark Steyn rolls-in on the selective support of the US 1st Amendment by our leftward leaning leaders:
Note: The column Mollifying Muslims, and Muslifying Mollies, is currently the lead article. Later this week the article may be moved to another spot on the website.
Personally, I could care less about a book held sacred by our enemies. While I think book burning is antithetical to American culture, I'm not about to stop anyone from burning one.
One of my on-line friends made an excellent comment on this subject:
My take on this:
Book burning is repugnant when its purpose is to suppress the ideas in the book and prevent people from being fully informed. That is censorship. Which was the unfortunate case with what the U.S. government did when it discovered a shipment of Bibles, written in Pashtu, had been sent to a soldier in Afghanistan last year - the Bibles were burned for fear that the Afghans would see them and get upset. A very clear-cut case of censorship, and despicable.
However, burning a book as a means of speech, as in protesting the contents of it, is perfectly fine. The minister in Florida was not attempting to prevent people from reading a Koran - he was making a statement that the contents of that book were unacceptable for him. Perfectly legitimate. Would there be any sort of uproar if someone burned a copy of Mein Kampf or Mao's Red Book to make a political statement? I don't think so.
I find it extremely telling that the mere discussion of burning a book is enough for some Muslims to commit murderous terrorist acts over, whereas actualy attacks causing the deaths of thousands in the U.S. led to no such random madness. That says a lot about the relative value placed on life and reason between the cultures.
Meanwhile, Alan Dershowitz had this to say on the New York Times Opinion Pages:
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/09/19/can-speech-be-limited-for-public-workers/a-dangerous-slippery-slope
We are on a slippery slope indeed.
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