« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

MEMBER DIARY

If you want to burn a book…

By: kowalski (Diary)  |  September 8th, 2010 at 09:48 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

You know, this whole thing about this tiny church in Florida has got me thinking.  It’s got lots of other people thinking, too – instead of doing useful, productive work.  There’s no need to recapitualte everything they’re thinking, because you can find it all over the place. 

But what I was thinking was this: burn the right book. And if you wanted to burn a book as an act of protest, to express your First Amendment rights for a cause that really matters, why not instead burn the Federal Budget for Fiscal Year 2011 and its appendix?  The Federal Budget for Fiscal Year 2011 is 186 pages and costs $37.00, or almost 20 cents a page.  The Appendix to the budget is 1424 pages (because it describes what actually goes on in there) and costs $73.00, or just over 5 cents a page.  It’s good to see, I guess, that the government applies a volume discount on the number of pages it prints, particularly when you need the Big Book to understand the Small Book. And really, the most important threat to most people’s livelihoods in this country is the endlessly increasing size of the federal budget.

In fact, burning the Koran will arguably make Americans less safe and sound – even the threat to do so has already made one preacher at a tiny backwoods church and his small congregation less safe, although whether they were really ever “sound” in terms of mind is a big open question.

On the other hand, burning some copies of the Federal Budget might have an entirely beneficial effect, since very few people read them anyway, but everyone pays for them.

My firm belief is that the Second Coming isn’t going to arrive at the behest of isolated Florida preachers, no matter how hard they try. On the other hand, the Federal Budget arrives every single year here in the United States, and look at all the damage it is doing.

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • bk

    If this goofball had said he was going to burn a Bible, would he have gotten NEA funding if he’d said it was an artistic rather than a political expression?

    • kowalski

      What if, as an artist, you decided to make an installation showing a new book that you created: a hybridized Torah/Bible/Koran spliced together like a scrapbook from pieces of each?

      Would that count as desecration and draw the fatwah as well as outrage from Jews and Christians?

      • bk

        When there are “artistic” exhibits like a crucifix in urine or a dung-covered Mary, you might have Catholics write letters or march in protest outside the building. The left and the press act like the protesters need to get a life, because there’s nothing wrong.

        But when Muslims don’t like a cartoon or whatever other million things they find offensive, they don’t protest – they start killing people. In this case, the left and the press puts all the blame on the people who committed the perceived offense, taking the side of the protesters/murderers.

        It’s the typical double standard we see over and over and over.

        • kowalski

          And I completely understand and agree with your analysis there. It’s an enormous double standard.

          However, I was raised as a Christian and as a person not to throw the first punch, not to give the first insult, and not to provoke the easily provoked. I was raised to outwit the deranged and the criminal and the godless, not to descend to their level.

          I have to believe that I don’t endorse this pastor’s message of burning the Koran, any more than I agreed with the message Robert Mapplethorpe was sending when he made “Piss Christ” and exhibited it. It’s not an easy thing to do as a Christian to accept that there are others in the world who wish to do you harm, or mock or protest or blastpheme or desecrate your religion, who do not abide by the same rules of combat or the same moral codes as you do yourself.

          As an American, I think his right to burn the Koran in protest is unquestioned as a matter of the Constitution. He might get hung up on some local ordinance or something. As a Christian, I cannot accept his path, or the way he has chosen to express his beliefs. And as an American Christian, and more importantly a Citizen of the United States who believes as strongly in my 2nd Amendment rights as I do my 1st Amendment rights, I have to believe that there is a better way.

          I live in a relatively small town, in some ways similar to the small town where the DWOC is. If a pastor at one of the smaller churches here one day decided to go on an international campaign to burn the Koran, I would be very opposed to it.

          And this is not just a guy in a small town in Florida doing something locally: his protest is called “INTERNATIONAL” and he used his Facebook page to promote it, which guaranteed that it would eventually go viral, and global. And I don’t think he really cares about the potential consequences of his actions. He’s certainly not going to minister to any of the families of Americans who come back in body bags because of his determination to make a radical statement.

          FWIW, my two cents.

          • bk

            Nothing else matters, not that any scum who use this as an excuse for mayhem are any better than he is.

        • kowalski

          This pastor is not burning the Koran as a response to someone burning Bibles. What he “refuses to back down from” is — intentionally starting the fight.

          He’s the one who is threatening to “fire the first shot” so to speak, but he is wrapping that in the courageous language of “not backing down” as though he is defending himself, his religion, his Church, and his beliefs.

          He is the one, in this case, trying to start the fight by offending. Will he be there to continue the fight he has started, to defend the Christians in the Middle East when they are attacked because of his actions? My guess is that he will not – because he doesn’t think they’re really members of his Church.

          He runs his church like a cult. And he acts as though he is leading a cult. And maybe it’s a suicidal cult, bent on Armageddon. I don’t intend to join.

          • bk

            He’s got some tiny following and was a nobody until he decided to make himself (in)famous. He and his pseudo-cult could have done this without trying to call attention to themselves. What priest / pastor / minister tries to make himself the focus of attention?

  • The_Rebel

    and at over 1600 pages, it should burn for quite a while. But it would be a smoky fire, given that it was put together and filled with smoke and mirrors.

    On another note, Mayor Bloomberg has come out supporting the preacher’s right to burn the Koran:

    “In a strange way, I’m here to defend his right to do that. I happen to think that it is distasteful……The First Amendment protects everybody, and you can’t say that we’re going to apply the First Amendment to only those cases where we are in agreement,”

    He thinks it’s “distasteful”. But, as he has previously stated, he thinks that those opposed to the GZM are “un-American”. What a sorry excuse for an American this guy is.

  • BlueStateSaint

    Burn one of Algore’s “missives” . . .

  • http://conservativestateproject.blogspot.com/ SE-779

    I’d burn “The Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams of My Father”.