Burninating

[digitaldiscipline]

It's time to put your money where your mouth is if you've ever said, "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Everyone who parrots the "support our troops, because they protect our rights and freedoms," they protect everyone's rights and freedoms, not just the people you agree with.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2010/09/koran-burning-first-amendment-and-right.html

I think the guy in charge of this church is a complete waste of protein and oxygen, but he is also absolutely right: the First Amendment says it is absolutely all right to be a gigantic asshole and offend a whole fucking lot of people.

So, if you're okay with what he wants to do this week, you are also okay with what RP & Co. propose to do in three months. And if you're not okay with the latter, you should be just as vehemently opposed to the former... and the attempts to say who can build a church where, incidentally.

Note: if you are opposed to either book burning demonstration, here is your National Socialist Worker's Party armband. Wear it with pride; you've earned it.

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I'm in favor of people advocating the burning of another faith's religious text taking a step back and recognizing that, if someone burns theirs in turn, it's got the same protections. Incitement to violence - gender-, race-, or identity-based hate, and whatever "fire" in a crowded theater falls under - those are rightfully uncool. However, neither what Pastor Ingram suggests, nor what RP does, are hate speech as far as that goes. Calling attention to the hatefulness of others ought to be lauded.

There are way, way, way too many folks laboring under the misapprehension that the US is a Christian nation. No, it frankly and explicitly *is not.* The US Senate, full of founding fathers, and the Adams government, approved the Treaty with Tripoli (now Libya) of 1797, which included this language:

"As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion...."

That would be pretty bloody unequivocal. Saying otherwise is simply and factually wrong.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in his 1777 Draft of a Bill for Religious Freedom:

"... that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right...."

TJ again (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82):

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Frankly, I have just as many problems with Islam as I do with Christianity; it's just people believing in and listening to a different invisible friend. Whether that invisible friend is more or less of a jerk doesn't really add or detract from my opprobrium.

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Welcome to autumn of an election year, people. If you don't like politics, you may want to turn me down to a dull roar until early November. Of course, my intolerance for intolerance and intrusive moralizing is evergreen.

Comments

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

I am opposed to the book burnings in a moral sense. It's just rude, no matter whose book is being burned. They've every _right_ to do it, though, and I won't contest that.

[ivy]

It's opposition in a civility sense, here. Sure, he has the right to do it, but I think plenty of people also have the right to stand up and say "what a jerk, we don't agree with being so inflammatory and threatening to people of different faiths". Having the legal right to do something doesn't make it wise, appropriate, kind, or a good idea.

[cheez-ball.livejournal.com]

Sure, dude can say/do what he wants. After all the Klan has a long history of burning crosses on people's lawns and often were allowed to get away with it. In this case they'll be burning without a permit and knowingly committing a misdemeanor.

However it's also part of my 1st amendment rights to refuse to acknowledge these jokers as Christians. I choose to describe them a fringe lunatic cultists, thank you very much.

BTW, the pastor has had legal problems in the past. Including being fined by Germany for calling himself "doctor" even though he doesn't have a PhD. http://www.newser.com/article/d9i3pgpg3/german-church-once-led-by-terry-jones-he-will-follow-through-with-plan-to-burn-quran.html

AND, dude doesn't enjoy full tax exempt status: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20015716-10391695.html. Heh, the church property is for sale at the moment: http://www.allisonables.com/gainesville-real-estate/North-43rd-Street-Area/Appletree/5805-NW-37th-St-Gainesville-FL-32653/

[etcet.livejournal.com]

However it's also part of my 1st amendment rights to refuse to acknowledge these jokers as Christians. I choose to describe them a fringe lunatic cultists, thank you very much.

It's funny how infrequently the "cult" label sticks to mainstream religion practitioners, even if they're doing exactly the same things that what someone who didn't follow some part of the Bible would be rightly excoriated and villified for doing.

[yokes1971.livejournal.com]

The greatness of the USA comes not only from your rights and freedom to do things that others disagree with but also in the rights and freedoms of other US citizens to do things you may not agree with.

thats what it meens to be an American. Restricting any individual because we dont like what they think is not what we are all about

In other words I agree