Burn Some Books!

I am not going to link to any of the stupid news stories pertaining to the stupid event being planned by a stupid, stupid man. I'm just proud that one of my own friends made our readers aware of this long before the current media frenzy. Took 'em long enough.

Not about the news story. No. Not directly. This is about surprising self discovery.

I am okay with burning the Quran. Or the Bible. Throw Dianetics and the I Ching on a fire for all I care. Burn the "holy book" of any religion that holds sway over a sufficient number of people to be considered a cultural entity. Which means I am also unopposed to burning copies of the Star Wars films since there is a growing number of people identifying as Jedis.

Burning a Bible (or Quran) is like burning a flag. It is a way to show your disapproval of a dominant paradigm. Many of my countrymen get mad when they watch protests in the Middle East where US flags are burned. If you want to get them extremely pissed off, show them clips of US protesters torching Old Glory. Yikes!

Same goes for the holy books. A bunch of ignorant evangelical nut jobs in Florida publicly burning a Quran means nothing compared to one rebellious kid in Iran secretly burning a copy. Iranians may make a lot of noise about those 'damned American pig-dogs'. If the Iranian kid was caught in the act, they would tear him to pieces with their bare hands and possibly stone the entire family for good measure!

So go ahead and burn a Bible or a Quran. I suggest that you have a reason for it and that the reason is not born of ignorance. Holy books are symbols of huge cultures. Sometimes to get the attention of these cultures you have to do something drastic like destroying that which they hold sacred. Don't sweat it. They'll print more.

I do not, have not, and can say with near absolute certainty* will never condone the burning of texts for the purposes of suppressing and/or destroying the information contained within. Such as when the United States government rounded up the works of revolutionary psychologist Wilhelm Reich and threw them in a garbage incinerator. That sort of book burning is WRONG! It is the willful destruction of information that another finds objectionable. Information genocide. There are books out there lost forever because someone was offended by the contents. Whole authors wiped from the literary landscape. Despicable!

If we need to have a blanket law that protects the Quran and the Bible from being burned in order to protect all other literary works, I would support such a thing. We could still burn a Bible in protest. Making it illegal makes it all the more powerful when someone does decide to light one up.

Besides, there are plenty of other symbols we can crap all over when we get mad at an entire culture.**

* I have to allow for the possibility. I can't believe I presently find myself in favor of any form of book burning. Shocks the shit out of me. Hopefully I've made my reasoning clear. I have heard good arguments in favor of burning every known copy of Atlas Shrugged. For that reason I have chosen not to read it. Seems like a superior solution to burning.

** Rev. Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center and organizer of the International Burn a Quran Day is an ignorant and hateful little man who does not have the wherewithal to be burning anything in protest. I'm not even certain he should be allowed near matches in the first place. The sentence above is not meant to encourage him to organize a 'Wipe your ass with an image of Muhammad' day***. Personal opinion of course.

*** I am in favor of thoughtful blasphemy. It is a personal hobby as well.