Enough is enough. Enough with the bigotry and the hate. Enough with the race-baiting and the fake debate about the Ground Zero Mosque. Enough of white Americans putting up fences to keep their fellow humans out. Enough of the birthers.
Enough of Christian hypocrites who thump their Bibles while denying men and women the right to marry the one they love. Enough of conservatives holding up the Constitution having never actually read it and preaching about one nation under God and also denying that every American has the right to worship the God of their choosing.
Enough of Progressives and Democrats who engage in these debates rather than attack these bigoted racist hypocrites. Enough of the hate-mongers getting all the attention and press.
You have to draw the line somewhere. Guess what? Now's the time.
You are entitled to your own opinion, after all, this is America and there is Freedom of Speech. But just as important, there is freedom of worship. Because of our freedoms, there, ironically, is the freedom to burn books. However.
Because we are Americans, because we defend and fight and preserve the right of free speech, because we have seen what happens in countries who don't defend these freedoms, we do not burn books. Let me repeat that.
We print books that maybe you don't people want to read. We print books filled with hate. We print and print and print books of all kinds, but we don't burn books. By defending everyone's right to speak, we defend our right to speak. By defending everyone's right to their own religion, we defend our own right to our own religion.
We have gone to war with people who do burn books; Adolph Hitler comes to mind. Stalin. Pol Pot. There are others. Our military graveyards are full of the men and women who protected us, who gave their lives for us. Not one soldier has ever died, so we could burn books.
And we especially don't burn the books of another person's religion.
You may or may not believe in the Bible, but if you think the Bible is the worst book in the world, as an American, you don't have to read it, you don't have to believe, no one can force you to or hold it against you if you don't, but you can not burn the Bible.
You may or may not believe in what is in the Torah. You may think the Torah is the worst book in the world, as an American, you don't have to read it, you don't have to believe it, no one can force you to, or hold it against you if you don't but you can not burn the Torah.
Buddhist books, Pagan books, Hindu books. You can't burn them.
And you can't burn the Koran.
You may or may not believe in what is in the Koran. You may think the Koran is the worst book in the world, as an American, you don't have to read it, you don't have to believe it, no one can force you to, or hold it against you if you don't but you can not burn the Koran.
I salute my friends at Human Rights First who are standing up against the bigots who would burn the Koran on 9/11. And if you want to, you can click here and get a free bookmark from Human Rights First. It says:
Americans Don't Burn Books.
But other people do. Notice the crowd watching the book burning and who is in it.
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Joan Walsh
Kerry Lauerman
Salon.com
Comments
Lois
But let us not forget where book burning leads.
Heinrich Heine said it best: "Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."
As someone who has walked the grounds of a concentration camp and shuddered, I shudder now to know that the road to those hells on Earth began at the ashes of book-burning fires.
I can only hope our road does not lead there if it is to begin at the same pile of ashes.
'Enough' will likely only happen with action -- Brotherhood of Man marches? American Unity marches? -- not us writing online...
It's an unfortunate circumstance of our history. More often than not Christians are the book burners in this country.
Damn skippy. A book I don't like never did me harm, sitting on someone else's shelf. What's wrong with our deliberative democracy is not fixed with fewer books, but with the close reading of more and more books, with better books, and with a respect for critical thinking.
Burning with a need to know, with a desire to understand. That's the right kind of heat. It forges our republic, inflames our passion for liberty, burnishes our civil discourse.
Torching ideas just produces ash holes.
for your resounding voice
and reminding us of choice.
Enough indeed you plead
I agree with what I read.
Thanks for speakin' out.
rated.
Unfortunately, I believe they will probably burn their Korans. And, because we are true Americans, we must let them. But we can sure as hell shout them down and call them the ignorant, narrow-minded, xenophobic bigots they are. That's our right.
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I think that you may have meant to say "Good Americans don't burn books". With which I agree, unless they are cold and scanned it into their Kindle first.
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is writing books
not burning books.
For a good Young Adult novel that explores book burning download the ebook at http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/14726/the-attic-notebooks.
I tried lighter fluid, and nothing...I mean don't get me wrong, it does burn, but you have to keep adding it and adding it...it's a mess. But it makes great burning papers....a real nice slow burn. So you're right, you can't burn the bible.
Witness the war now taking place in the right wing political books now flooding the market in which the truth has very little to do with the polemics. There is a review of Coulter's new book in this months NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS that demonstrates my point. Liberals like Joe McGinness are fighting back with books like his latest, but I'm not sure adopting their tactics of chicanery and character assasination is the way to go.
I understand the temptation when you are dealing with an opposition that will stoop to anything but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of those who desire to be civil and don't see catering to the lowest common denominator as the solution. It's become not so much a matter of burning books but throwing them at each other.