Buring the Koran

Burning the Koran, or the Bible, or the Torah are despicable acts. They need to be denounced, and are being denounced by religious and political leaders. Nevertheless stating that the Koran should not be burned because our enemies might take umbrage is unfortunate, ill conceived, and wrong.

We are fighting to preserve our way of life. This revolves around the 1st amendment to our constitution, among other items. Our supreme court has found burning things to be political speech which is protected. Therefore to criticize an expression of free speech because it has deleterious effects outside our country is bad for political discourse, and un-American to boot. If the Muslim religion is to be provided with special handling because of their faith, what about those who believe Abortion is murder? People have been harmed because we insist on abortion. Should we now declare abortion reprehensible and see to eliminate it?

Our enemies wish to destroy us in any case. No reason to take them into account. I am not talking about the uninformed ignorant masses of the Middle East, just the terrorist we are going after. The fact that some currently uninvolved civilians may join the terrorists, and cause us casualties is regrettable. We need to improve our communication with these people and make sure they understand our position. But whether we can convince them, or not, we should not use the fact that the actions of an extreme few can have deleterious effects to ban political speech.

Note that I am not talking about whether an act is reprehensible in itself. Abortion may be reprehensible in itself to many people, and so is Koran burning to even more people. But they are both protected by our way of life and we "will fight to the death for free speech" and for those who wrongly, in our opinion, use that right.

Therefore we should condemn Koran burning, some of us do condemn abortions, but we should not be doing so because of the consequences to the acts. Those may be dire, but that is the cost of freedom