Do you or do you not support burning the Qoran?I do not support burning the Koran, but I am even more against the government preventing anyone from burning the Koran.
I can understand how this might look contradictory. My rationale for not burning the Koran is to avoid being provocative and offensive to Muslims for no good reason, yet I critiqued Justice Stephen Breyer’s rationale that it is best to avoid being provocative and offensive to Muslims because they might, you know, cut some American tourists’ heads off or release sarin gas in Grand Central Station or other such religion of peace activities.
The difference is it is a personal choice whether exercising your freedom of expression is worth te offense it may engender in someone else. It is not the government’s role to decide for you. If police had arrested Terry Jones on some dubious charge in order to keep him in jail over the weekend so he could not go through with his Koran bonfire, I would have been the first to cry foul.
For that matter, while I am deadest against the ground Zero mosque being built, I do not want the government to intervene there, either. I am not thrill about the waving of pom poms I support that has been going on from the White House on down, but that is another gripe altogether.
I fully support the right of individuals to actively protest or support anything they wish as long as they do so within the law. It is the people engaged in these activities who ought to decide the moral value of them. I do not appreciate the idea of the government deciding on the general principle on our behalf.
