Balancing Liberty Against Fear: Burn a Koran

I cannot accept the premise that causing “outrage to Muslims” is reason enough to condemn the burning some paper and ink. Nor would the matter differ if someone threatened to burn the Bible. A thing that has been done — and far worse, without ever engendering as much indignation as the present incident raises.

This is clearly a moment for reflection. While General Petraeus must be regarded as a serious man in his warning of the dangers inherent in such a protest as that planned by Rev. Jones, the incident is in fact no different than the familiar publishing of political cartoons satirizing Mohammed or Islam. Those have engendered outrage, fatwas, and even in some related cases, murders. But what are we doing when we use the implicit threat of violence to compromise the dearest liberties we know — and none is dearer than free political expression. Were it not fit sooner to ofter to shed one’s own blood in defense of that precious liberty, than to condemn as bigoted and patriotic the person who would exercise it?

This once was a country in which men and women of courage were prepared to defend the most unpopular forms of expression by the most obnoxious persons out of the commitment to defend liberty. What kind of a country has it become when we can so easily privilege the Koran over the draft card?

Something is wrong with this picture, and I think I know what it is. We have lost the resolve to defend the country against outrageous conduct. We have become craven, so much so, that we would sooner turn against our own liberties than resist manfully the intimidations of barbarians. We have become a people who fear giving outrage far more than we resent receiving outrage. Notice how tepid, in comparison, were the expressions of indignation from the President and Secretary of State following the recent murders of Christian missionaries in Afghanistan merely for possessing Bibles; while there is no end to phlegm and bile dredged up over Rev. Jones’s stunt in Gainesville. Our priorities are all wrong. Yes, there are dangers from Radical Islam. But do we forget that we have an Administration that does not even know how to say “Radical Islam.,” that has banned references to “Jihad,” that will not even recognize the full character of the war the U. S. is engaged in?

Jones may be a silly man, but the saddening irony of this situation is that his silliness more closely approximates the honest speech the nation requires in this hour than all the twisted hand-wringing seeking to turn him into the “terrorist” while true terrorists are free to terrorize us with fear of their reprisals. No! Let us say, rather, let Jones speak; and let any who resent it speak against him, but let none expect to respond to Jones’s speech with violence here or abroad without assurance of forceful reprisal from the United States. That would be the right balance.