Farenheit 451

I come from a family of folks who read for business and pleasure. Many among my family are educators. Some even studied to be librarians.

We like books, as a rule.

Thus, it should be no surprise that one of the gravest sins in my little world is the burning of books. I don't especially care what the subject matter is in said book.

It's pretty simple: BOOKS SHOULD NOT BE BURNED. Period.

You want to restrict information? Go for it. Lock away the books or whatever. Restrict publication if you're worried someone's going to build a doomsday device or raise the dead (or something worse than dead).

You want to burn books? Then I'm thinking you're asking to be beaten horribly.

Just sayin'.

So this asshole pastor, Terry Jones, wants to score some political points by burning qurans as a "message" with respect to 9/11 and that proposed mosque in New York.

He needs a good swift kick in the nuts all the way up into his brainpan. Burning a book is atrocious. Burning a book that's considered holy by a major segment of the world's population is just being an asshole.

I get that the proposed mosque in New York is controversial. I get both sides of the issue, but honestly? People need to suck it up. This is America, for god's sake. Freedom of religion is a right here. If folks backing the mosque can afford to buy the land, then they have a right to build the mosque.

It wasn't Islam that caused the 9/11 attacks. It was a bunch of criminal, psychotic, fundamentalist assholes who were stupid enough to follow a psychopath. They killed to make us afraid.

They were no more Muslim than a mass-murderer is a true Christian.

And narrow-minded, hate-filled jackasses who burn books don't count as either. They belong to a different group: idiots.