I'll Offer You A Poke In The Eye

I wasn't really mad when I heard about the nice retarded man in Florida whose idea of celebrating the sacrifice of Americans and several non-Americans nine years ago would be to perpetuate a crime against one of the basic American guarantees (the free exercise of religion) and thus inadvertently (or more to the point, ignorantly) partially invalidate the unwilling sacrifice made by those murdered on that day.

Mostly I was nonplussed. Wow, somehow the swirl of rhetoric producing white-hot anti-Muslim vitriol around the building of a religious center within an imaginary Boundary of Sanctimony in Lower Manhattan escalated past cynical political point-scoring to an actual act of discriminatory social violence, even if it's only against helpless books.

No, I didn't get really mad until that fucker decided he wasn't going to do it.

Because it turns out I think he should burn the Quran. He should burn a lot of them.

This isn't because I think he's right. Actually I'm pretty sure he's loaded down with a bonus chromosome. Were he here, I'd as likely kick him square in the balls as shake his hand because that's how we should greet moral and physical cowards.

But the conventional-wisdom position is: he shouldn't perpetuate his act of political expression because it is a threat to national security in some fashion. OK, that's the Dick Cheney position, as far as I can tell.

The thing about free speech is that it also affords us the freedom to be douchebags. Further, it saddles us with the responsibility of suffering the company of douchebags so that we might enjoy the unimpeded right to douchebaggery should it occur to us to exercise it.

If I take a public position, there's no way the President of the United States, the Secretary of State and the military leader of the most critical active combatant command should take the position (official or even public) that I should shut the fuck up. And certainly, with no crime committed, should I ever, ever, ever expect a visit from the FBI.

When one guy threatens someone else's constitutional guaranteed rights (intimidating people from the expression of their religion), that's one thing. When the government and the military exercise their influence to suppress one dude's fucked-up expression of his political rights (basic, stupid-ass free speech), that's really something else.

So now I'm mad because I have to be on this guy's side.

If I were any kind of non-coward myself, I'd burn a Quran just to make my point. But I won't because the idea of destroying a book not written by Glenn Beck makes me queasy.

Now I'm stuck taking what is probably the ACLU position on this, which also pisses me off. I feel about the ACLU about the same way I feel about PETA: it's probably a good idea that they're around, but sanctimony in all its forms is unattractive. Yeah, because of both of them I can burn a flag and there's a social stigma attached to fur-wearing, but if that means you have to be on the side of the Ku Klux Klan or vegans (respectively?), I'd rather enjoy the fruits of your labor than watch you work.

As for what I will actually do, I plan to mark the 9/11 anniversary the same way I always do: intending to put the flag out and then forgetting.

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PS: Taking a cue from Andrew Sullivan, let's take a step to Google-rescue the name Terry Jones and keep it where it belongs: