A little more serious today - cause I really hate people sometimes

There are a lot of things in life that piss me off (case in point, just scroll down through previous posts), but bigotry and intolerance are way up there (probably only surpassed by poor grammar).

Seriously though, this whole “Burn a Koran” (Quaran, Quran, however you want to spell it today) thing is just ridiculous.

I’ve alluded to this before in other posts, but, believe it or not, over 200 years ago, this country was founded on a lot of things, the utmost being religious freedom. The new land was sought out so people were not forced to adhere to religious beliefs being forced upon them by the others, most notably the monarchy.

It was even built into the Bill of Rights, FIRST THING, that we have the freedom of religion. Now, you will routinely hear me go off that no freedom is absolute, and that, is of course, my years of First Amendment Law classes and people crying “freedom of speech” for everything, which it doesn’t cover everything. But the right to pray to who you see fit, to read whichever holy book you see fit is completely protected within this country. No one can take that away from anyone.

Speech that is used to incite acts of rebellion is not protected, there are many Supreme Court cases that waiver back and forth about the actual connotation of “incitement” and if it was a justified fear or not. In my point of view, does burning the Koran violate freedom of speech? Not so much. It does have the possibility of inciting harmful acts, but I believe that, if it was taken to the Supreme Court, they’d rule it to be constitutional.

HOWEVER, legally does not answer the moral question here. In that respect, is burning the Koran right? Absolutely not.

Look, just because I don’t believe in Mohammed, or even Joseph Smith and whatever it was he was teaching, or any other religion of which I am not a part, I would never condone burning what it is they find to be of importance to them.

It’s especially disturbing to me that people of an entire religion have been stereotyped based on some nutjob who performed harmful acts. Sure we lost lives, sure it was a sucker-punch, and I’m not saying that 9/11 needs to be forgotten. However, wouldn’t those who were lost prefer us to honor them in a way that is not racist? Do they want you to sink to the level of our enemies to avenge them? I seriously doubt it.

Now, I’m not saying that Bibles and flags, and whatever else, have never been burned to show disgust against Americans and Christians, because they have. I’m not oblivious to it. I also don’t believe in repeating mistakes of the past (with a couple exceptions – but they weren’t mistakes, lessons learned) and I don’t believe in perpetuating hatred.

In Iraq, the Shiites and the Kurds still fight. Most of them don’t even know why, they just know they are supposed to hate each other. Do we really want to be reduced to that years from now? “Why do you hate the Muslims?” “Uhh, because we have to.” I mean, that’s just asinine.

We are supposed to be some major super-power in the world today. If we keep breeding this Neanderthal thought-process, we’ll never evolve, we’ll never grow, and quite frankly, we’ll never be better than those we claim to hate.

If you support the “Burn the Koran” day, ask yourself why. Do you want that on your tombstone? Does it make you the type of person you want to be? The type of person you want your kids to grow up emulating?

If you don’t, ask yourself why. Does it make you the type of person you want to be? The type of person you want your kids to grow up emulating?

I know where I fall.

*climbing off my soapbox now*