The Other McCain

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Showing Any Public Figure Crucified Is As Tasteless As Burning The Qur’an

Posted on | April 2, 2011 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

An interesting discussion came up today regarding the idiot in Florida who burned the Qur’an, and the resulting deaths in MeS, just north of me by a couple of hours.
Burning anyone’s scripture is deplorable. Double deplorable for anyone nominally a follower of the Christ. Do you really think He’d do such? Really?
And so then you have horrid depictions of other sacred objects, connected to public figures.  The image is far enough out there that I don’t care to embed it in this blog post.
The discussion went in the direction of the Florida pastor being held responsible for the Afghan deaths. While not defending the goofball pastor in the slightest, I cited the 2005 Newseek story about Qur’an flushing, which fiction cost 17 Pakistani lives. The causality gets to be challenging. The Florida pastor and the LA artist both merit public derision for tastelessness. But is the threat of a Heckler’s Veto by citizens willing to undertake violence sufficient justification for government restrictions on freedom of speech?
My counterpart in the discussion felt that the Pastor had behaved immorally. Now, from a Christian standpoint, you can build that argument, but what about a secular legal vantage? Playing the slippery slope card, I told him that we could equally decide alcohol is immoral, and outlaw beer. He said “Fine by me, I hate beer.” Great, we can outlaw all alcoholic beverages, then.
The argument concludes around the notion that we all have things we don’t like, but which others cherish. The least-worst answers here are:

  • Never actively offend others’ faith.
  • Strive to minimize passive offense of others’ faith.
  • When someone of your own stripe runs amok, regulate them.
  • Ensure the regulation is kept at the social level; attempts at codifying good taste as secular law are doomed to failure.

And may God have mercy on the creep in LA who depicted Sarah Palin getting spiked. Not asking him to like the lady; just for a modicum of decency. As art, the style isn’t completely without merit. The subject matter is the problem. Also, I’d put forward the same objection if BHO was enjoying the nine inch nail. If the artist had gone that route, the media would probably call the artist a raaaaacist.

Ed Driscoll has more, as does M. Joseph Sheppard

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Category: Ed Driscoll, Sarah Palin, The Flemish Menace

Comments

  • Anonymous

    Do I think Christ would denounce and destroy a book written by the devil to deceive people with small brains? Absolutely. He went postal on the commerce in the temple didn’t he?

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    The big question that goes beyond burning the Quran is, what does it take to get a bunch of seventh century savages to run amok and murder a bunch of people? It doesn’t seem to take a whole hell of a lot, does it? Just offend their religious sensibilities. The latest outrage involved burning a Quran. What’s next? A Gay Pride Parade? Women showing their bodies in a beauty contest, maybe a small local one? Alcohol being sold in a bar, or in a store? When it starts happening here, more and more often, are we going to condemn those who commit the “offense” or are we going to go after the perpetrators? I don’t want to think about the answer right now, because there’s too many god damn Democrats in office for me to come up with the answer I’d like.

  • Anonymous

    The Savage’s reaction to the Quran burning say’s a great deal more about the savages, their religious leaders, and the sociopathy they believe in than the man who burned the book. The Afghans who attacked the UN office came right from services at a local Mosque. One wonders how long we are going to humor the delusion that the followers of Islam have any redeeming qualities. Can anyone imagine Christians coming straight from Sunday services to murder members of their community at the behest of the local Reverend? Would any of us continue to practise a religion that would make the Aztecs shake their heads in disbelief?

  • Johan1mscss

    Smitty, I usualy agree with you, BUT, Moses, at the command of God, destroyed the golden calf being worshipped by the children of Israel. The armies of Irael repeatedly destroyed graven images when warring against the Philistines. Jesus himself cast out the money makers, and destroyed thier books of account when cleansing the Temple. So in this case, yes, I think my God would approve of destroying a corrupt ‘scripture’ such as the koran. Jehovah is the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow. And the Son bows to the will of the Father in all things.

  • DaveO

    Smitty,

    The UN workers were murdered because the Afghanis wanted their money, their resources, and the Koran-burning story gave them topcover protection from Dostum. Those UN workers were under his protection, and supporting his people. The murderers possessed free choice, and chose to murder and then further defile the remains.

    Dostum, or his rival Atta (if he’s still alive), will either arrest and kill the murderers, or hide them. That will tell you who found the deaths advantageous. In MeS, sure as the sun rises in the morning, a killing of Europeans requires sanction from one of those two men.

    As far as the pastor in Florida goes, his action barely registers on the bad-meter. It’s that chaos theory folks believe in: if a butterfly farts in Arizona, mass rioting will take place in Delhi.

  • http://saberpoint.blogspot.com Stogie Chomper

    Color me tasteless. I burned a Koran last September 11 and thoroughly enjoyed doing it. Burning a “sacred text” that is really a handbook for murder, pillage and rape seems to me to be a good thing. What better way to show, convincingly, that we reject this horrid little book and the evil ideology that it represents?

    Smitty, it seems to me that you lack moral clarity with regards to the evil that is Islam.

  • http://twitter.com/MNRobot Mind-Numbed Robot

    I wonder if an image of Obummer nailed to the cross would be as offensive. The seemingly natural occurrence of halos and crosses magically appearing about the president’s head in MSM photography would have us believe the man is our messiah. What would be the reaction if that projection were taken to it’s historical correlative end?

  • http://theothermccain.com smitty

    No, actually, I’m making the moral clarity argument: it’s morally clear to me that Jesus of Nazareth never spent time attacking any religion, pagan or otherwise.
    He did vigorously attack the charlatan Jews of his day.
    Having read about half the Qur’an on my kindle, I would commend to all mature Christians to give it a read and find out precisely what all the commotion is about.
    While fully supporting your right to burn things in accordance with your local regulations, I deplore burning sacred texts with all the vigor I deplore flag burning.
    You, sir, may be more a part of the problem than the solution, in my humble.
    Cheers,
    Chris

  • Mysterian1729

    Smitty casts himself as LMA:
    Having read about half the Qur’an on my kindle, I would commend to all mature Christians to give it a read and find out precisely what all the commotion is about.

    To slightly alter RSM:
    But the actual history of [Islam] is vitally relevant to this debate, because facts are still stubborn things.

    The truth lies in what they do not what they say.

  • ThomasD

    Christ was a devout jew. His approach to false gods, and false prophets would be expect to be rather Mosaic to say the least.

    To accuse the nutjob pastor of not following his own faith is, well, rather nutjob.

  • Michael Lonie

    If burning US flags is “protected speech” then burning Qur’an is also. Muslims burn bibles all the time. Our fiends the Saudis burn any Bible they find in Saudi Arabia, and outlaw Christian worship there to boot. How many Muslims have been murdered in America by outraged Christians over these affronts? None. Muslims constantly kill Christians (and others) and burn down churches. How many Muslims have been murdered in America over these affronts? Nada. If Muslims are adult human beings who kinow right from wrong it’s past tiem for them to show it.

    Going further, if Muslims say that we risk violence for criticizing them, as with those Danish cartoons, then it is instantly necessary to ramp up criticism to higher decibel levels. If they say we must do something, or risk their violent response, we should do the opposite of what they want and, when the violent response comes, kick their teeth in.

    I doubt that responding in kind would affect the Muslims who carry out these pogroms. Murdering Muslims in the West in retaliation for Muslim murders in Trashcanistan or Fraudi Arabia would have no effect, except to convince the Muslims that there really is a war between Islam and the West and that the West started it, not the Muslims. That’s quite apart from any moral considerations, too. No, committing counter atrocities in the West is not the answer. On the other hand, leveling Mazar e Sherif with a couple of thousand 500-pound iron bombs from B-52s might have a salutary influence on the locals there.

    And Muslims have made murderous rampages over a beauty contest already. Several years ago in Nigeria they did so after a radio announcer made the jaunty comment that Muhammed might have chosen a wife from among the contestants. In the subsequent rioting there were 200 dead as I recall.

    These Muslim riots against non-Muslms, by the way, are intended to keep the kufrs in their place. When you read about Muslims in Egypt, for example, torching a church with its Christian congregation inside, you are seeing the Muslim version of a Jim Crow lynching. Except the Muslims kill a lot more of the despised minority than any lynching ever did.

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