Onward Christian Soldier

Hey all you god-fearing folks out there, there are only three days left until the big Koran burning down in Gainesville, Florida. And when I say "god-fearing," I am appealing to any of you out there who are burdened by paranoid schizophrenic delusions, like the Reverend Terry Jones himself. Terry runs the oh-so-ironically-named Dove World Outreach Center. If you happen by their web site, there is list of "Top Ten Reasons To Burn a Koran." Most of the list fails to caputure the wit and zeal of anything from David Letterman's writers, but I suppose you could admire their faith and conviction. Or not.
I am increasingly concerned by the ease with which even those amongst us with less-than-pointed heads have demonized one of the world's religions wholesale. The horrible irony of the addendum to Reverend Terry's list, "Five More Reasons to Burn The Koran," includes the assertion that this fear-soaked ritual is somehow connected to Free Speech. The rant complains, "Even the Gainesville Fire Department has stepped in to aid the suppression of free speech by using an unconstitutional application of a burn permit." Vile heretics! How dare they limit free speech by keeping yahoos from setting fire to piles of flammable material. Don't they know this is the Lord's work? If God didn't want us to burn the Koran, he wouldn't have given us matches and kerosene. Then there's our godless men in uniform: General David Petraeus warned Tuesday in an e-mail to The Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence."
See, I don't think Reverend Terry remembers that we're supposed to be the good guys here. Burning flags and such is the kind of thing the bad guys are supposed to do. Nazis burned books. Hasn't this guy seen "Footloose?" All of this fuss about "burning copies of its own books, on its own property" has got the Reverend a little nervous, to the point of strapping a forty-caliber pistol on his hip. Nice job, Terry! You managed to get the First and Second Amendments mixed right in there with God. I suggest we send Kevin Bacon down there posthaste to straighten him out.