Hubbell Can Wait; This Really Raises My Hackles

The saga of Gary the Great is by no means over, and the rest of the story is truly fun, but right now i am busting at the seams over this Mosque thing.  Not just the Lower Manhattan one in New York City, but the
arson in Murfreesboro, and similar situations all over the country.  That paranoid idiot who thinks it's fun
to burn the Koran -- who the hell does he think he is? Any book burning is sacrilege.  Why haven't we learned these lessons already!?! My late father in law, a presbyterian minister and noted antiquarian Decherd Turner would be rolling over in his grave (except that we actually scattered his ashes as he wished) at such a horrible thought. I loved him and miss him, a great deal. And since i knew him in my adulthood as i never had the chance with my own Dad, I will no doubt be drawing on his wisdom and strength here in these cyberpages.

True Story.  I may be fuzzy on the details, but why take all the fun out of fact-checking? (What, you don't look stuff up after reading about it in the first place?) Anyway, way back in the Renaissance, I think maybe in Florence, Italy, there was a priest (or a monk, or a bishop, whatever) named Savonarola.  He had a lot of serious, um, emotional issues, and was not a particularly happy person.  At any rate, he grew to be rather influential with the powers that were and and he gained popular approval by capitalizing on the already miserable conditions generally of that period. Through fear and the threat of eternal damnation,  he convinced quite a number of otherwise intelligent people that the way to salvation was to discard knowledge.  So he had gathered from high places the oldest and most beautifully decorated scrolls to the lowest scrawling on scraps of vellum, all the books and paintings and drawings and such as he could. There were books of medicine, art, mathematics, astronomy, engineering -- who now knows what wonderful things were contained in the thousands of ancient and contemporary works that he gathered up. And burned.

Yep. Right there in the middle of the city.  Burned it all.  To ash. Who knows how advanced our sciences, our medicines, might be had we not lost what those works contained? For many years, SMU's Bridwell Library held an annual tongue-in-cheek salute to Savonarola that actually celebrated books......cheeky. I like that.

If this is too much history for ya (and i hope i didn't bore you) then read Bradbury's Farenheit 451 and the same lesson is taught. Or see the movie (not as good, have a snack handy). Anybody have any other works along this vein that they think are worthwhile? There was a good book out a few years ago, kind of a DaVinci Code kinda thing, called The Rule of Four which a fun read.

So The Angry White Mom is furious with these Jackwagons who hide  good ol fashioned racism and
bigotry behind faith.  This is exactly what gives religion a bad name. Religion aside, and just speaking as a fellow American, this anti-Muslim spate of hate has got to stop.  In the first place, how dare these guys demand rights for themselves that they are unwilling to extend to their neighbor (and who next- you? me?)!  There is no Patriotism in acting out of mindless hate.
And if you have personal issues  -- I mean like your sister was knocked up by a guy from Bahrain -- don't drag that baggage into the body politic.

This kind of anti-Islam activity just plays into the hands of our enemies -- who, incidentally, happen to also be the enemies of most Muslims.  I cannot believe I actually agree with Bushie on something (I will check my medications again) but he was right about focusing our outrage on the ones who deserve it. Our enemies feel justified by these morons' blind hatred of this religion -- they can point to these horrible events, these nasty rallies and such and say "see? All Americans hate the Islamic world and we are right to hate them back."
How come these Christians don't burn the Book of Mormon after finding out about the systematic child
predation going one with that Warren Jeffs and his "congregation"-- and that's just the latest.  Read Under the Banner of Heaven (i can't recall the author) for more on Mormon outrages. How come nobody went
out and torched Seventh Day Adventists Churches after Vernon Howell (I refuse to call that child molester by his play name David Koresh) slaughtered his own followers, including children?

Whoa. I have nothing against Mormons. Or Seventh Day Adventists, for that matter.  But I hate the hypocrisy. Here's a thought. I have never heard of anyone (well, there is that Scottish legend of the brother of St. Columba -- another fact-checking tease) who came back from the dead to tell us for sure -- nobody Nobody NOBODY has a real handle on anykind of afterlife. So any religion, or none of our religions, may have it right.


Maybe it is a good time for all religious leaders to urge their believers to step back from the brink, and take a second look at working out a future that we can actually have a say in. I think we need to take a look at what we all have in common and stop zeroing in on the things that divide us.

True Americans of  all faiths are ashamed of this behavior.  Americans must set the standard for tolerance -- no matter what pain or agony we FEEL -- we always must ACT like Americans. It's hard. But the high is like no other. My guidepost is WWJWD -- What Would John Wayne Do?

What do you think? (And if you have any ideas on what John Wayne would actually do, that could be fun)