Posted on 09/13/2010 6:01:26 PM PDT by Kaslin
There is a glint of John Brown in the eyes of the Rev. Terry Jones, a bit of theatrical madness and a Gingrichian lust for the spotlight. His plan to burn the Quran was canceled, or, given the way these things often go, maybe merely postponed.
For CNN will call again or the "Today" show will run out of missing white girls and Jones will again feel compelled to burn someone else's holy book, striking a match to illuminate his own bigotry and, while he's at it, forcing us to take sides. I stand with Jones.
I hope I don't have to explain that I am hardly anti-Muslim. I hope, too, that I don't have to explain that I find Jones objectionable, and I wondered, back eons ago in Instant Media Time (last week) why Newt Gingrich didn't call him or Sarah Palin tweet him or Rick Lazio issue a press release in which they all said that while they share his compulsion to exploit a fear of Islam, they thought he had gone about his publicity-seeking in the wrong way.
They might have succeeded, although Jones might have retorted that moderation in pursuit of publicity is no virtue and extremism in the same pursuit is no vice. Something like that.
John Brown confronted pre-Civil War America with a dilemma. He had either murdered or approved of murder in the cause of anti-slavery and led an insurrection at Harpers Ferry. The vicissitudes of life (the deaths of children and of his first wife) and especially the searing injustice of slavery had taken a toll on him.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
Goodbye to free speech. That’s a western/Christian concept.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vocbu68oKsQ&feature=related
How come they weren’t this obsessed with Rev Wright?
“I hope I don’t have to explain that I am hardly anti-Muslim. I hope, too, that I don’t have to explain that I find Jones objectionable, and I wondered, back eons ago in Instant Media Time (last week) why Newt Gingrich didn’t call him or Sarah Palin tweet him or Rick Lazio issue a press release in which they all said that while they share his compulsion to exploit a fear of Islam, they thought he had gone about his publicity-seeking in the wrong way.”
He must have been out of town when they all did what he says they didn’t.
“Jones is a jerk, a Warholian concoction who used his allotted 15 minutes of fame to trigger concern at home and riots abroad. He is ugly in aspect and message, yet if a line were drawn and I had to choose a side, I would have no choice. I stand with him.”
John Brown was right to oppose slavery, he just went about his opposition in the wrong way when he retaliated for Bleeding Kansas by murdering some pro-slavers.
So, if the analogy to Jones were a good one, Cohen is saying Jones is right to oppose Islam and the Koran, it's just that publicly burning the book is the wrong way to go about that.
I don't think Cohen really meant to say bashing the Koran and Islam or even working for it's abolition is a good thing. Bad, bad analogy.
Cohen is a idiot
John Brown was a terrorist.
JB was an incompetent and megalomaniacal insurrectionist. The Kansas attacks were in direct retaliation for attacks on free soil men. Harpers Ferry was an attempt to start a full blown slave insurrection. It was not itself intended to have terroristic effect.
I have never heard someone give a logical explanation why the Founders were morally in the right to violently revolt against (primarily) possible future oppression, while John Brown was morally wrong to violently revolt against actual present oppression.
The oppression by Britain of Americans, as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, was in any historical sense really pretty minor. The oppression of black slaves, as of any slave, was absolute and ultimate.
I don’t think this preacher made a big deal out of his plan or sought out publicity. He was doing it as a protest to the ground zero mosque as I understand it.
It was the media that latched onto him as a figure to be made fun of and an illustration that ‘we’ are just as crazy as the muslims.
John Brown wasn’t revolting against anything. He murdered seven innocent people in cold blood, using the sack of Lawrence as his excuse.
After he denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire”, Richard Cohen wrote a screed calling Reagan a “religious bigot”.
The Kansas attacks were not part of an insurrection. They were, however, made in the context of what was very nearly a civil war. At east several of the victims were hardly what most people would call “innocent,” being active members of the pro-slavery party and militia. Three or more were or had been professional slave catchers. Brown’s party sought out specific individuals for retaliation.
Not to justify the attacks, but these were not random attacks intended to terrorize the population, they were more in the nature of vigilante retaliation, however misguided.
Harpers Ferry, however, was most definitely intended as the start of a slave insurrection. It was poorly planned and executed, but that was the intent.
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