Actually, it is. If that book is recognized as “free speech” by the government then in your protest you are both decrying that book and free speech as seen by your government. James Madison has nothing to do with this. Also, he’s dead and we don’t know what he’d do. He may tell us that we should all wear plaid and love each other. We could ask the question “WWJMD?” but that seems equally ludicrous.

Your second paragraph is in contradiction with your first: An objection to a legal book and (presumably in protest) its burning is in fact a statement decrying free speech. I’d like to say more but there is nothing more to be said on the matter. Also, you assume that they are burning “their” copies of the books. If these books were such “abuses” then why would they own the sacrilege? Are they wishing themselves as pious as the early Christians burning their “magic scrolls”?

This also places them in a tricky spot: If they don’t own what they burn they are purchasing for the sole purpose of destruction which both contradicts the Bible (parable of talents) and makes a mockery out of their “we just don’t like it for us” theory.

If we take this into another arena of law: I don’t approve of abortion. I assume most of us on this blog/forum don’t. However, killing abortion providers is neither moral nor legal. If this church were doing so we wouldn’t be having this discussion but ideas, however, are another matter. Ideas are somehow a grey area. But the person and the idea are essentially the same thing. Ideas are powerful, the stuff that revolutions are made of and what you aren’t looking at is this: kill an idea and you do, indeed, kill the person.

“Until AGBC lobbies government officials to outlaw the publication of any Bible other than the KJV or trashes bookstores, the argument (”burn the books one day and kill the people the next.”) is a slippery slope fallacy…”

Sigh. I could have dissected your arguments with the silly debate terms that are commonly thrown about on forums, etc. nowadays but I didn’t. Had I wished, I could have pointed to study after study about such a topic but I live in constant fear of overwindedness. And, had I wished, I could have pursued the scientific method (observe, repeat) on this fact: the killing of ideas results in the suppression of people–if not the flat out killing of them. It’s no more slippery slope than saying “if I grill a cheese sandwich, I’ll have a grilled cheese sandwich”. Nothing about suppression is a minor thing. And there is, indeed, a slippery slope between the wonderfully non-harmful protest book burning and the creation of fancy new lampshades…the Germans have proven it.

“It might be said that such an extreme conclusion is in our nature and it has just as long a history as anything else.”

This is true. I did say it, actually, and there can be no denying it. The concept of book burning is nothing new. The concept of killing any idea that doesn’t coincide with yours is nothing new. The concept that everyone should be free to speak their mind, however, is. And the concept that everyone should have the right to speak their mind is something extremely new. Burn books if you must, but don’t say that it isn’t something we shouldn’t raise an eyebrow to and be cautious of.

Objecting to a book as a perceived abuse of free speech is not equivalent to decrying free speech itself, whether a person burns a book, tosses it in the garbage, or writes “This is a bad book!” in a letter-to-the-editor. I suspect that even James Madison, were he alive today, would favor legislation to prohibit falsely yelling, “Fire!” in a crowded theater without being accused of decrying free speech.

Furthermore, I didn’t opine that the listed books are an abuse of free speech (well, not all of them, anyway). I stated that members of churches like AGBC, with their religious beliefs (whether right or wrong), see such books as abuses, and show their objections by burning their copies of the books, in addition to explaining (e.g., on websites) why they object to the books.

Until AGBC lobbies government officials to outlaw the publication of any Bible other than the KJV or trashes bookstores, the argument (“burn the books one day and kill the people the next.”) is a slippery slope fallacy… unless one were really suggesting that the AGBC members are borderline Nazis or Stalinists. It might be said that such an extreme conclusion is in our nature and it has just as long a history as anything else.

I’m sure there are other factors involved but methinks that’d be the last straw.

“they and their religous beliefs see as abuses of the exercise of free speech.”

At the end of the day they are still exercising free speech to decry free speech, regardless of whether they “accept” that speech or not. Spin it how you want, that’s how it shakes out. One man’s opinion does not an “abuse” make. In short, if the law allows such daring speech as the NIV Bible, then it’s not an “abuse” of free speech–a proper abuse would probably be something such as: butchering puppies to protest puppy mills.

What’s more disgusting for me is this apparent pride in book burning (as some kind of perverse heritage) and the larger issue (albeit more hidden)–the eradication of “ideas that aren’t mine” is asinine and shameful. We live in a world that has seen what happens when people are given free reign to kill ideas and should be wary when it starts up anywhere. We burn the books one day and kill the people the next. It’s our nature and it has just as long a history as anything else.

But, ultimately, and regardless of whether book burning is American, German, Russian, Chinese, etc. The question that hasn’t been asked is this: should a church (any book-burning church) be so threatened by “false religions” that they must busy themselves with the eradication of an idea rather than the rebuttal of it? Or, rather, has their view of their god become so boxed in and so weak that their god–to them–is now useless against the attacks of their enemies? In short, have they nullified their god through their actions?

You indeed were suggesting that when, to my disagreeing about book-burning being un-American,” you said that “exercising rights is not any more ‘American’ than abusing them”, explaining that book burning “goes against the American tradition of the free exchange of ideas.”

John: “I would just like to point out the irony of burning books you disagree with. Excercising the right to free speech to decry the excercise of free speech.”

AGBC is not burning books as an exercise of their members’ right to free speech in order “to decry the exercise of free speech”, but in order to decry what they and their religous beliefs see as abuses of the exercise of free speech. There is no indication that AGBC (and other similar churches) are doing this as a threat or intimidation or any other reason than their attempt to follow their understanding of Acts 19:18-20 by burning books to demonstrate their opposition to such books.

Gary @ 32:

You noticed that they are not burning any Lutheran books. I think this is a reproach to us Lutherans.

There is no way these people would agree with the doctrine taught in the Lutheran confessions. Which means that they’d be burning the Lutheran confessions too, if they knew what was in them.

But, Lutherans must not even be on their radar screen enough to make them want to burn our books. I’m so embarrassed. Time to focus more resources in the southeastern district, folks.