A Burning Question.

"...where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also."

-Heinrich Heine

In case you live under a rock, there's a church in Florida that is planning to protest... I don't even know what to be honest, but the protest is in the form of a book burning of the Qur'an. The way the Pastor at this church looks you'd think they were also doing rattlesnake worship, but that's unconfirmed. All kinds of people are getting involved in saying that this is a terrible idea, including the President, Fox, the Associated Press, leaders of both parties in the House and Senate, the State Department, Interpol, Muslims and General David Patraeus, who sees this as having the potential to inflame anger towards American soldiers overseas.

I guess my question then is... when in the history of man has a book burning been viewed as a good idea? I looked into it, and let me tell you, there wasn't a single book burning that I would get down with in History. The only one I was remotely okay with, was the burning of child pornography, except, I don't really get how that works, seeing as its a crime to possess child pornography, whether you're burning it or not. 

Did this pastor ever read Fahrenheit 451? (This may be a good time to add how terrible our education has become.) Wouldn't it be wiser to have your congregation READ the Qur'an, rather than destroy it? Isn't Bradbury's point that we shouldn't numb ourselves with what mass media tells us, but inform ourselves with direct contact of the things that we claim to believe or value. What if they spent 3 hours on September 11, not burning the books, but finding passages from them that the terrorists and radicals are not emulating? What if they spent 3 hours finding what these two faiths have in common rather than widening the gap and increasing the centuries old hatred between them? 

A book burning? Really? Its not even that good of a demonstration; its the protest equivalent to camping overnight in your own backyard, it doesn't really need any prep, marching or guts (assuming you got permission from the local fire department). It doesn't even require a lot of supporters, just a lot of books. I can name a few things I'd like to see burned instead. How about prejudice, intolerance,  bigotry, ignorance and apathy towards the thousands of social/natural/medical injustices happening around the world.

Or, I guess you can be a church that burns perfectly good paper, by the way, Heinrich Heine's books were burned a hundred years after he wrote them... by the Nazi Party.