Just a Hunk, a Hunk of Burning Hate

Just a Hunk, a Hunk of Burning Hate

Quentin Smeltzer, www.SmeltzerNation.com, 9/8/2010

As you are likely aware, three days from now some nutjob pastor in Florida is going to burn copies of the Islamic holy book, the Quran.  I say nutjob in only the most positive way.  This is the kind of thing that could only happen in Florida.  Or Texas.  Or Arizona… heck I guess it could happen anywhere in this country, although it is difficult to imagine it taking place in my polite state of Connecticut.  Then again, we may elect the former head of the World Wrestling Federation as our new junior Senator, so let’s stick with it could happen anywhere. 

One thing I remember from my youth is conservatives love to burn stuff.  McCarthy incited the burning of pro-communist books.  The Catcher in the Rye was burned.  Beatles records were burned.  Before my time, a few Negro slaves were tossed into the flames.  One thing Americans know is that if you don’t like something, blow it up, and if you can’t blow it up, at least set it on fire!

To be fair, this urge to burn stuff is not confined to the right.  I don’t recall any conservatives burning the American flag.  I remember quite a few of them jumping to the conclusion that we must have yet another change to the Constitution (which they so dearly love just the way it is) to protect the flag.  But they weren’t burning it.  They didn’t burn their draft cards.  And was it conservatives out there burning their bras?  No, of course not.  Republican girls need the support. 

Nor is this urge to burn confined to America.  The Nazis famously burned books with which they disagreed.  The Chinese burned books (and buried the scholars who wrote them)!  The Quran has been burned before, during the Spanish Inquisition.  There was the destruction of the library at Alexandria and the burning of the Mayan codices in 1562…  Good times, good times…

So let’s face it, we all of us, left and right, near and far, we all love to burn stuff!  In fact, burning stuff may be the world’s favorite way to say, I disagree with you.  But why is this?  How to explain it?  Well, can you say “Weenie roast?”   And here’s a question for you:  what’s more cheery and heart-warming than a fire?  Answer:  a fire that devours thoughts and ideas you don’t have the intellectual firepower to refute, that’s what!

So let’s not get too down on our little pastor from Florida.  He’s not original, he’s nothing new.  He’s just doing what tyrants, despots and the intellectually feeble have done for centuries: casting big scary shadows from teeny, weenie people with just a little help from a glowing pile of ignorance and hate.