Burning a book considered holy to many people is stupid. I would say this if it was a Bible, Book of Mormon or a Quran. Here we have Pastor Terry Jones - a man who has admittedly never read the Quran - deciding to stage a book burning on September 11, 2010. What does this mean? This means, that on the world stage, the US will once again look like a group of intolerant hicks. Does Terry Jones care? No he doesn’t. He has been told that there might be retaliation against American troops stationed overseas and currently fighting a war. He doesn’t care. He has been asked by US leaders to not burn the books. He doesn’t care. He has been universally panned. Again, he doesn’t care.

Terry Jones is a symbol of all that is wrong with intolerance. He is a symbol of all that is wrong with freedom. He has the freedom to do this in my country. He has the freedom to say what he wants to say. However, he lacks the absolute common sense to know that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. I wish we could get rid of people like this, but we can’t. They have as much of a right to be here as the rest of us. What can we do? Instead of glorifying this guy, we need to open our mouths and condemn him. We need to send people like this a clear message. That message is that their type of hate is not welcome within a civilized society.

We can’t stop Pastor Terry Jones’ book burning. However, we can call it very stupid and we can stick together in our worldwide condemnation of his behavior and the behavior of people like him - people who would destroy our peace and civility. Radicalism on any side is just wrong. Being an American doesn’t make it right or acceptable. Thankfully, the world is speaking out against this man. Hopefully, he will gain some common sense before 9/11!