Korans and Craziness

Sensible people get used to absurdity in the world and come to expect it, particularly from the politicians and the so-called pop culture. Sometimes, however, something comes along that is so utterly goofy that even the jaded have to shake their heads. The present flap about some crackpot preacher in Florida planning to burn a Koran is one of those things.

That someone is planning to burn a Koran on September 11th is not surprising. In a country of three hundred million people, it was fairly likely that someone would hit on that as a way, albeit a vulgar and inappropriate way, of remembering the attacks and defying those who committed them. In fact it is a fairly sure bet that, whatever happens with this particular preacher, there will be a few Korans burned in protest on that day somewhere by somebody, and anyone who stops to think knows that.

No, what makes the whole thing so bizarre is the reactions to the preacher’s plans. First Eric Holder or someone literally makes a federal case out it by siccing the FBI on the preacher. Then President Obama weighs in as the President of the United States against a legal protest by a private citizen as though the poor guy were planning to blow up Miami - with the predictable effect of helping make a trivial bit of late summer nonsense national news. Various political and media characters around the country join in, and pretty soon it is big national news. Even General Petreaus, who should have more sense, forgets that part of his training about active duty officers not taking part in domestic political controversies, and pipes up that this is bad juju.

Meanwhile, assorted fanatics in the Moslem world start rioting and threatening dire vengeance against the entire United States if this insult goes down. This leads to the State department warning Americans to be careful abroad and Interpol going on alert. It also leads our president and his administration to quake in their boots and get all atwitter over possible reprisals by the Moslems, whom they simultaneously praise as exemplars of peacefulness.

No, you literally could not make this stuff up. Unfortunately it has its serious side. Its treatment in the press illustrates once again a part of the American left’s dangerous infatuation with Islam, an infatuation that, given Islam’s positions on a number things these same lefties claim to care about, seems best explained by the hypothesis that some leftists will go gaga over just anybody who claims to be an enemy of the United States. It also makes the Obama administration look even weaker and more timid to America's enemies in Moslem countries. Finally the whole mess offers yet more evidence that our president needs to acquire both a sense of proportion and a better understanding of the rights of our citizens.