On the Subject of Burning Books

Book burners give me the creeps.

I’ve been following the story of Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who announced plans to observe 9/11 with a “Burn the Koran Day.” As I write this, he appears to have called it off, but he may reconsider. I don’t know what he will do. But it gives me hope to see the range of people, from all areas of the political and religious spectrum, who have stood up and objected to his planned demonstration. Here’s a sampling:

A preacher on Fox News
John Kelso in the Austin American-Statesman
The Huffington Post
An Evangelical Christian website

Personally, I think book burners are about as low as the human race can go.

Of course, you’d expect to hear that from me. I’m crazy about books. I have three 8-foot bookcases in a fairly small house, a short pile of books on my nightstand, and more books in boxes that I can’t figure out where to put. I’ve loved books since I learned to read. Maybe even before that. I still have a few of my childhood favorites, and I treasure those books. I love them as much as I loved any pet I’ve owned. I know, in my rational mind, that books are inaminate objects. Just ink and paper, not alive and capable of loving back like a cat or a dog. But they’ve kept me warm through many a cold and lonely night. They contain characters who live in my imagination, and speak the wisdom of authors who are long gone, but in a sense immortal, because their words are still here.

I myself am an author. I have some idea what it takes to bring those words out and set them to paper. Writing a book is a lot like giving birth -- except that in my case, the gestation period was considerably longer.

I don’t have much respect for people who ban books. They do it, I suppose, when they don’t want others to find out what the book-banners don’t want them to know; or they don’t want others thinking what the book-banners don’t want them to think. Book banners are an affront to the American ideals of free speech and free expression.

Book burners have the same desire to squelch knowledge and expression, but they’re more into drama and violence. They don’t simply want to ban a book; they want to obliterate it. To take those words that someone composed with so much thought and turn them into smoke. To make sure that nobody will discover that book, years from now, in an attic or a library stack or a quirky used bookstore. They want to silence the voice, kill the ideas, and sear the flames into the public mind, in the hopes of sending a message to anyone who might dare to pose an unorthodox idea in the future.

Let me be clear here. I'm not talking about legal rights. If this preacher in Florida decides to go ahead with his Koran-burning, he has the right to stage that demonstration. Provided, of course, that any books destroyed were owned by the people that brought them to the fire. That means bought and paid for, or otherwise legally acquired. If they are snitched from libraries or bookstores, or taken by force from Muslims on the street, those who profess to be Christians need to review the Eighth Commandment.