Thursday, September 09, 2010

Even a broken clock...

Until today there has been absolutely nothing that Glenn Beck has said that I did not wish I had never heard in the first place. His rhetoric is usually so inflammatory and stupid that it is impossible to escape it from either the reverent right or the lampooning left.

Surely you've heard about the plan hatched by Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center church in Gainesville, Florida to hold a good old-fashioned down home book-burning of exclusively the Islamic holy book the Quran on September 11th.

Apparently so has Mr. Beck, and he weighed in with his opinion in this blog post.
What is wrong with us? It’s just like the Ground Zero mosque plan. Does this church have the right? Yes. Should they? No. And not because of the potential backlash or violence.
Update: Okay, no. The mosque is not being planned to be built on Ground Zero, for one thing. If it was, that might be a little weird. Calling it the "Ground Zero mosque" is just a straight up lie.

And besides, burning the Quran, and building a mosque two-blocks north of Ground Zero are not the same things at all.

But go on...
We must be the better person. We must be bigger than our problems. Bigger than the times in which we live. Burning the Koran is like burning the flag or the Bible. You can do it, but whose heart will you change by doing it? You will only harden the hearts of those who could be moved. None of those who are thinking about killing us will be affected, but our good Muslim friends and neighbors will be saddened. It makes the battle that they face inside their own communities even harder.
What?

This sounds measured and calm. It sounds well-reasoned. It actually sounds rather Christian in the idealistic turn-the-other-cheek sense of the word.

Well (almost) good for you Mr. Beck. You (almost) got one right this time.