A Noble Tradition

Book Burning and Guilt

There is a long, respectable tradition of book burning in the Christian church.  We read in the Book of Acts that when the Gospel of our Lord began to take hold of large numbers of families in Ephesus that a widespread fear began to fall upon that great pagan city.  As people came out of the horrors of pagan magical practices and were made sons and daughters of God through believing in Christ they disclosed and confessed the things they had been involved in before conversion.

So convicted were they of the evil of pagan witchcraft and magical rites that they brought all their books of magical practices--that is books of secret arts, rites, spells, curses, sexual deviancy, and demon respect--and burnt them publicly.  It was some bonfire--around fifty thousand pieces of silver's worth.  (Acts 19: 17-20)  On the assumption that a piece of silver represented about an ounce, in today's debased coin that would represent a bonfire of around NZ$2.6m dollars worth of books going up in smoke. 

Now, of course, this was not a political stunt.  It was a public act of repentance and turning away from evil.  Since doubtless those books represented a dead past, and since for many there would be demonic powers associated with the books, burning them was not just an act of repentance and consecration, it was also to help secure liberation, in the same way that a converted alcoholic might systematically rid his house of alcohol, lest he fall under its thall again. 

So there is nothing wrong with book burning per se--although pseudo-intellectuals would disagree, seeing any rejection of any book an act of cultural philistinism.  The liberal intellectual prides himself on his urbane openness of mind towards any human thought or creation, except of course any criticism of his liberalism which is very definitely not to be tolerated. 

Some of the great libraries of antiquity have been destroyed, either through natural catastrophes such the destruction of Pompeii in AD79, or through human device such as the burning of the library at Alexandria during the invasion of Mark Anthony.  Without doubt these represent great historical loss.  There was nothing intrinsically evil in the books of magic burned in Ephesus.  Separated from the pagan cultural practices, and the demonic powers incarnated therein, the burned books could have provided much insight to scholars in our day of the nature of religion in the Roman Empire. No doubt it would be a tale of debasement, degradation, and evil--but it would be a tale that could be told without threat or danger--and one that would well prove helpful and cautionary.   

But in the situation and circumstances of Ephesus as people were coming out of captivity to the Devil into the freedom of Christ, destroying their magic books was the right thing to do.  However, it was not without political consequences, for the account in Acts goes on to tell us of a riot in that city that occurred afterwards as silversmiths found their market for shrines of the goddess Diana was shrinking due to the number of people becoming Christians.  The silversmiths, led by one Demetrius, took offence at the "offence" given to the goddess and led a riot that threatened the city itself.  (Acts 19: 23-28)

Fast forward to the present.  A pastor in the US orders the burning of the Koran, wanting to call attention to its prescription for evil violence.  As a result, some Islamic folk in Afghanistan take offence and murder some UN aid workers.  In response some excited members of the Commentariate in the US accuse the pastor of committing murder.  Yet again blood libel rears its head. 

But let's think this through more sensibly.  We know neither the pastor, nor his motivations, but we assume that members of his flock were not recent converts coming out of Islam who had previously been captive to the teachings of the Koran.  The situation, then, was different--very different--from that real serious book-burning in Ephesus two millennia ago.  It is likely that it was done to make a public point about the Koran.  Now even here we ought not to rush to judgment.  There are numerous instances of God's servants publicly enacting scenes to get a point across to an audience.  One thinks of Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Hosea for example. 

A relevant question to ask is, Which of the commandments did this pastor break?  Well, possibly he is guilty of gratuitous offence to Islamic believers--but even here the case needs to be made carefully, not just asserted.  We are conscious that any Christian witness might be so labelled as gratuitous offence to Unbelievers, leading to demands that Christians be silenced. 

As to the murders that transpired as a reaction to the pastor's order of Koran burning we must be very, very clear.  The responsibility for that breaking of the sixth commandment, Thou shalt not murder, rests totally with the perpetrators.  Anyone who suggests otherwise is guilty of blood libel. Aaron Worthing at Patterico makes the point very well in a piece entitled, "Don't Burn the Bible, or This Kitten Gets It!" by making reference to Abraham Lincoln who, when campaigning for the presidency, was libellously accused by his opponents. 

In 1860, long before he was the Republican nominee for President, he confronted fears that this union would break if the nation dared elect a Republican president, addressing his remarks to the South:

But you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is [clever]. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, “[Give me your money], or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!”

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me – my money – was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

(Old-timey slang replaced with modern language.)  The metaphor works perfectly.  What the robber demanded of Lincoln—his money—was his own and he had a clear right to keep it.  But it was no more his own than my God-given right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion is my own, and the threat of death to extort Lincoln’s money, and the threat of death to strangers to extort my silence, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.

Or, put another way, any suggestion that the pastor was guilty of murder because of his acts is as stupid and duplicitous as the suggestion that Lincoln was guilty of murder because he was killed for refusing to give up his money to a thief demanding with menace.  Yet this is precisely what Joe Klein, a nationally recognised journalist/commentator has argued in Time Magazine:

But there should be no confusion about this: [Pastor] Jones’s act was murderous as any suicide bomber’s. If there is a hell, he’s just guaranteed himself an afterlifetime membership.

Really.  On this basis, Paul would be guilty of inciting a rioting in Ephesus, Jeremiah guilty of Nebuchadnezzar's sack and execution of thousands in Jerusalem, former Moslems who become Christians would be guilty of their own murders when they are honour-killed, and our Lord would be guilty of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.  Methinks, Mr Klein that you had better repent before the Hell which you interdict upon the head of the pastor falls upon you.  Blood libel is no trifle.  May our Lord have mercy upon you and bring you to your senses before it is too late.

Showing Form

The Blood-Libel Industry

It is now obvious that extreme punditry and politicians on the Left in the United States have a convincing track record of blaming violent political acts upon their political opponents on the right--in a breathless fact-free manner. We can think of only two reasons for this: one disgusting, the other shameful.

There will be those who long ago sold their souls to the god of statism. For these people, the quest for power, notoriety, popularity and prestige is a lust that trumps all else. For media, the goal is money, subscriptions, attention, sales. For all these, the end justifies the means. All crises are viewed as exploitable for one's personal or group ends. Truth is a mere impediment to "framing"--the act of telling a story so as to get others to do your bidding and fulfil your objectives.

We all know them--those politicians and so-called celebrities, figures lusting for power and public adulation, so that it is the end, that goal trumps all else, including the truth. "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story," is their mantra.

To such, the emphatic assertions that conservatives and right wing people caused an act of violence and are to be justly blamed for it, are nothing more than an unsavoury attempt to gain air space, to be quoted, to be spoken of, to be heard, to be referred to, and to get the ratings up. All such are disgusting in their self-serving venality and demagoguery.

But there is one other possible reason. There are likely to be those who believe genuinely that conservative beliefs and principles are the "mothers of all evils". Anything and everything that is wrong can therefore be legitimately sheeted home to the right wing of the polity. Such folk would therefore find the ideology of conservatism threatening and intimidating. They see it as a threat to all that is good and right.

Such folk, assuming they exist, would be ignorant, and gullible in their ignorance. Their support for blood libels would more shameful than disgusting.


Lest any be in doubt that blood-libel does exist in the United States and that it is a regular occurrence and that it comes forth whenever murder occurs with potential political overtones, it would be worth reading the following litany from Michelle Malkin. What she demonstrates is that there is a pattern, non? Clearly, some on the Left have, as the cops would say, form. 

Blame Righty: A condensed history

by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

I agree with President Obama. When it comes to politicizing random violence, he and his supporters have been “far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than” they do. Recognition is the first step toward reconciliation. It’s time to recognize the poisonous pervasiveness of the Blame Righty meme.
For the past two years, Democrat officials, liberal activists, and journalists have jumped to libelous conclusions about individual shooting sprees committed by mentally unstable loners with incoherent delusions all over the ideological map. The White House now pledges to swear off “pointing fingers or assigning blame.” Alas, the Obama administration’s political and media foot soldiers have proven themselves incapable of such restraint.

In April 2009, a disgruntled, unemployed loser shot and killed three Pittsburgh police officers in a horrifying bloodbath. The gunman, Richard Poplawski, was a dropout from the Marines who threw a food tray at a drill instructor and had beaten his girlfriend. Was this deranged shooter who pulled the trigger to blame? Nope. Despite evidence that Poplawski’s homicidal, racist tendencies manifested themselves years before Obama took office, lefty publications asserted that the real culprits of the spree were the “heated, apocalyptic rhetoric of the anti-Obama forces” (according to mainstream liberal Atlantic Monthly pundit Andrew Sullivan), along with Fox News and Glenn Beck (according to mainstream liberal journalist Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly online).

That same month, a sick, evil man named Jiverly Voong ambushed an immigration center in Binghamton, New York. Recently fired from his job, Voong murdered 13 people, critically wounded four others, and then committed suicide. The instant psychologists of the Left knew nothing about the disgruntled man of Vietnamese descent of undetermined political affiliation. But within hours of the shooting, liberal mega-website Huffington Post commenters had overwhelmingly convicted GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, the National Rifle Association, Fox News, Lou Dobbs, and yours truly. Liberal radio host Alan Colmes pointed his finger at the “huge anti–immigrant backlash in this country” – never mind that tens of millions of legal immigrants and naturalized citizens have coped with hardship, overcome racism, and embraced assimilation without going bloody bonkers.

In June 2009, a depraved, elderly anti-Semite named James von Brunn gunned down a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent and lefty Center for American Progress think-tank fellow Matthew Yglesias immediately invoked the Obama administration’s report on right-wing extremism, leading to a wider chorus of condemnations against the Tea Party, talk radio, and the entire GOP. The truth? Von Brunn was an unstable, equal-opportunity hater and 9/11 Truther conspiracy loon who bashed Jews and Christians, George W. Bush and Fox News, and had also threatened the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.

In late August 2009, as lawmakers faced citizen revolts at health care town halls nationwide, the Colorado Democratic Party decried a window-smashing vandalism attack at its Denver headquarters. The state party chair, Pat Waak, singled out Tea Party activists and blamed “people opposed to health care” for the attack. The perpetrator, Maurice Schwenkler, turned out to be a far Left transgender activist/single-payer anarchist who had worked for a labor union-tied political committee and canvassed for a Democrat candidate.

In September 2009, Bill Sparkman, a federal U.S. Census worker, was found dead in a secluded rural Kentucky cemetery with the word “Fed” scrawled on his chest with a rope around his neck. The Atlantic Monthly’s Andrew Sullivan rushed to indict “Southern populist terrorism, whipped up by the GOP and its Fox and talk radio cohorts” in an online magazine post titled “No Suicide,” which decried the “Kentucky lynching.” Liberal author Richard Benjamin blamed “anti-government” bile. New York magazine fingered conservative talk radio giant Rush Limbaugh, “conservative media personalities, websites, and even members of Congress.” So, who killed Bill Sparkman? Bill Sparkman. He killed himself and deliberately manufactured a hate crime hoax as part of an insurance scam to benefit his surviving son.


In February 2010, ticking time-bomb professor Amy Bishop gunned down three of her colleagues at University of Alabama-Huntsville and suicide pilot Joseph Andrew Stack flew a stolen small plane into an Austin, Texas, office complex that contained an Internal Revenue Service office. Mainstream journalists from Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart to Time magazine reporter Hilary Hylton leaped forward to tie the crimes to Tea Party rhetoric. Never mind that Bishop was an Obama-worshiping academic with a lifelong history of violence or that Stack was another Bush-hater outraged about everything from George W. Bush to the American medical system to the evils of capitalism to the city of Austin, the Catholic Church, and airlines.

In May 2010, liberal New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to preemptively pin the Times Square bombing attempt on “someone with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something.” The culprit was unrepentant Muslim jihadist Faisal Shahzad.

In August 2010, Democrat supporters of Missouri Rep. Russ Carnahan blamed a “firebombing” at the congressman’s St. Louis office on Tea Party suspects. The real perpetrator? Disgruntled progressive activist Chris Powers, enraged over a paycheck dispute.
President Obama wisely counseled the nation this week at the Tucson massacre memorial that “Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.” But as the progressive Left’s smear-stained recent history shows, criminalizing conservatism is a hard habit to break.