[HPFGU-OTChatter] Book burning

[Aberforth's Goat]

Howdy Jen!

I was just catching up on three days worth of chatter when I realized that
you'd written a great post a day before I spouted off in the main group
about the same topic.

You wrote,

> I'd just like to start by saying that, as a scholar, particularly as a
> classicist who studies a period (Greco-Roman antiquity) from which a
> huge portion of the written works have been lost to us through the
> vagaries of time and humans, book burning is repugnant to me.

Hmmm. Now that's an interesting thought. Granted the astronomical investment
that Christian scholarship has made in textual criticism, you'd think we
Christians would be the most pyrophobic bunch going ...

> Book burning deserves protection too.
<snip>
> [....] Book burning is the most extreme form of
> disagreement with (the ideas contained in) a book, but such disagreement
> is essentially speech, and no less than the authors of the book they're
> burning, their speech *must* have protection to promote the free
> exchange of ideas, upon which is predicated a society of equality.  <snip>

Bang on. Like rockers trashing stage sets or rap groups spewing
obscenities--I'd be proud to fight for their right to express ideas I find
reprehensible in language I find repugnant. (Unless they are instigating
violence.) And given the right situation, I think book burning may be a fine
and valiant form of speech--although using such an inherently violent
vocabulary seems dangerous, even under the best of circumstances.

Baaaaaa!

Aberforth's Goat (a.k.a. Mike Gray, who wonders whether any HP fans have
considered burning copies of Stouffer's legal briefs.)
_______________________

"My own brother, Aberforth, was prosecuted for practising
inappropriate charms on a goat. It was all over the papers,
but did Aberforth hide? No he did not! He held his head high."