"So, just for the record, my take on this is pretty much the same take I had with respect to Park51"

As far as I can tell, Drezner's take on this is NOTHING like his take on Park51.

Here is point #1 from Drezner's Park51 post (linked):

"1) Of course the mosque should be built."

And here is point #1 from this post:

"1) Of course it's offensive to burn Qurans."

These two positions appear to be COMPLETE OPPOSITES, not "pretty much the same take". (To be sure, point #2 of the posts are similar, but let's focus on point #1 of the respective posts.)

... of fifty bibles to protest against bans of fous grais and people who cries freedom of speech, while trying to ban Islam , unless Kurt Russell and Bruce Cambell get an Oscar or I cant buy duckfat on a budget

God (or whoever) bless. This is the best description I have seen of this controversy.

"I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it." is an expression from the turn of the last century every school child learns.

We learn this so even as Children we can understand all that is right about America and why the Bill of Rights is so fundamental.

President Obama clearly never fully comprehended that. Put to the test of defending free speech the President in face of risk of death the President wavered.

Religious intolerance is Un-American President Obama has instructed us, but much more Un-American is asking an American to forgo their 1rst Amendment rights. It is all the the more egregious when it is the President.

Last week some Liberal commentators were trumpeting how courageous the President was for defending a minority's 1rst Amendment rights despite overwhelming public opposition. We now see he really isn't that courageous and worse he appears craven. He may not care about the sensitivities of Americans but he is concerned about foreign sensitivities when couple with threats.

The President doesn't understand what I learned as child, the 1rst Amendment protects unpopular speech even at the risk of death.

Mayor Bloomburg was morally and constitutionally consistent, the same cannot be said for the President.

Everything tastes better when you add heavy cream to the recipe. Or when you fry it.

Good post, I agree with everything, especially the 11th Commandment.

We're ignoring the group dynamic. If the president wanted the pastor not to burn the Quran, he/ his staff might have called him. This whole display instead calls the pastor out and humiliates him for the benefit of Muslims. That may be good on a short term basis in Afghanistan but it has, among others, the problems you suggest; better something were done privately.

On this ninth anniversary, 'we' are beginning to live together, as in our feelings come out. Some have suggested it is demagoguery to oppose the Park51project. I think we have proceeded somewhat by rote in our relation to the other, in this case Muslim, and this occasion has led to a discovery of feeling about some issues. Your example of everything tasting better wrapped in a bacon though you are Jewish is a signal that indicates to others that you are not going to insist on icons of your tribal views outside of your tribe. I suppose the argument would be what elements fit in the set ot icons, but it would seem to me that expressing a preference that what might feel like a standard of victory on a battlefield by an opponent not be built is not insisting on our iconic preference.

I cringed when Patraeus, within hours of Rauf's appearance on Larry King, hitched his horse to Imam Rauf's boilerplate conflation that the current wave of anti-Islam fury could endanger our national security. The MSM executed a 360. From hysterically accusing Rauf of threatening us to giving sober credence to it now that the good American patriot Patraeus had weighed-in. We could trust HIM. Suddenly the fear-mongering "threat" meme galloped all over the MSM gaining momentum.

This was a PR campaign. Each movement, the segues, progression and climax amateurishly orchestrated, hurriedly cobbled together in the final hour in hopes of turning the tide of our nation's current and embarrassing infatuation with rampant Islamophobia. The conductors threw a red herring into the libretto- "national security threat" - an irony lost on the protesters. Employing a threat to threaten.

Consider the sequence of events: Rauf' just returned from a tour of the Middle East, a trip paid for by the state department, goes on King.makes his statement. Patraeus pipes up within hours, Gates pressures Rev Jones. Book burning canceled. Jones quietly makes a trip to NYC. A triumph for national security. We are safe. Or so they want us to believe. At least for the moment.

When we examine all this it appears that some are conflicted about the degree of intolerance a tolerant democracy should allow. Should we tolerate same sex unions? A mosque? Islam? A woman's right to choose? Burning books? Democracy may appear to look and act like a free for all when disparate views conflict and rupture and sometimes even redefine our world view. But that free for all is most of all about the freedom to express one's views. Democracy for its inherent fractiousness ultimately agrees to disagree. It's how functioning polities continue to exist and grow and change. Often, in the best interests of the commonweal we acquiesce in order to form a consensus no matter how tenuous or temporary.

Islamophobia must be expressed no matter how distasteful. It is an outgrowth of toleration, that high wire balancing act when opposites tolerate one another without respecting or trusting the others motives; it's similar to Northern Island where Protestants and Catholics live side-by-side in sulky accommodation. Or in Cyprus where the eternal enmity continues between Greeks and Turks warily sharing an island nation by dividing it between them.

Islam is not the problem. Nor is Islamophobia. The problem is our minds and souls.

George Bush, Tony Blair & assorted neocon zionist allies, allowed 9/11 to occur despite the heroic attempts of a few patriotic FBI officials to arrest all the perpetrators prior to the event that changed & divided the world. When the astute flight school owner reported to the FBI his well-founded suspician that they were indeed training to hijack planes. Who in Washington ordered the FBI to back off? Nay, who silenced the FBI?

Now in the 10th Year of George Bush's & Tony Blair's "Crusade" for dominion and control over the world's Oil, Gas and Mineral Natural Resources (not to mention Opiates) through the Barrel of a Gun. How much Oil has been exported out of Iraq in the last 10 years and by whom? Where did the Oil go? And how? Who benefited? How much Opium has been grown, harvested and Heroin exported from Afghanistan in the last 10 years and by whom? where did it go? And how? Who benefited?

Score Board: IRAQ; 1m innocent Iraqi Civilians, Men, Women & Children Killed, countless Wounded/Injured and 3m made Refugees. AFGHANISTAN; 250k innocent (and starving) Afghani Civilians, Men, Women & Children Killed, countless Wounded/Injured and 12m made Refugees (most living in long-term poverty in neighbouring Pakistan). PAKISTAN; 150k innocent Pakistani Civilians, Men, Women & Children Killed, countless Wounded/Injured and 20m made Refugees (most living in long-term poverty due to rampant, endemic & systematic corruption by western hand-picked, installed, financed, patronised and protected, compliant yet absolutely corrupt politicians and bureacrats).

I say let them do what they want and burn whatever they want on national & international TV and let the chips fall where they may.

It would be interesting to see what happens.

Around 340 B.C. Alexander the Great set out with his Spartan Armies from Greece to Conquer the then known world. In his 8-year long campaign he managed to conquer the Trojans (Turkey), Assyria (Syria), Tyre (Lebanon), Egypt, Mesopotamia (Iraq), Persia (Iran) and Afghania (which was then a province of Persia) untill he was stopped on the banks of the river Jhelum in present day Pakistan (the ruins of his encampment can still be seen today) where his Spartan Army rebelled refusing to go any further and in the infighting he was wounded. Taking Alexander, his nobles retreated by boat to Alexandria in Egypt where he died of his wounds. Where one of his generals "Ptolemy: started his own Pharoanic dynasty.

In fact almost all of Alexander the Great's Spartan Army never left AfPak they remained there. Indeed most of the inhabitants of present day Afghanistan & Pakistan are direct descendants of Alexander the Great's Greek Spartan Armies.

The Spartan Code lives on; Spartans never forgive, never forget, and always revenge.