Richard Cohen: Pastor Terry Jones, as Right as John Brown
[Richard Cohen is a columnist for the WaPo.]
There is a glint of John Brown in the eyes of the Rev. Terry Jones, a bit of theatrical madness and a Gingrichian lust for the spotlight....
John Brown confronted pre-Civil War America with a dilemma. He had either murdered or approved of murder in the cause of anti-slavery and he led an insurrection at Harpers Ferry. The vicissitudes of life (the deaths of children and of his first wife) and especially the searing injustice of slavery had taken a toll on him. He was possibly mad, but his cause certainly was not, and when the state of Virginia hanged him, not a few people -- among them Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau -- thought a great man had been murdered.
Jones is neither a great man nor the leader of a great cause. But what he wanted to do was both permissible under our system and, in a sense, valued. He was attempting to make a statement. It was chaotic and bigoted, but it was a political statement nonetheless, and he had every right to make it. Still, President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Afghanistan War commander Gen. David Petraeus urged him to stand down -- the lives of American soldiers were at stake. Jones stood down....
Read entire article at WaPo
There is a glint of John Brown in the eyes of the Rev. Terry Jones, a bit of theatrical madness and a Gingrichian lust for the spotlight....
John Brown confronted pre-Civil War America with a dilemma. He had either murdered or approved of murder in the cause of anti-slavery and he led an insurrection at Harpers Ferry. The vicissitudes of life (the deaths of children and of his first wife) and especially the searing injustice of slavery had taken a toll on him. He was possibly mad, but his cause certainly was not, and when the state of Virginia hanged him, not a few people -- among them Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau -- thought a great man had been murdered.
Jones is neither a great man nor the leader of a great cause. But what he wanted to do was both permissible under our system and, in a sense, valued. He was attempting to make a statement. It was chaotic and bigoted, but it was a political statement nonetheless, and he had every right to make it. Still, President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Afghanistan War commander Gen. David Petraeus urged him to stand down -- the lives of American soldiers were at stake. Jones stood down....