Why Cook Books

Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who was essentially unknown until he threatened to burn the Koran, has been banned from entering the United Kingdom. The previously obscure Reverend Jones joins right wing radio talk show host Michael Savage on the list of Americans to whom entrance to Britain is forbidden. There is no comparison of course between Savage who articulates the sentiments of millions of conservative Americans who are dissatisfied with both major political parties and Jones, who on the other hand, either staged a masterstroke of a publicity stunt by using the world media to broadcast a threat he never carried out or Jones who is a Visigoth on a par with book burning Nazis who was eventually cowled into submission after an earnestly intended provocation aimed at the world's Muslims. In any event, in a country like England that proclaims a respect for free speech and has indigenous Islamist agitators openly calling for violence on her streets, I think Savage certainly and even the primitive Jones should be permitted in to debate and defend the course of their actions and their ideas no matter how controversial because staid speech ruffles no feathers and therefore needs no protection, it is precisely only those notions that agitate that are the commerce of democracy.