Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 couldn’t be written today.  I’m not sure what temperature a Kindle or a Nook would burn at, but it certainly isn’t 451 degrees (233 degrees centigrade for those enjoying a saner temperature standard).  And burning those neat gizmos wouldn’t really do the trick—you’d really have to go after the whole internet.  I can turn on my laptop or Kindle and download just about any book I care to read, but that book still exists on some server somewhere.  You’d have to destroy them all.

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The first amendment to the Constitution of the U.S. states:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press; or….”  Previously, perhaps in several posts, I underlined the point that this proves the Constitution is an evolving, living document that was written to adapt to new situations that would appear in our young democracy, something some sectors of our society and even some obstinate Supreme Court judges deny:  This is the first amendment—it wasn’t in the original document.

Today I will focus on those freedoms that deal with publishing—speech and press.  While Sixty Minutes (CBS) has suffered the same blows as all network news programs and is in a downward spiral, I still watched the segment last Sunday night about Greg Mortensen.  I remember when, several years back now, a colleague at work recommended the book Three Cups of Tea, a heart-warming portrayal of a person trying to do some good in this world.  I’ll confess that my first knew-jerk reaction was cynicism.  Someone who’s rich enough to go halfway round the world to climb mountains wants to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan?  I thought, “Either this guy is Paul on the road to Damascus, celebrating a personal epiphany, or he’s a con artist.”

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It always has been, of course. However, events recently have transpired so fast that not even the Warner Brothers’ roadrunner could keep up with them.  I will only comment here on two things that really bother me, but it’s obvious from previous blog posts that many things concern me about how the West is handling problems in that region of the world.  Today my two concerns are American duplicity and Muslim immaturity.

Duplicity is SOP in our State Department.  You have to wonder if that’s what foreign policy reduces to these days.  When the Egyptian revolution started, the diplomatic corps, led by Mrs. Clinton, struggled to figure out which side to support, the rebels or Mr. Mubarak.  It was clear that it’s time to change our foreign policy and people.  The duplicity resides in supporting some clearly tyrannical and oppressive governments and trying to topple some others.

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