Terry Jones's stunt: Morally ugly and tactically unhelpful

Michael Graham is correct when he says that Jones isn’t culpable for murder — the guilt falls squarely on those with blood on their hands.

But he and others also say there’s “nothing wrong” with burning the Koran. This represents an astonishing evolution in the right’s attitude toward free speech that has been unfolding for the last decade or so. Traditionally, the conservative argument about free expression went like this: “Yes, you have the right to say (or do) X, but that doesn’t mean you should say it and it doesn’t mean I can’t criticize it.”

Burning the Bible, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” or, yes, the Koran is a shameful and brutish act. And failure to criticize it can sometimes be legitimately, or at least predictably, interpreted as an endorsement.