Should There Ever Be a 'Right' to Burn Books?
December was nothing short of momentous for free speech in the West.
In just 10 days, a whirlwind unfolded.
Three Ivy League university presidents were grilled by both Congress and public opinion for their nonchalant approach to antisemitism.
Meanwhile, Denmark criminalized the desecration of holy books.
In Iowa, a Navy veteran destroyed a satanic display installed by secularist zealots in the state capitol.
While each of these events made headlines individually, the bigger picture was overlooked: the subtle interconnection of our most cherished freedoms — religion, speech, and property.
And nothing ties them all together like a good old-fashioned book burning.
Denmark’s law against such acts was perceived as a threat to the sacrosanct separation of church and state by the secular humanists, the status quo keen on establishing their ideology as the official religion.
In the U.S., while burning money is a crime, destroying a holy book, the flag, or even the Constitution remains perfectly legal.
It’s a strange win for the material over the transcendent. We might as well remove any references to God in the currency, and make it mandatory to print "in cash we trust" in every Bible.
This utilitarian, almost nihilistic perspective reduces burning a book to nothing more than destroying cloth or paper.
But that’s a lie.
When you torch a book, you’re setting fire to its soul, and the ideas it represents, an effort to obliterate its meaning and weaken communal bonds, hoping to reign supreme over the ashes.
That’s precisely why the statue of Satan in Iowa’s capitol wasn't an expression of speech.
It was a six-foot-tall act of aggression against religious freedom, an insult to the immaterial values held dear by the community.
It stood there, opposite a nativity scene, as if to hijack its significance.
And we are expected to overlook the elephant in the room as if the pachyderm were draped in the emperor’s new clothes.
Perhaps destroying the statue wasn’t the most Christian "thing" to do, but it might hold a valuable lesson: an eye for an eye teaches your enemy the worth of their teeth. Castigat ridendo mores — indeed, we did have a good laugh.
To free speech absolutists, demolishing the statue was an attack on the freedom of expression. Ironically, they view laws against burning sacred texts as similar attacks.
They fail to recognize that defining everything, from expressing an idea to burning a book or flaunting religious intolerance on the public square, as free speech is walking a fine line. This embodies the very concept of "speech as violence" they claim to oppose.
If every act is considered "speech," then violence, such as the satanic display in Iowa or the Quran burnings in Denmark, also becomes speech.
And if violence is speech, then speech can indeed be violence. It's a full circle.
This is what you get when woke ideology meets libertarianism.
The fascist is always the other guy, and the other guy is always a fascist. Especially if he stands in the way of "freedom fighters" with lit matches and piles of sacrilegious books.
But the underlying issue is deeper.
It’s rooted in a culture of "authorized protest" fostered over decades by the global NGOcracy. This has bred self-satisfied activists on both sides who stand defiantly in compliance with all the rules and regulations of the system they swore to bring down.
Our libertarians might not be free speech absolutists after all, but rather private property absolutists, a trait the woke unknowingly share with them. Both are drowning in the same materialistic nihilism that infiltrates their philosophies.
In November 1994, Bill Gates purchased the world’s most expensive book, the original "Codex Leicester" — a collection of da Vinci's scientific writings — for an inflation-adjusted $60 million.
If Gates chose to destroy this book, libertarians might argue that preventing him would violate not only his free speech but primarily his property rights.
For today’s libertarians, property rights are the moral imperative.
They prioritize market efficiency over cultural heritage, and are willing to sacrifice our freedoms of speech and religion for the sake of shaving an extra cent off the price of a Big Mac.
This is why the protection of holy books is vital. It serves as a defense against a slippery slope where only property rights matter, and where nothing else, not even a secular masterpiece such as the "Codex Leicester," stands a chance.
We accept copyrights that protect commercial texts, yet outrage ensues when laws safeguard sacred texts.
"It’s all a matter of incentives," they claim --- we are driven to maximize profit, not guided by free will or morals. From accepting experimental vaccines to eating bugs to save the world, if we are given just the right incentives to act for profit, we might never act on principle again.As the Ivy League harpies believe, depending on the context, we might even fight for our rights — especially if it involves the right to burn our books and relinquish our foundational freedoms.
Michael Cassidy, the "satan slayer" of Iowa, did more than topple a statue. He took an eye from the secular beast, forcing it to think twice about its next bite.
Payback is a lesson in dental economics, and we tend to learn fast when our teeth are on the line.
Cauf Skiviers writes about philosophy, economics, politics, and things that lie between the inconceivable and the undesirable. His reports also appear at: https://cauf.substack.com.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.