Do you think it ought to be illegal to burn books?

Presuming the question relates to censorship, yes. The one exception I can think of for any censorship is the depiction of children in sexually explicit situations, AKA, child pornography. And there are some (not necessarily here) who would argue against even that.

Perhaps it was the early hour at which I first responded to the question but after re-reading it, I find that my answer needs clarification. "Should book burning be illegal?" No. Not per se. I was trying (badly) to say that books shouldn't be burned as a form of censorship by the government such as in Nazi Germany or by a school committee in the United States. Until an ammendment is made to the U.S. constitution, burning a book is just as protected as a freedom of expression as burning the U.S. flag is.

I don't think it should be illegal. I've just never seen what it really accomplishes. It might be a symbolic way of taking some kind of "stand" but it just draws attention to the book in question. Now people who weren't even interested before want to read it. If you're talking about the jackass in Florida who burned the Quran, you have to use common sense. Anyone with one functioning brain cell would know that it would spark some kind of violence. Having the right to do something doesn't mean you should do it.

There are better ways to make a point but it shouldnt be illegal.

Quote :

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. "
-- Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky, 1991, Russian-American poet, b. St. Petersburg and exiled 1972 (1940-1996)

Quote :

"Every burned book enlightens the world."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote :

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education."
-- Alfred Whitney Griswold, Essays on Education