Sometimes it’s amazing how effective stupid publicity stunts by freaks can be.

Want proof? Consider the story of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, a miniscule church with 50 or so people in the congregation and an attention whore pastor named Terry Jones – not the Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, that Terry Jones never had a moustache this goofy even in costume – who wants to stage a commemoration of the 9/11 jihadist attacks by burning a bunch of Korans.

So far, Jones’ publicity stunt has been, by any standard, a smashing success. He’s gone from a complete nobody to an international figure in the space of a few days. Jones is being talked about by Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, David Petraeus, Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg this week, making him the most famous Gainesvillain since Tim Tebow.

Jones isn’t getting good publicity, mind you, but he’s hardly looking to be a guest host on Oprah. By threatening to burn Korans, he’s made his church the most talked-about in the country this week and – given the violent demonstrations in the barbarian world at the mere suggestion that some small gaggle of rustics in the armpit of Florida might be staging torchings of a volume they actually did study in school – he’s demonstrated with flair the difference between Western civilization and the Muslim lack thereof.

And he’s actually sounding reasonable while doing so.

“Of course it’s insulting. Of course it’s not a nice thing to do,” Jones told ABC News’ “Nightline.” “But this is a very dangerous religion. If we don’t do it, when do we stop backing down?”

Jones has also exposed much of the leadership of the country for the abject frauds they are. The same people who are screaming about his plan to burn a few books because the practicalities of doing so are horribly inconvenient have been doctrinaire in their defense of the constitutional right for Feisal Abdul Rauf to build his Ground Zero Mosque.

By the way, Rauf said on Larry King last night that it was important for his project to go forward or else anger in the Muslim world would boil over.

So in other words, Rauf – who is also saying the name of his mosque will indeed be called the Cordoba House, not Park51 as has been claimed when the public got wind of the implication of naming his facility after a triumphal mosque built by Muslim conquerors on top of a church in Spain – thinks it’s OK to extort the American people in order to get what he wants, but Jones can’t burn a book or two because it might offend someone.

Petraeus is probably correct that Jones’ bonfire would stoke up the al-Qaeda types out there to behave badly. But if it’s not Jones, it’ll be something else. Jihadists recruit other jihadists to practice jihad. The difference here is that the mosque hasn’t resulted in nuns strapping bombs to their bodies and blowing a minaret sky-high or Baptist deacons staging a riot and burning Saudi kings in effigy – which is precisely what Petraeus, Clinton, Obama and Bloomberg are concerned will happen on the other side of this divide.

Frankly, while Jones ought to take what he’s won and agree not to burn Korans on Saturday, the only reason he should do so is to prove Christians are nicer, more civil folks than Muslims are. But if we’re going to approach this as a logical exercise, Jones shouldn’t back down until Rauf agrees to build his mosque someplace 70 percent of the American public isn’t offended by. He is absolutely correct that the civilized world needs to push back against Muslims, who have perverted the civil rights process in order to inconvenience and limit the freedoms of us infidels, even if his chosen means of rebellion sinks to their level.

Here’s hoping Jones finds a way to save face and not burn the Koran. Our servicemen doing their duty in the barbarian world don’t deserve the added threat. But in the wake of Rauf’s intransigence put on display last night there ought to be daily repercussions against both his project and the increasing attempts to insinuate Sharia in America and the rest of the Western world.