Where I spent Sunday Afternoon

[MSimon]

All I can hope is that Christians don't actually start following the bible very closely.

They haven't for centuries.

One thing to keep in mind: for the left it is all tactics. Once the Right embraces a cause (female political equality for instance) it incorporates that into a philosophy. And once the right does that the left will work against such understanding.

When I was on the left the guiding principle was the brotherhood of all men. Now a days it is just - what grievance du jour will help us win the next election?

[CaptainBeowulf]

I believe that Churchill also said something like "Democracy is the best of a bunch of bad systems."

No political system is entirely stable due to human nature...

[olivier]

Not the best, the worst!

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time

According to http://richardlangworth.com/2009/06/dem ... overnment/.

[JLawson]

Quite a few I know moved here to GET away from the radicals. How about we talk about the shari'a courts in Quebec? Just for Muslims, of course... for now. But I wouldn't have thought it possible a decade back...

There was a time in history where the Rabid Christianists were just as deadly of a threat to non-believers and insufficiently pious believers. Islam appears to be in that phase where the extremists among them keep everyone running scared of being fingered as insufficiently pious, and the only way to assuage the charge is to be fiercely Religious.

Christianity moved past this period in it's history, we can only hope that Islam will as well.

Not in my lifetime, or my son's, I think. Change like that is darn slow, it requires the people making up the institutions to die off without passing their ideology along... or the ideology to slowly mutate to a less virulent form.

[Diogenes]

Quite a few I know moved here to GET away from the radicals. How about we talk about the shari'a courts in Quebec? Just for Muslims, of course... for now. But I wouldn't have thought it possible a decade back...

There was a time in history where the Rabid Christianists were just as deadly of a threat to non-believers and insufficiently pious believers. Islam appears to be in that phase where the extremists among them keep everyone running scared of being fingered as insufficiently pious, and the only way to assuage the charge is to be fiercely Religious.

Christianity moved past this period in it's history, we can only hope that Islam will as well.

Not in my lifetime, or my son's, I think. Change like that is darn slow, it requires the people making up the institutions to die off without passing their ideology along... or the ideology to slowly mutate to a less virulent form.

I agree. We all have to survive in the meantime.

[MSimon]

Progressives support Islam because it oppresses women and gays.

Just, wow.

http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/201 ... -the-rise/

I lost it with the fuddy-duddy, seventies-style women’s libs after their pathetic non-response, post 9/11, to Islamic misogyny.

Stuck in time, the leftover libbers still regarded membership rules at Georgia country clubs as a more serious threat to women than the billion-plus people under Sharia law.

This reached its black comic apogee (for now) with Nicholas Kristof’s recent review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new book in that bastion of feminism, the New York Times. Kristof — husband of the Times‘ Sheryl WuDunn — attacked a woman whose filmmaking partner was assassinated by an Islamist, who has had a forced clitorectomy, and who is under constant threat of being murdered … for going too far in her criticisms of Islam.

Oh well. What’s a little multiculturalism among “feminist” friends?

[TallDave]

Islam appears to be in that phase where the extremists among them keep everyone running scared of being fingered as insufficiently pious, and the only way to assuage the charge is to be fiercely Religious.

Christianity moved past this period in it's history, we can only hope that Islam will as well.

It's sort of ironic -- Islamic countries used to be much more tolerant, much more so than Christianity. Even just 100 - 150 years ago, there were large Jewish communities in the Arab states. The real problem in the Mideast isn't Islam, it's Arab/Persian nationalism, which is basically a sort of Nazism with Islam in place of the Volk as a vehicle for focusing prejudice. (Fascist Italy had its own ethnoreligious narrative as well, about reclaiming Roman glory.)

Wahhabism is the other problem. Like Arab nationalism, Wahhabism is something new. They claim to be returning to the fundamentals of Islam, but that's not really accurate. They've really just invented their own narrative of a "pure" Islam that never existed anywhere.

[Skipjack]

Most arabs want a single unified arab nation. Most of those that live in my country anyway. They also make a cutthroat motion any time you mention the name "Saud".

[kcdodd]

As I've said before, I've got no problem with Islam - it's the militant factions that want to see me either Muslim - preferably their flavor of the week - or dead that I find quite objectionable.

If you can't (or won't) see the difference between Islam, and Militant Islam, then I don't see much point in trying to argue with you on it.

I think I have made my position clear enough on the difference. I think if we can agree there is one we can stop arguing about that point because now all you are saying is that I didn't really say what I said. Just as your biggest issue with liberals seems to be that they aren't really liberal.

aka

one thing that's always puzzled me about the left. They're very much supportive of the most repressive societies, with no condemnation of the misogyny or violent homophobia inherent in them

All that shows me is you don't know very many people on the left. And makes me wonder what sort of ones you have been hanging around.

My point is you are the one condemning all Islam on the basis of the militant parties, and then forgiving all Christianity in spite of the militant parts. If there is a militant group, I agree, don't let them be aggressive. But we are not talking about some fictional group here.

As I tried to point out, Islam IS no-win. Christianity has at least a notional top-down structure, which provides guidance and reform. Islam is more open-source, with mullahs interpreting their scriptures as THEY see fit.

There is no such thing in christianity. Not since the protestant revolution.

Would you have considered a WW2 Victory Monument built in Hiroshima to be offensive to the Japanese? How about a Shinto shrine over the USS Arizona memorial? Would the local populations have any sort of right to complain about such?

Should they build a mosque two blocks from ground zero? Probably not. It makes their organization look bad. Should the government stop them because some people are pissed off? Absolutely not. I don't believe in throwing out the constitution every time someone's sensibility gets hurt. Where are the libertarians when it actually counts? I also, by the way, do not believe in censorship in order to appease Muslims.

[JLawson]

As I've said before, I've got no problem with Islam - it's the militant factions that want to see me either Muslim - preferably their flavor of the week - or dead that I find quite objectionable.

If you can't (or won't) see the difference between Islam, and Militant Islam, then I don't see much point in trying to argue with you on it.

I think I have made my position clear enough on the difference. I think if we can agree there is one we can stop arguing about that point because now all you are saying is that I didn't really say what I said. Just as your biggest issue with liberals seems to be that they aren't really liberal.

aka

one thing that's always puzzled me about the left. They're very much supportive of the most repressive societies, with no condemnation of the misogyny or violent homophobia inherent in them

All that shows me is you don't know very many people on the left. And makes me wonder what sort of ones you have been hanging around.

My point is you are the one condemning all Islam on the basis of the militant parties, and then forgiving all Christianity in spite of the militant parts. If there is a militant group, I agree, don't let them be aggressive. But we are not talking about some fictional group here.

As I tried to point out, Islam IS no-win. Christianity has at least a notional top-down structure, which provides guidance and reform. Islam is more open-source, with mullahs interpreting their scriptures as THEY see fit.

There is no such thing in christianity. Not since the protestant revolution.

Would you have considered a WW2 Victory Monument built in Hiroshima to be offensive to the Japanese? How about a Shinto shrine over the USS Arizona memorial? Would the local populations have any sort of right to complain about such?

Should they build a mosque two blocks from ground zero? Probably not. It makes their organization look bad. Should the government stop them because some people are pissed off? Absolutely not. I don't believe in throwing out the constitution every time someone's sensibility gets hurt. Where are the libertarians when it actually counts? I also, by the way, do not believe in censorship in order to appease Muslims.

I've had enough. There's no sense in continuing when you won't pay any attention past a hook to hang your talking points on.

[kcdodd]

Of course. If I don't agree with you it must be because I don't pay attention.

[Diogenes]

Another example of what we are talking about.


Madrid gay pride march bans Israelis over Gaza flotilla raids

Organisers say it would be 'barbaric' to allow group to take part, but Israelis say Islamists would try and 'cure' them all

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ju ... s-israelis

[kcdodd]

You mean simple stupidity? Yes, it happens a lot.

[kcdodd]

I would like to add the worst thing someone can do to you (well, best for the other person) in a debate is to get you to say something you don't really believe. If you wish to abandon our history of freedoms just to oppose the terrorists that is your prerogative. Just as it was of the organizer of that gay pride to abandon their sense of inclusion.

[Diogenes]

You mean simple stupidity? Yes, it happens a lot.

If it is stupidity, there is a long and well documented pattern of it. The stupidity explanation doesn't really work, and that's why we've been using the term "cognitive dissonance." There are other examples, such as this.


White Liberal Feminist Gets Raped By Haitian...But Blames White Patriarchy!

That night, before I could finish the piece, I was held on a rooftop in Haiti and raped repeatedly by one of the very men who I had spent the bulk of my life advocating for.

It hurt. The experience was almost more than I could bear. I begged him to stop. Afraid he would kill me, I pleaded with him to honor my commitment to Haiti, to him as a brother in the mutual struggle for an end to our common oppression, but to no avail. He didn’t care that I was a Malcolm X scholar. He told me to shut up, and then slapped me in the face. Overpowered, I gave up fighting halfway through the night.

http://byrdeye.blogspot.com/2010/05/whi ... ed-by.html



and this:

Elisabeth Mandala, High School Student Who Wanted to Smuggle Illegals, Ends Up Dead

Her mom believed she was headed to Mexico to learn how to be a coyote, shuttling illegal immigrants across the border into the Good Old USA. While police were searching for the girl, she posted a note on her Facebook page saying she was in Mexico and would be back soon.

http://www.truecrimereport.com/2010/05/ ... school.php


I mean GEEZZZEEEE! How stupid can you be?