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On December 12 2015 03:58 Cowboy64 wrote:
I agree that we should not bar all Muslims from entering the country. I do not agree that we should pretend there is no radical Islamist threat, especially when there are many moderate Muslims who are speaking out against that very same threat, at great risk to themselves, and they are being ignored.
I'm pretty sure no one here except the trump crzies disagrees with any of this. Militant Islamis is a threat. We shoudlnt take that out on all Muslims is also true.
But seriously, what is the actual disagreement? We all agree IS sympathizers shouldn't be let in. I imagine most of us think persecuted minorities (Shia, Alawite, Yazidi, and Christians) should jump to the front of the queue, all else being equal, due to their more dire situation. We should probably let more refugees in, and make sure they're screened properly, and perhaps under additional surveillance for a time after coming here. Oh, and can we add agreement on "terrorists should't be allowed to buy guns" too?
Is the actual problem just that the liberals didn't read the NYT thing on binding religious arbitration and that the conservatives don't get that to a lot of Muslims "jihad" means what Christians call "spiritual warfare" where you fight against your own dark side, and that to a lot of Muslims "sharia" means something a lot closer to "righteousness" than a policy prescription... and that the study linked shows almost no Muslims anywhere actually want Sharia applied to non-Muslims?
Yes, there are differences between Islam and Christianity. Islam is fundamentally more political. (Mohammad pbuh was a political leader who ran a state and waged war, versus Jesus who was a wandering moral teacher.) Islam does have the issue that the Quran is the literal words of God, as spoken in Arabic, whereas the Christian Bible assumes a series of stages of human moral development from a brutal and short-sided quasi-paganism with one bigger god to ethical monotheism and from there to Christian morality and soteriology as taught by Jesus. + Show Spoiler +This means that when I say Christianity is fundamentally feminist, I can point to the arc of the story where God seems to be constantly pushing people in a feminist direction, culminating in "there is no male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free," and not be bothered by bronze age gender discrimination chronicled as part of the story. A Muslim has a harder time doing the same thing, although it's a pity... Islam was radically feminist for its time and place, and looks to a Christian like a good thing from God that got frozen in place.
All that said, Islam is a good and noble religion generally seeking to make the world a better place. I don't buy into hijabs, but in a world where we've so heavily objectified women, I can understand why some women would prefer to opt out of having their worth judged by their appearance. I'm not ultra pro-life, but I certainly respect it among Muslims as I do among Buddhists.+ Show Spoiler +Christianity I respect too, but Christian pro-lifism without fundamentally secular reasoning relies on super stretchy interpretations of a handful of verses that are actually about predestination.
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I think the most depressing part about the last few months are the reports from US Muslims that they were treated better after 9/11. That Americans were defiant about not giving into xenophobia after 9/11. And now US Muslims say they are more scared and feel less welcome in this country than ever before. That slightly over a decade ago we were suffered the worst terrorist attack in history and we managed to avoid this shit.
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On December 12 2015 04:38 Plansix wrote:
I think the most depressing part about the last few months are the reports from US Muslims that they were treated better after 9/11. That Americans were defiant about not giving into xenophobia after 9/11. And now US Muslims say they are more scared and feel less welcome in this country than ever before. That slightly over a decade ago we were suffered the worst terrorist attack in history and we managed to avoid this shit.
Yeah there was just a story in Seattle: While I feel terrible for Muslims wrapped up in all the ignorant hate, it's especially embarrassing (as an American) when it's not even directed at Muslims but Sikhs, simply because bigots tend to be so utterly stupid.
The driver said one of the passengers, a 26-year-old man, gave him a credit card to pay for the trip but became angry when it took longer than he thought it should.
The passenger allegedly threatened to shoot the man while calling him a ‘terrorist.’
“You should go back to your own country,” the man reportedly said before police said he leaned across the seat and punched the driver in the face.
Source
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I wish they would slap people like that with hate crimes. Would teach them a well needed lesson.
Then again it might make them even angrier and vindictive.
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On December 12 2015 03:58 Cowboy64 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2015 14:03 Doraemon wrote:
do you have muslim friends? 1/2 are radical? Don't think this was addressed to me, but I have an answer: Yes I do have Muslim friends. They are mostly secular, and I'm pretty sure one of them is actually an agnostic, but they call themselves Muslim and I won't contradict them. I don't know their geo-political opinions because I mostly talk about books and other interests with them. None of them are "radical" as far as I know. However, I think you're second question pretty much illustrates the huge problem (seen on both the left and the right) we have right now with the way we deal with Muslims, Islam, and more generally "multi-cultural-ism." Define your terms. If you're asking about Muslims inside a Salifist mosque in Saudi Arabia, the likelihood is that 50% or more of them are jihadists or support jihad. If you're asking about moderate Muslims in Kansas who go to a moderate mosque, the likelihood is that none of them are jihadist or support jihad. Islam is not monolithic, and neither are Muslims. Many on the right seem to have this knee-jerk "All Muslims are bad!" attitude, which is silly and counter-productive. Likewise, many on the left seem to have this knee-jerk "There is no radical Islam!" attitude that is equally silly, and funnily enough, incredibly bigoted against Muslims! It presumes a monolithic generality about Muslims and is actually not multi-cultural at all. It lumps them all as "Islam" and doesn't take into account the many sects and philosophies among the world's second largest religion. It also ignores the vast differences between Muslims of one culture and Muslims in another culture. I agree that we should not bar all Muslims from entering the country. I do not agree that we should pretend there is no radical Islamist threat, especially when there are many moderate Muslims who are speaking out against that very same threat, at great risk to themselves, and they are being ignored.
I agree with pretty much everything you say here. I think what really scares people on the left is that discourse has been slowly shifting from battling Islamic extremism towards battling Islam. We're still not at the point of pitching internment camps-thank god-but even the fact that Trump hems and haws about whether they should have been used in WWII really makes alarm bells go off for people.
This fear sparks overcorrection in a lot of spheres, which is unfortunate, but can you really blame them? It's more comprehensible to me than the overreaction on the other side, at least.
It is actually terrifying that Trump is too lazy to read the survey results he cites in his campaign that demonstrates there are multiple definitions of Jihad, by the way. He continues to impress me with his incompetence.
(the bitterest irony would be if after years of fringe right elements believing the left was creating FEMA internment camps for those on the fringe the right ended up making them themselves)
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On December 12 2015 04:56 Kickstart wrote:
I wish they would slap people like that with hate crimes. Would teach them a well needed lesson.
Then again it might make them even angrier and vindictive.
I would've thought something like that would fall exactly within the bounds of "hate crime". What makes that not the case?
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On December 12 2015 05:06 jcarlsoniv wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2015 04:56 Kickstart wrote:
I wish they would slap people like that with hate crimes. Would teach them a well needed lesson.
Then again it might make them even angrier and vindictive. I would've thought something like that would fall exactly within the bounds of "hate crime". What makes that not the case?
They are hard to prove, since you have to clearly show that race was the primary motivator for the crime. This guy is clearly a racist, but its hard to prove that he wouldn’t have freaked out if the cab driver was white. And once again, we are all 99% sure that was the reason, but proving that to a jury would be difficult.
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On December 11 2015 15:02 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2015 14:35 KwarK wrote:On December 11 2015 14:03 LuckyFool wrote:
Eskendereya, keep in mind you may be arguing with people who view basically all fundamentalist religion as an equal threat to secularism. Generally from a liberal/secularist standpoint, christian law, sharia law, any "religious" law can be viewed as an equal threat (for possibly different reasons) to secularism.
As a result of this (and maybe also just ignorance, or lack of real understanding or time spent in religious study) many secularists fail to properly identify that not all religions are the same, even though from their standpoint, all religions pose equal risk to secularism.
Sharia Law calls for a theocracy, it calls for violently pushing it's views on others. Apostasy is punishable by death under Sharia Law. I'm not entirely sure why m4ini seems to be trying to defend it, or at least that's what I felt following this conversation. Sharia is a guideline that spreads religion through violence.
Christianity calls for things that may remove personal liberty, making abortion illegal for example is something that is viewed as a threat to a secularist. But this is far from being as dangerous as someone who will kill you if you refuse to accept their belief system.
When the Smithsonian displays an urn with a portrait of Jesus in urine, you may find fundamentalist Christians praying for the people who came up with the display. When Charlie Hebdo publishes satirical cartoons of Mohammad, they get shot. Someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali needs personal protection when she makes major public appearances criticizing Islam... Muslims extremists seem to do more batshit insane things but as a group they have no power beyond that we grant them by grossly disproportionate responses to their acting out. Terrorists do something evil, we all agree it's evil, no real debate to have. If we had an "ISIS: Good or bad?" topic I would be all over that arguing bad but we don't. Now Christian crazies, they actually control one of the major two parties in this country. Carson's beliefs are dangerous to the world in a very real way that ISIS could never rival. Rubio's belief that religious law overrides earthly laws is antithetical to everything I believe this country should be. Then there is the active campaigning from Federal all the way down to local to use government force to push beliefs, from bullshit local laws designed purely to fuck with planned parenthood to zoning complaints against mosques to Trump's xenophobia. ISIS are cunts but they're not a threat. I'm not saying that individual Christian extremists are literally the same as ISIS, they're not, although I suspect a lot of them probably would act the same way if you separated them from the system and society that currently empowers them to act through other means. Christian extremism is a far more real threat because there are a lot of them and they have far more power due to being an entrenched part of the system. ISIS sympathizers can shoot up a school but they can't change the curriculum. That's the difference. Christianity is the greater threat to secularism. ISIS will lose, Christian America has made huge strides over the last century as America became increasingly hostile and insular and in an effort to define itself and its place in the world picked Christianity, rather than secularism, as a key part of its national identity. Ground has been lost. Just chucking this out there, but you can't claim that "muslim extremists" is solely exclusive to ISIS, and then act like the GOP are their equivalents. I mean, that's pretty silly. The GOP isn't appealing (nor are the Dems), but they aren't a theocratic fundamentalist party. Are you going to recognize Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states in general (Yemen, UAE, et. al.), Pakistan, Afghanistan, Northern African countries like Libya (I really got to give thanks to the fine folks of France and the US for that one...bang up job.), Erdogon in Turkey, Chechnya, etc. Salafism and Wahhabism isn't exclusive to ISIS lmao. Anyways, if you want to know who reaps more terror just look in the White House right now. Obama has carried out vastly more drone strikes, which kill primarily innocent folks (it's nothing new....that dearly beloved leader Clinton killed a million Iraqi children with his policies...etc.). It's not like secularism is clean either - most communists were atheists, and they killed more than European and American fascism combined. Take a guess what "religion" North Koreans follow (Dear Leader). Humans just suck in general. Most people aren't Tolstoy or Thoreau or Twain, etc. America has always been christian - that is, the people of America by and large have been majoritarian Christian folk. That doesn't mean, the Government was Christian (though it certainly had some State churches in the early days). I happen to like Jesus as a moral figure, and hate Christianity. I identify as irreligious. Even I can see that there is a gulf between Salafism and Wahhabism and Seventh-Day Adventists/Jehova Witness/Quakers/Amish/et. al. It's like people here have a reactionary need to defend these creeds (Sala/Wahhabi/Sharia), because bigots are against them as well. Tip: you can be against both. (Oh, and trust me I can't stand most fundies either - don't get me started on dry counties, drug war, sodomy laws, State-sanctioned marriage, etc.).
Thoreau was a huge dick who never progressed past adolescent development.
Re: the MATs and arbitration
You guys are so ridiculous. Dauntless was the most reasonable person in that whole discussion. I think there is an argument to be made that those kinds of institutions retard social integration, although what that means for immigration policy is not clear.
Who has read The Camp of the Saints? Written in 1973 and reads like it could have been written by a red-blooded American yesterday.
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On December 12 2015 05:11 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2015 05:06 jcarlsoniv wrote:On December 12 2015 04:56 Kickstart wrote:
I wish they would slap people like that with hate crimes. Would teach them a well needed lesson.
Then again it might make them even angrier and vindictive. I would've thought something like that would fall exactly within the bounds of "hate crime". What makes that not the case? They are hard to prove, since you have to clearly show that race was the primary motivator for the crime. This guy is clearly a racist, but its hard to prove that he wouldn’t have freaked out if the cab driver was white. And once again, we are all 99% sure that was the reason, but proving that to a jury would be difficult.
Ah, fair enough. Thanks.
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On December 12 2015 04:56 Kickstart wrote:
I wish they would slap people like that with hate crimes. Would teach them a well needed lesson.
Then again it might make them even angrier and vindictive.
Make him volunteer at a Muslim community center or something maybe?
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so the poor muslims have to deal with the asshole? 
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On December 12 2015 06:30 Velr wrote:so the poor muslims have to deal with the asshole?
I am sure we can find a community that is willing to assist with that rehabilitation. It would be educational.
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California is overhauling its substance abuse treatment system for low-income people, embarking on a massive experiment to create a smoother path for addicts from detox through recovery.
The state is the first to receive federal permission to revamp drug and alcohol treatment for beneficiaries of Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California. Through what's known as a drug waiver, state officials will have new spending flexibility as they try to help people get sober and reduce social and financial costs of people with substance abuse disorders.
Under the waiver, the state plans to expand treatment services, including inpatient care, case management, recovery services and added medication. Beginning next year, drug treatment centers will be able to get reimbursed for providing this much wider range of options to people on Medi-Cal.
Only a small fraction of low-income Californians with substance abuse disorders receive treatment, largely because of restrictions on what Medicaid will pay for.
"This was a long time coming," said Keith Lewis, executive director of Horizon Services, which provides treatment in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Alameda counties. "It's a win/win for people with substance use issues and their families ... and for the people providing those services."
The changes, which will be phased in starting next year, stem in part from the Affordable Care Act, which required that substance abuse treatment be covered for people newly insured through Medicaid or insurance exchanges. The health law allowed states to expand Medicaid to cover millions more people.
Source
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On December 12 2015 04:31 Yoav wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2015 03:58 Cowboy64 wrote:
I agree that we should not bar all Muslims from entering the country. I do not agree that we should pretend there is no radical Islamist threat, especially when there are many moderate Muslims who are speaking out against that very same threat, at great risk to themselves, and they are being ignored. I'm pretty sure no one here except the trump crzies disagrees with any of this. Militant Islamis is a threat. We shoudlnt take that out on all Muslims is also true. But seriously, what is the actual disagreement? We all agree IS sympathizers shouldn't be let in.
I think the actual disagreement is largely over methods. We all agree we have to address the issue, but many of us disagree over what is the best way to do so. There is also a large disagreement over exactly how pressing and immediate the issue is as compared to other concerns. Personally, I do think IS and more generally radical Islam are very immediate existential threats to the United States and Europe. A few weeks ago I pointed out on this thread that Osama bin-Laden had called us a "paper-tiger." Most seemed to think I was implying that we should worry because he called us a mean name. They misunderstood my point, though admittedly I was not very clear:
The problem wasn't that Osama called us cowards and wimps. The problem was that he was mostly correct.
The propaganda of the jihadist usually centers around the weakness of America and the West. They think of us like an empty shell. We have a hard exterior, a strong navy and military, unrivaled air-power and global influence. But if you crack the shell, you'll find nothing inside. And any objective observer would probably conclude that they are mostly correct. Charlie Hebdo published cartoons of Muhammad, and the radicals responded by slaughtering the cartoonists, and Charlie Hebdo does not draw cartoons of Muhammad anymore. We can give any reason we want, but the honest truth is that the terrorists don't care why we stopped. All they care about is that we did stop. They won, again.
I don't blame Charlie Hebdo for refusing to draw them anymore. I never did draw them and I never would. Why? The same reason no one else would: I value my life. If the Muslim will execute me and my family for drawing a picture, then I just won't draw the picture. But then they'll just move on to their next excuse. Charlie Hebdo didn't draw Muhammad, but they still destroyed the Bataclan. America has more official tolerance for Muslims and Islam now than it has ever had in the entire history of the nation, and yet they still attacked San Bernadino. They do this because they know that we won't do anything about it. Don't believe me? What are we doing about it?
I read somewhere that we've dropped 20,000 bombs on IS. And yet, IS still exists, and by all accounts they are relatively unscathed. We don't attack their oil because we don't want to harm the environment. We don't attack their headquarters because we don't want to harm innocent civilians. Noble reasons. But remember, IS doesn't care about your reasons, they only care about results. And they are getting the result they want, every single time. I'm supposed to be surprised that a young man with a good job, who had reportedly faced no persecution or oppression, who had been treated wonderfully by this country, turned radical and threw in with our enemies. Now our media can't even decide whether it was really terrorism, because our narrative has always been "What did we do to cause this?"
What did we do? We did nothing.
Osama said something else, once, that I think applies here. He said that no one backs a weak horse. Even if you love the weak horse, you won't bet on it. You won't put your money on it to win the race, regardless of how much nicer it is than the mean, strong horse.
I don't know what we should do about IS or more broadly, the radical strains of jihadist Islam that breed groups like IS and Al Qaeda. I do know one thing though: as long as we do nothing, they will grow stronger and we will grow weaker. And eventually, much sooner than you'd expect, you'll find that we've grown too weak and now the question of what to do is irrelevant because we will have lost the ability to do anything.
Except submit. We will always have that option, right up until there's no other option left.
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I disagree vehemently. We are fully capable of destroying ISIS. Hell, we are fully capable of destroying ISIS about a thousand times over. As long as we don't give a shit about collateral damage. ISIS doesn't give a shit about collateral damage, so why should we? I don't buy into that reasoning.
Firstly, I don't think destroying ISIS in its current form will get us anywhere without doing something about, as you put it, eradicating the radical strains of jihadist Islam. And turning Iraq and Syria into a smoldering crater does absolutely nothing about that.
Secondly, we don't "protect" western values by abandoning them, and murdering millions of innocents to kill a couple of thousand rabid jihadists. I fully believe that we don't have to become monsters to beat the monsters.
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The fundamental problem with the strategy regarding ISIS isn't that we couldn't or wouldn't wipe them off the map in a month or so. The big problem is what the hell do we do after we drive them out/undercover?
No one has a solution for that part. So it sounds good saying things like "We'll bomb the shit out of them" but it's no more a winning strategy than sticking our thumbs up our asses and waiting.
So the real argument isn't even over ISIS, the argument (once you strip away the BS rhetoric and posturing) is, does the US want a massive DMZ in the Middle East that for all intents and purposes would be necessary for the foreseeable future (50-infinity years).
EDIT: I guess I should say a "BF American Military base" instead of DMZ.
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FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Four of the nine people killed in a melee between rival biker gangs outside a Texas restaurant were struck by the same caliber of rifle fired by Waco police, according to evidence obtained by The Associated Press that provides the most insight yet into whether authorities were responsible for any of the deaths and injuries.
The latest trove of potential grand jury evidence reviewed by the AP depicts a chaotic, bloody scene in which police swarmed into the shootout between rival biker gangs on May 17 outside the Twin Peaks restaurant that left about 20 wounded and arrested nearly 200 people.
Hours of audio and footage and hundreds of documents including ballistics reports show that four of the dead and at least one of the wounded were struck with bullets from .223-caliber rifles — the only type of weapon fired by police that day.
Two of the four dead had wounds from only that kind of rifle; the other two were shot by other kinds of guns as well. The ballistics reports show that the rest of the people killed were shot by a variety of other guns.
It was not clear whether any bikers had similar guns to the police that day. Among the hundreds of weapons authorities recovered from the scene were 12 long guns, which could include rifles.
The Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences, which conducted the ballistics analysis, declined to comment on its findings.
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On December 12 2015 09:13 GreenHorizons wrote:
The fundamental problem with the strategy regarding ISIS isn't that we couldn't or wouldn't wipe them off the map in a month or so. The big problem is what the hell do we do after we drive them out/undercover?
No one has a solution for that part. So it sounds good saying things like "We'll bomb the shit out of them" but it's no more a winning strategy than sticking our thumbs up our asses and waiting.
So the real argument isn't even over ISIS, the argument (once you strip away the BS rhetoric and posturing) is, does the US want a massive DMZ in the Middle East that for all intents and purposes would be necessary for the foreseeable future (50-infinity years).
EDIT: I guess I should say a "BF American Military base" instead of DMZ.
What happens if we don't? Maybe we don't have to do it and the conservatives are overstating the threat?
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On December 12 2015 09:09 Acrofales wrote:
I disagree vehemently. We are fully capable of destroying ISIS. Hell, we are fully capable of destroying ISIS about a thousand times over. As long as we don't give a shit about collateral damage. ISIS doesn't give a shit about collateral damage, so why should we? I don't buy into that reasoning.
Firstly, I don't think destroying ISIS in its current form will get us anywhere without doing something about, as you put it, eradicating the radical strains of jihadist Islam. And turning Iraq and Syria into a smoldering crater does absolutely nothing about that.
Secondly, we don't "protect" western values by abandoning them, and murdering millions of innocents to kill a couple of thousand rabid jihadists. I fully believe that we don't have to become monsters to beat the monsters.
Put another way, Jihadi Terrorism is killing between 2-4 digits of Americans a year. There are 9 digits of Americans. Jihadi Terrorism is a problem, but it will never break our society unless we let it.
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On December 12 2015 05:12 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2015 15:02 Wegandi wrote:On December 11 2015 14:35 KwarK wrote:On December 11 2015 14:03 LuckyFool wrote:
Eskendereya, keep in mind you may be arguing with people who view basically all fundamentalist religion as an equal threat to secularism. Generally from a liberal/secularist standpoint, christian law, sharia law, any "religious" law can be viewed as an equal threat (for possibly different reasons) to secularism.
As a result of this (and maybe also just ignorance, or lack of real understanding or time spent in religious study) many secularists fail to properly identify that not all religions are the same, even though from their standpoint, all religions pose equal risk to secularism.
Sharia Law calls for a theocracy, it calls for violently pushing it's views on others. Apostasy is punishable by death under Sharia Law. I'm not entirely sure why m4ini seems to be trying to defend it, or at least that's what I felt following this conversation. Sharia is a guideline that spreads religion through violence.
Christianity calls for things that may remove personal liberty, making abortion illegal for example is something that is viewed as a threat to a secularist. But this is far from being as dangerous as someone who will kill you if you refuse to accept their belief system.
When the Smithsonian displays an urn with a portrait of Jesus in urine, you may find fundamentalist Christians praying for the people who came up with the display. When Charlie Hebdo publishes satirical cartoons of Mohammad, they get shot. Someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali needs personal protection when she makes major public appearances criticizing Islam... Muslims extremists seem to do more batshit insane things but as a group they have no power beyond that we grant them by grossly disproportionate responses to their acting out. Terrorists do something evil, we all agree it's evil, no real debate to have. If we had an "ISIS: Good or bad?" topic I would be all over that arguing bad but we don't. Now Christian crazies, they actually control one of the major two parties in this country. Carson's beliefs are dangerous to the world in a very real way that ISIS could never rival. Rubio's belief that religious law overrides earthly laws is antithetical to everything I believe this country should be. Then there is the active campaigning from Federal all the way down to local to use government force to push beliefs, from bullshit local laws designed purely to fuck with planned parenthood to zoning complaints against mosques to Trump's xenophobia. ISIS are cunts but they're not a threat. I'm not saying that individual Christian extremists are literally the same as ISIS, they're not, although I suspect a lot of them probably would act the same way if you separated them from the system and society that currently empowers them to act through other means. Christian extremism is a far more real threat because there are a lot of them and they have far more power due to being an entrenched part of the system. ISIS sympathizers can shoot up a school but they can't change the curriculum. That's the difference. Christianity is the greater threat to secularism. ISIS will lose, Christian America has made huge strides over the last century as America became increasingly hostile and insular and in an effort to define itself and its place in the world picked Christianity, rather than secularism, as a key part of its national identity. Ground has been lost. Just chucking this out there, but you can't claim that "muslim extremists" is solely exclusive to ISIS, and then act like the GOP are their equivalents. I mean, that's pretty silly. The GOP isn't appealing (nor are the Dems), but they aren't a theocratic fundamentalist party. Are you going to recognize Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states in general (Yemen, UAE, et. al.), Pakistan, Afghanistan, Northern African countries like Libya (I really got to give thanks to the fine folks of France and the US for that one...bang up job.), Erdogon in Turkey, Chechnya, etc. Salafism and Wahhabism isn't exclusive to ISIS lmao. Anyways, if you want to know who reaps more terror just look in the White House right now. Obama has carried out vastly more drone strikes, which kill primarily innocent folks (it's nothing new....that dearly beloved leader Clinton killed a million Iraqi children with his policies...etc.). It's not like secularism is clean either - most communists were atheists, and they killed more than European and American fascism combined. Take a guess what "religion" North Koreans follow (Dear Leader). Humans just suck in general. Most people aren't Tolstoy or Thoreau or Twain, etc. America has always been christian - that is, the people of America by and large have been majoritarian Christian folk. That doesn't mean, the Government was Christian (though it certainly had some State churches in the early days). I happen to like Jesus as a moral figure, and hate Christianity. I identify as irreligious. Even I can see that there is a gulf between Salafism and Wahhabism and Seventh-Day Adventists/Jehova Witness/Quakers/Amish/et. al. It's like people here have a reactionary need to defend these creeds (Sala/Wahhabi/Sharia), because bigots are against them as well. Tip: you can be against both. (Oh, and trust me I can't stand most fundies either - don't get me started on dry counties, drug war, sodomy laws, State-sanctioned marriage, etc.). Thoreau was a huge dick who never progressed past adolescent development. Re: the MATs and arbitration You guys are so ridiculous. Dauntless was the most reasonable person in that whole discussion. I think there is an argument to be made that those kinds of institutions retard social integration, although what that means for immigration policy is not clear. Who has read The Camp of the Saints? Written in 1973 and reads like it could have been written by a red-blooded American yesterday.
The conversation would have gone much better if people stuck to arguing the direct point that I was raising as opposed to raising a bunch of tangential bullshit (some of which they did not even understand).
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EPT
