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Democrat Drops MN State House Run After Tweeting 'ISIS Isn't Necessarily Evil' (startribune.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Dan Kimmel, who works for U.S. Bank in its technology and operations section, dropped out of the race for a Minnesota House seat after unleashing a firestorm of criticism. The controversy erupted after Kimmel tweeted, "ISIS isn't necessarily evil. It is made up of people doing what they think is best for their community. Violence is not the answer, though." The tweet rapidly led to harsh criticism on twitter and spread from there. The DFL Party Chair issued a statement saying that Kimmel's "views have no place in our party. On behalf of the Minnesota DFL, I strongly condemn his comments. ..." The House Minority Leader for the DFL called for Kimmel to end his campaign. Kimmel issued a written apology and withdrew from the race.
Chopping people's heads off to make a point and to recruit more crazies is not necessarily evil... uh huh. And Aristotle taught us that violence IS the answer. "We make war so that we may live in peace". This "violence is never the answer" is just a meaningless feel good politically correct statement to appease the liberal left. There is violence for the right reasons, and violence for the wrong reasons. We need more violence for the right reasons because war, after all, is a contest of violence. These crazy people must be rooted out and dealt with.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I guess I've heard shit like that before. From my German-side Grandpa.
I think there is a distinct area in which people and their views can be placed that is undoubtedly evil. Holding abysmally absurd theo-fascist views, chopping peoples heads of whilst chanting praises to your utlitmate-dictator-in-the-heavens god, preaching and trying to practice genocide, believing in truth by revelation rather than insight and forcing that truth to others at gunpoint, etc. pretty much puts people smack center of the 'evil' designation in my book. And in most other peoples book aswell, I would presume.
Give us an effin' break - please.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I think that his point is that if someone is "evil", it carries a connotation that, there is an agreed upon morality, and they are doing something that is not only wrong, but that they agree is wrong, and that the simple wrongness of the act is in large part the motivation behind it.
This is opposed to differences in the accepted morality arising from cultural norms or otherwise.
This has a lot of practical considerations with how to deal with the person. If there are mere cultural differences, it may be possible to change a person's views on the matter through education and cultural conquest generally. Views on right and wrong are somewhat malleable and so pushing hard on westernized education, commerce, etc. can at least HELP alleviate a situation. However, if they already agree upon our system of values, and perform acts purely because they are wrong, education seems pointless, because they are already educated in your way of thinking, and wholesale destruction becomes the only obvious answer.
I'm not really acquainted with any ISIS members, so I'm not sure if they are truly evil or their actions are simply driven by a different world-view, but I like to hope that we can settle the situation through education and open communication (which is what, I think, this congressman was hoping as well); because the other option will be death and destruction, and lots of it.
Christian - inspired violence is so rare as be not merely exceptional, but aberrant.
At this point. Kinda. Not necessarily so in the past. We both know the burinings of heretics, gays and presumptive witches, and the crusades. And while there is some nasty ass stuff in the bible about killing all of your enemy except for the little girls, which might be though a tad odd these days.
But yeah, there is no doubt that the Muslim religion uses violence as a core competency.
But there's the nexus of religion, and it is that if your god just so happens to hate everything you do, it's pretty likely that you are making god in your own image.
IOW, denying Christianity's sometimes violent tendencies is not at all required to condemn the immorality of radical Islam.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Some Christians certainly are evil
KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.
The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.
For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”
Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.
This was just business as usual, nothing new.
Uganda is set to pass new anti-gay legislation with provisions calling for the execution of gay people under some circumstances. The rumor of the death penalty clause being removed seems grossly exaggerated. Dr. Warren Throckmorton, who has followed the legislation closely, indicates that some Western media are erroneously reporting that the death penalty clause has been removed. He writes that "the bill is the same bill it has always been. It cannot be amended until the committee report is presented to the floor of the Parliament." Even with the amendment the legislation remains a gross travesty of justice.
The "intellectual" fuel for this grotesque law came from Christian fundamentalists in the United States. According to The New York Times:
Much of Africa's anti-homosexuality movement is supported by American evangelicals, the Rev. Kapya Kaoma of Zambia wrote in 2009, who are keen to export the American "culture war" to new ground. Indeed, American evangelical Christians played a role in stirring the anti-homosexual sentiment that culminated in the initial legislation in Uganda.
Of course, it's also right at home in the US as well. Earlier this yesr:
California proposal to legalize killing gays hard to stop
A California initiative proposal is testing the limits of free speech. Lawyer Matt McLaughlin wants to authorize the killing of gays and lesbians. Yet legal experts say the state’s attorney general can’t block it.
McLaughlin’s plan refers to “buggery” or “sodomy” as “a monstrous evil that Almighty God, giver of freedom and liberty, commands us to suppress on pain of our utter destruction even as he overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” Under the proposal, “... any person who willingly touches another person of the same gender for purposes of sexual gratification (would) be put to death by bullets to the head or by any other convenient method.”
Anyone transmitting “sodomistic propaganda” to a minor would be fined $1 million per offense, and/or imprisoned up to 10 years, and/or expelled from California for up to life. It would ban lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, or those who espouse sodomistic propaganda, or who belong to any group that does, from serving in publ
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
So when we get bombed it's terrorism but when we bomb them and kill innocents it's not? I don't think we're quite as 'white' as we claim to be.
There is a big difference between waging war against military targets, making a great effort to target them intelligently to minimize civilian casualties...and deliberately targeting civilians.
I do not support any government that indiscriminately kills civilians (ie Israel) and I hold my own accountable when accidents happen.
If we wanted to end this war quickly we could carpet bomb that entire part of the world into non-existence - which is what ISIS would do to us, given half a chance, and yet we do not - and THAT is the difference between our sides.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
There are many reasons for targetting Paris. It's a world-class city, it's streets are alive with locals and tourists, giving gunmen lots of easy targets. The French are very proud of their history as standard-bearers of liberty and freedom, ideals detested by fanatics that treat women like dirt and anyone that does agree with them as candidates for death. And France itself does not have clean hands. Its colonialist past, most recently in Algeria, resulted in a lot of carnage back home.
"Could be worse...could be raining." Igor