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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.
Well it is made up of the religious righteous.
Another circumstance where the court of public opinion rules political correctness to be a greater virtue than the first amendment.
Tink of Paree! O WeeWee!
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.
Well no. He was able to speak his mind. Now he's dealing with the consequences of not pandering to morons
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That was going to go down well? After the other night?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
... if he had said that, I dunno, Christians/cops/republicans "aren't necessarily evil"
But interestingly enough, the supposedly rabid atheists around here who "bravely" stand up to those "totalitarian oppressor" church-ladies on here have a huge blind spot / sick fetish for the most hard-core Islamic fascim you can think of.
Some Christian doesn't want to bake a cake for a gay wedding? Government funded execution squad, no trial.
ISIS executes gays by throwing them off of buildings? How dare you be intolerant of other people's culture!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Mark my words, this guy is going to announce his candidacy this week. There's no doubt in my mind that he wants to run for President. None of the three Democrat presidential candidates appear to be capable of forming the words "radical Islamic terrorism". He'll fell right at home.
Another person who doesn't understand the first amendment. The first amendment says that the government can't mess with your free expression. They can't put you in jail because you say something they don't like, they can't shut down a news paper for reporting on things they don't want, and so on. It does NOT say that people have to listen to whatever you say, like it, and not respond in any way.
This guy didn't have his rights violated at all: He said something extremely stupid, and people then used their first amendment rights to express that he's a jackass. His political party decided that because he'd pissed off lots of voters, they weren't interested in supporting them. They aren't required to support anyone, the choose the candidates they like. He realized he'd fucked up, and had no chance of wining, and so withdrew.
Nothing improper here. You seem to think that the first amendment should mean speech without consequence. Of course that doesn't work without infringing on the rights of others. If you say something I don't like, I have to be free to say I don't like you for it, or my freedom of speech is being infringed upon. I have to be free to refuse to talk to you, do business with you, etc or my freedom of association is being infringed upon.
So ISIS is necessarily evil. And you seem at least as necessarily evil as ISIS is.
As uncle Bob always said: "extremists at both ends are the best allies". Watch now Le Pen winning out in France: "Thank you ISIS!"
The SJWs have already confirmed that ISIS isn't that bad. As they've repeatedly said over the past year, GamerGate is "literally worse than ISIS".
I understand what he was trying to communicate, but brainwashing children to hate from the time they're born is the epitome of evil. However, yes; they are doing what they think is right. But, that doesn't make it right. Right?
ISIS is completely unnecessarily evil.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Democrats of all people should know that morals and ethics are relative, as relativism is a fundamental tenet of leftism.
Democrats and liberals have an obligation to stand behind the tweet, because it was absolutely in line with democrat and liberal ideals.
except what ISIS is doing is bad for everybody else.
How is this news for nerds?
and its only stuff that matters to the people who would have been voting for him
Honestly all this does is serve to prove that the people running for any office are some of the absolute dumbest people in our society. Because smart people don't want to have anything at all to do with it because you have to deal with the general population and that is the largest collection of dumb there is.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
the civil wars and world war's happened for reasons.
the outcomes of the wars don't always matter because it's often times one evil fighting another evil, and when the whole world is evil - who gives a fuck?
can't undo the western evil civilization war machine killing torture brutality denying all humans rights thing we have going on world wide.
obamasweapon.com
drrobertduncan.com
Once more ... reinforcing the truth that free speech in the US is a figment; that everything the US does is right - therefore, it's not OK for the other guy to fight back.
The freedom to toe the line and pretend to be religious; to repeat the platitudes; to avoid mentioning the elephant in the room. Keep it up.
Requiem for the American Dream
You could almost say this of Daesh even a few years ago, when they kept their antics mostly confined to their own territory. You'd still be wrong, because that argument requires you to ignore both the sheer enormity of the things they do to inside that territory and the blatant expansionism they practiced and continue to practice, but the argument could at least be considered semi-reasonable.
But that was before they started going after their own refugees: people who were outright running away. Quarrel or no, they posed no threat; indeed, posing no threat was, for many, a driving factor in their decision to leave. And if Daesh are willing to do this to refugees, then the only even half-baked argument left for calling them anything but pure evil is gone now. It is time to accept that we are dealing with the Nazis of our time, and treat them accordingly.
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
For a DFLer to show this much sense (withdrawing, not the original tweet) is...unusual, to say the least - and I say that as someone who lives in Minnesota.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Anyone who uses Twitter to express political views needs to be locked up. Extremely poor judgement, no matter what your view on ISIS is.
In the real world, "evil" people almost always think they do what they think is best for something.
If ISIS cannot be considered evil, then true evil only exist in fiction, and even then, it's only when writers don't put much thought into their villains.
Maybe that's actually the point : there is a bit of good in all of us, even the worst.
Yesterday Marco Rubio equates all muslims to nazis and he's cheered for it.
Video: http://youtu.be/RVCip5B8P6c
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, arguing that the United States is "at war with radical Islam," sharply criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton for declining to characterize the perpetrators of the Paris attacks in that way, invoking Nazi Germany to make his point.
"That would be like saying we weren't at war with Nazis, because we were afraid to offend some Germans who may have been members of the Nazi Party but weren't violent themselves," Mr. Rubio said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
http://www.nytimes.com/politic...
You know, sooner or later people might get it through their heads that using Twitter is a strategy for fools.
You have two choices with Twitter: either you tweet some meaningless groupthink post, guaranteed not to offend anyone, OR you post something that offends someone, somewhere. And if you offend enough people, suddenly your life and career are in tatters when the Internet mob turns on you.
You'd think that enough peoples' lives have been ruined by thoughtless tweets that the lesson would have been learned. But it seems there's always another fool just waiting to make an example of him/herself.
Thank you for defending us against that straw man. Delightful of you to drag your personal conflicts into this discussion. No one is claiming that ISIS are not bad people, the point is that we should not become bad people ourselves in response. Our brains are wired to be irrational towards people we perceive as enemies (as your post demonstrates ably). We dehumanize them, we exaggerate their bad qualities, ignore the good, and so justify any malicious act against them.
In terms of human suffering, Paris was a drop in the ocean, and probably outweighed by deaths in Syria both in recent history and as a result of these retaliatory airstrikes. Interventionist policies are increasingly difficult to justify, and bombing hasn't seemed to do anything except provide welfare for munitions manufacturers.
To a rational person, this is a complicated situation. For the hawkish politician it's a great time for a power grab -- for some reason there's a tendency to want to fight fascism with fascism. By surrendering your reason to violent instinct you aid those who wish to control you, and work to spread suffering -- no matter who the villains-of-the-day happen to be. It's also not particularly Christ-like.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Another circumstance where the court of public opinion rules political correctness to be a greater virtue than the first amendment.
I think you don't understand how the first amendment works. Allow me to clarify:
1) The first amendment protects you from the government, not from private citizens or companies in most cases so long as they don't violate the law in response to your speech.
2) The first amendment does not protect you against all possible consequences of saying something stupid or offensive.
3) People have as much right to say they don't like what you say as you have to say it. You have the right to be offensive but it might cost you your job if you exercise that right. You have a right to remain silent too but that seems to be exercised less often.
4) This was a private citizen exercising his right to free speech (however stupid it might be) and others exercising theirs. All peacefully. That's how it's supposed to work.
Oh, the pompous Democratic assholes — the above-quoted view was perfectly in line with the party's (including government officials) thinking until last Friday.
Maybe, not all of the party, but hardly a far fringe — the man was endorsed by the same Star Tribune, which is now reporting on his dropping out. The whole idea, that evil is relative (unless it is Hitler or Bush) and that we don't really have enemies in the world — only friends, whose grievances we haven't accommodated just yet — is firmly planted in the Democratic party today. Mr. Kimmel's attempts to stop "othering" ISIS were perfectly in accordance with the opinions prevailing on the Left. The Left, which temporarily retreated into their "Healing Zone", but who will emerge from there with counter-arguments on how ISIS are different from Islam, and how murdering infidels is really "unislamic" — pretending to believe, they know the opinions and customs of ISIS' target-audience better than ISIS knows them themselves.
No, Mr. Kimmel's views do have a nice and comfortable place in the Democratic party — complete with a "Safe Zone" too — it was just silly of him to underline that point at such inopportune time. Should've waited a month or two...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
well this guy's just a total idiot for saying something like that, the institution of the House of Representatives, the Democratic Party, and the people of Minnesota are better served by him dropping out - hopefully someone with more of a brain can take his place in the race for the democrats in that district
He's from MinnieSoda, you betcha. They think harsh winters aren't necessarily evil, don't cha know.
It was already moronic for a US politican to express any even-slightly nuanced view on ISIS, much less since Paris happened, and even stupider to phrase it like he did. But likely what the guy meant to say was that "these guys don't see themselves as evil".
Hardly anybody ever does, of course. In the case of ISIS, they believe that God wants them to conquer the world for Islam. And even though that requires killing a bunch of what we would call "innocent" people, well, that's okay, because all those people they're killing are evil, because they oppose the spread of Islam. It's not evil to destroy evil, right? It takes all the moral horror out of violence, and "righteous" violence is like crack to the 18-year-olds that ISIS is marketing itself to.
Yeah, it's pretty obviously evil to the rest of us. But then again, if you go far enough back, we're all of us living on land that our ancestors stole from somebody else's ancestors. It wasn't a smooth and amicable transfer of ownership, either. Unless you believe that there's such a thing as absolute morality, which is actually kind of the problem here, you can't really "prove" that ISIS isn't "right" to put zero or even negative value on the lives of the rest of us. It's just our word against theirs, so to speak.
That said, I think that, at this point, the rest of the world we can all agree that ISIS is a pack of rabid dogs that are wandering our streets intent on spreading the infection. Whether they're evil or not is irrelevant. Evil or not, they gotta go.
It is so easy to just lump people into a group called Evil. Then we need not think of the consequences. Do people stop to think what might drive other people to do "evil" acts? Consider, what might you do if a foreign country dropped a bomb on your land and killed your relatives? I bet you'd be inclined toward doing some "evil" things too. I think it is very hard for Americans to understand that the Iraq war and Syria civil war has resulted in hundreds of thousands dead and what that can do to people. While many people hold on to a shred of humanity, usually b/c they still have children to protect, others look for someone to blame and they look for groups to join to do something about it. Until we actually start discussing these nuances instead of just lumping everything into "Evil", these conflicts will never end, but simply continue in a cycle of endless escalation.
File it with "Good Old Uncle Joe" Stalin - sometimes people in politics say stupid shit even when most are becoming aware that they are saying something nice about a monster.
He should drop his head off for this.
He is a dangerous imbecile that must be removed from public space.
The true irony is Islam has no tolerance for most liberal ideals.
We really live in a more complicated world than that; terms like "evil" have led us into really awful and short-sighted situations before. Perhaps this guy could have phrased his tweet a little more elegantly, but he does have a point that civilized discourse should not reduce itself to calling people - or organizations of people - "evil" (although twitter doesn't help that).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
ISIS is as much a place on the map (sphere of influence) as it is a black flag unfurled by some angry young violent men.
What about all the women/children/elderly/pacifist swept up by it?
Perhaps we call them victims, and not "ISIS" but ISIS itself disagrees.
They are most certainly not the same "Evil."
The Golden Rule has been observed in nature. It is natural. It is the basis of any sensible law and regulation. To not follow it is evil.
Two Republican governors of Michigan, Alabama reject resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states.
This typical democrat's clueless view of reality is just More evidence that liberalism is a mental disease.
Which party has a clue and is trying to keep us safe?
In other news, a politician has an opinion and is chastised for it. Let's not let these people think too hard lest they hurt themselves in the process. Just sit down and take your spoonfed soundbites like a good doggy. Here comes the plane! Prrrrrwooooooooeeeeeee!
His point could make for interesting academic discussion but in a political context in the U.S. it was moronic.
Perhaps a showcase example of being so smart you look stupid.
Considering a Republican (Gorge W Bush) caused the creation of ISIS, the Republican party is certainly not trying to keep us safe.
And we are going to argue "what is evil"??! I find that utterly fascinating!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
... the tweet is accurate?
in.news.yahoo.com/britain-vienna-talks-draw-syria-144131896.html
How 'bout the institutions that finance them? Nobody wants to talk about that, because we would discover something that nobody wants to know, much less accept. Hasn't anybody noticed that Al Qaeda is now an "ally" (again) in this little spat?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Holy shit, so reasonable level headedness has no place in the party?
And you wonder why they hare us so much?
The entire premise of evil is false. We ascribe our in-built vestigial cave man monkey instincts as "evil" which denies the fact that we were once a bunch of apes who raped and stole from each other. Maybe after a few thousand years we will have finally shed our monkey dna and start acting like humans.
... The time for full-fledged war is here. The only thing these aholes understand is a bullet in the skull. It's time to give it to them. Let's not beat around the bush - it's time to return them to the stone age. I'm sorry if you don't like this but it's time. Long live freedom.
Using Twitter.
Well to be fair ISIS is controlled by the CIA.
Saudi Arabia beheads people almost every month.
And many of the state governments in the US routinely execute people (some innocent) plus the federal government kills innocent people all the time with drone and missile strikes while trying to assassinate people they deem terrorists. You really want to compare the human rights and execution record of the US with Saudi Arabia? It won't be pretty on either side of the ledger.
When asked about it, the State Department calls it unfortunate, not batshit crazy evil.
Because of practical Realpolitik reasons. Not as if the US government has its hands clean. If it was politically expedient for them to call out Saudi Arabia I'm sure they would even if that made them (more) hypcritical.
Actions can be evil. Thoughts can never be evil. And that is all I am saying on the subject.
Just a thought about all this evil nonsense. Imho only misguided people fall into this trap of believing that his opponent is evil. What humanity should have learned through infinite wars and numerous religious superstitions, is that man is capable of doing anything if he believes he is in his right to do so. And how easily a man can be misled into believing he is right. And please spare me this my God holier than thine religious chant, read your history books and be silent.
Jug-ears has helped along the process of creating ISIS.
In his press conference this morning he confirmed what a piece-of-shit president he is.
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.
Not if you're a civilian casualty. How are they even supposed to distinguish between a military accident and a deliberate act of violence? Do we issue an apology afterwards? Pay reparations? Try, convict, and sentence the offenders? Or do we call every military-age male a combatant in order to pretend our bombing campaign is just and legal?
Considering every military-age male to be a combatant gives them two choices: become a refugee, or take up arms in self-defense. Not only are you not holding anyone accountable (to anything more consequential than your bad opinion), you don't even know what's being done. Our hands are clean because we defined "dirty" in such a way that it doesn't apply to us.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
ISIS is no more necessarily evil than WBS is necessarily evil.
But you want to be DEFINITELY the good guys, so therefore whoever you're against must be CLEARLY the bad guys.
So his comment, which would likely lead to at least SOME progress with getting extremist muslims as socially ignored as WBS is, must be shouted down.
Because you'll damn well not like what he says, and FUCK that "fight to the death" shit to ensure he can say it!
You have as much proof of the former claim as the latter.
Did you take a poll? When was the last time you heard some christian on TV telling the world that they abhorred the attacks and said that they were DEFINITELY NOT christian acts?
Can't remember one time it being done, never mind the last.
CAN remember the last time some christian whined about someone who committed an atrocity was called a christian, though.
There are North Dakota Democratic-Nonpartisan League Party and Democratic farmers party in minnesota. This guy belongs to the later. They are far more like the old style dems from the 40-60s, rather than the losers of today. Of course, this guy still needs to go.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Way to paint 100% of religious righteous as the same as these ISIS animals. Such "tolerance" by the stereotypers.
Can't tell the difference between the true religious righteous who are serving the poor, feeding the hungry, treating the sick in poor countries, and those.
Nope. They're just the same as ISIS according to this person. Clearly the bigotry is huge in this one.
I bet this guy thinks all religions are exactly the same.
Mother Theresa is the same as ISIS. Dalai Lama is the same as ISIS. This is what that poster believes.
300 million murdered in the 20th century by the atheists.
But your facts miss this #1 most violent religion: Atheism.
ISIS/ISIL/Daesh was created by USA and Saudi Arabia for israeli benefit. As soon as ISIS manages to largely depopulate the Sinai, Iraq and Syria and totally destroy their statehood in a chaos of bloodbath, Merkava tanks will roll in among worldwide cheering as saviours of mankind. Voila, the Greater Israel is created with the conquered territory, as depicted on the 10 agorot coin, spanning from the Nile to the rivers of Tiger and Euphrates.
Third Temple of Jerusalem is then built and large-scale ritual animal sacrifices restart, with the daily slaughter of genetically engineered red heifers serving as detonators for eventual violent conflict between the semitic-carnivorous posse of jews, arabs and the aryan-vegan posse of India and much of Far East Asia. One must wonder whom Europe will side with, the hindi vegans led by the Society of the Nine Unknown Men or the animal sacrificers led by the Sanhedrin? Anglo-americans will surely side with the israeli-saudi confederation.
Something strange to consider: the soil in much of India is still highly radioactive from a large-scale nuclear war that was waged there app. 8000 years ago. A large percentage of hindi people are born with mutation-based disfigurations and disabilities (hare-lip, congenital eye problems, etc.) Repeat, they had nukes at the time when the very first, illiterate town-dwellers in the Levante just started to lay mud bricks on top of each other.
All I can say is wow. I came back to check on responses to my comment four hours after posting it, and it looks like only the parent seems to have understood my meaning.
I know very well that the 1st Amendment is a limitation on actions the government may take against the people. My point had nothing to do with government action against an individual. My point is that we as a society would rather lynch anyone who dares to rationalize the actions of these bombers before we ever will find the courage to consider it ourselves.
In our rush to defend the victims of this tragedy and protect them from further harm, we are quick to decry any-and-all rhetoric that fails to condemn those responsible as anything less than psycopathic, sadistic, demented, and/or depraved. So, when someone has the courage to merely suggest that these individuals may be acting out in a manner that is, dare I say, human, we must as a society silence that voice. We will not allow ourselves to, as the parent put it, "foster debate, free from intrusion". These individuals who attacked civilians in Paris were/are monsters, we must forever see them that way, and we must treat them that way.
But it's that exact point-of-view that got us into a 10-year war in Iraq. It's that exact point-of-view that is keeping us in a 14-year war in Afghanistan. We as westerners do not understand the Arab mindset. (A decade ago, I lived for a year in Cairo, Egypt, myself. I'm not a Muslim, but it did certainly give me perspective on this subject.) The more we seek revenge / justice / reparations / etc. from these individuals, the more it will inflame them. We're pouring water on a gas fire, and it's only spreading further and further. If we want to ever succeed in solving this Crisis in the middle east, we -must- see these terrorists not as savages, but as humans. We need to understand what drives them to such ends, and cure the sickness rather than treat the symptoms.
And when a politician of all people has the courage to suggest as such, we cannot treat him or her as a monster either.
While it's a good thing to take a moment and thoughtfully consider where ISIS may be coming from ("know your enemy" is may be distasteful for the impatient, but it's the smart way to go), once you get past all the smoke and mirrors of all the religious and political propaganda, ISIS is a blown up street gang making their way by the classic trades of evil: murder, rape, pillaging, and extortion. That's how they survive. That's how the organization sustains itself, and the unknown fatcats who run it.
You think ISIS takes territory in Iraq over some holy mission? The Caliphate? Bullshit! They take territory because they gotta eat and buy more ammunition, or else the whole thing will start coming apart leaving the leaders with no protection. They rape and blow up ancient artifacts to keep themselves occupied during down time, lest some of the new recruits leave or start fighting each other or seek out revenge against the bosses who beat on them.
Every crime organization has some narrative for excusing the fact that they have to steal or extort everything they have, why they can't lead ordinary lives. ISIS is a glorified street gang, and once their completely invested in rape-murder-pillage-extortion for making their way in the world such that there's no turning back, you've got evil.
Again, it's good to think about them and figure their point of view, but recall the President in Independent Day. Even after DC, New York, and god knows where else had been blown up by the aliens, he was still like "they're not evil" until he accidentally mind-melded with one of them. Then, that idiot finally got what everyone in the audience already knew. Don't be like him. You don't have to mind-meld with a guy who makes a living strapping bombs onto kids to know he's an evil fuck, no matter what religious verses come out of his mouth.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
We must be willing to accept any and every possible examination of the truth.
Comments like yours are what's making our country more difficult to live in. People are too afraid to share ideas, because they fear being judged for them.
In fact, the very essence of your comment is a quintessential illustration of the problem I was trying to highlight. Let's not debate the idea. Let's judge the voice.
It's time to reduce the middle-east to a steamin' pile of fking rubble. Let's have the five (six?) nuclear players contribute 50 nukes each and reduce that area of the planet to unlivable freakin' waste land. May your camels grow nuts from their foreheads for the next 10k years. Long live freedom.
You know, sooner or later people might get it through their heads that using Twitter is a strategy for fools.
You have two choices with Twitter: either you tweet some meaningless groupthink post, guaranteed not to offend anyone, OR you post something that offends someone, somewhere. And if you offend enough people, suddenly your life and career are in tatters when the Internet mob turns on you.
You'd think that enough peoples' lives have been ruined by thoughtless tweets that the lesson would have been learned. But it seems there's always another fool just waiting to make an example of him/herself.
Ah, but there is a third-way: you tweet something that's considered to be cool and sparks a firestorm of debate and interest and sells a product. Corporation rewards you in some small but essentially meaningless way, hoping you'll keep promoting.
See, that's the real goal - as an advertising channel, Twitter can collect rents from their real customers who own large brand names! Free tchotchkes for all! Who would't want in on that?
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
hell, the bible advocates stoning for lots of things!
what was your point again?
This really illustrates what a problematic concept "evil" is. What does it mean? How do you determine what is evil?
He's entirely right that ISIS is doing what they believe to be right. They're fighting a holy war, and they're on the side of God. How do you categorize a person who believes "goodness" consists of doing something you believe is entirely evil? Do you judge them based on their actions? Their beliefs? The consistency between the two? Which is worse, a person who does terrible things because they think that's right, or a person who wants to be evil but accidentally ends up accomplishing good things instead? If someone sincerely believes that killing innocents is the right thing to do, is it better for them to act on their beliefs, or ignore their beliefs out of fear of taking risks? What's the "right" way to judge them?
Answer: you don't judge them. ISIS is dangerous. They're doing a huge amount of harm. Therefore, we need to stop them. But don't pretend that you have any right to cast moral judgements on any other human being.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
It's not necessary to be evil, but for alienated young people, flocking around, it is a form of releasing endorphins. Disperse the flock, disperse the "evil". It's not that they want to create a stable Caliphate or anything of the sort.
The only thing separating the two is that the genuinely ethical people are able to keep the right wing nut cases around here under a little bit of control.
you just think you can insult everyone's intelligence by pretending otherwise with some no true scottsman thrown in for further shame fullness.
to pretend that other people are bad for doing the exact same things that me any my friends do.
A demoncrap wouldn't think ISIS evil, by comparison to its own "political" "party".
All this talk about evil means there is some definition of evil that has at its foundation the belief in right and wrong. We all have our definitions, but in general we agree for the most part what is right and what is wrong. We tend save the term evil for the worst and most blatant wrongdoing though you can argue that subtle wrong doing and wrong thinking can be evil too. No one is free from wrongdoing. The problem is we all have this tendency to be selfish and self-centered and that makes our wrong doing easy to do and easy to rationalize our wrong doing. The problem with evil is right in front of us or in us. We are the problem. We all hurt people. We are broken and messed up, because we do not always live up to the ideals of right living that we aspire to. People through out the ages have tried fix ourselves and produce a utopian society of well behaved people. They all have failed. Some have had some good ideas, but I believe they fail to get to the root of the problem, our selfishness. We are able to dream of utopia, where everyone is well behaved and loved, and everyone works for the common good, but we are not able to achieve that. Our self-centeredness is the real evil.
Sorry, dude, there's only one terror group with delusions of statehood founded on inflicting its medieval view of humanity on others, including human slavery, that you're allowed to defend in this country, and that's the Confederacy. Easy to get the two confused, though.
i can say 'there is no god' and it doesn't require any faith to do so. i can also say 'there are no ghosts' and 'there are no aliens' and that requires no faith.
the burden of proof is on religions. until they have proof, saying 'there are no god, ghosts, or aliens' are the obvious and default rational beliefs.
atheism is the default natural state. any child raised in a religious vacuum would be an atheist.
In the past it was said "History is written by the victors." When Reagan characterized the anti-Sandanistas as 'freedom fighters', that was the same process at work.
Until recently, state violence was usually characterized as 'war'. You have two aggressors killing each other for some period of time. There may or may not be a winner.
However politicized the language, however 'tres moderne' that language becomes, it's the same tactic in use for thousands of years. The hundreds of ancient dead countries in the middle east are proof are still Truth speaking. Rallying around the flag may discredit the truth-tellers, but not the Truth. The outcome has been the same for lo, these many thousands of years.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Everybody must get stoned?
The Torah mandates stoning for a lot of things, Jesus however refutes it quite clearly: "let he who is without sin throw the first stone".
Hmm, how about commenting on what the guy actually said? But no, it has immediately descended into a stupid dick-waving contest about why Muslims with their Jihad are evil and Christians with their Crusades aren't. This is nothing to do with religion - terrorism is simply a form of organised crime with a thin veneer of 'ideology', 'religion' or 'honour'. There are many parallels with how the Mafia arose and operates.
Now about mr Kimmel's comments - it is of course an amazingly clumsy way to put it, as well as being very uninformed, but he is actually trying to make us think a little bit deeper over the issues, instead of just screaming "Attack". After all, we haven't really had much success with that so far. So how about coming up with some intelligent ideas about what can be done?
We shouldn't naively think that people we regard as evil, see themselves as evil - on the contrary, I strongly suspect that all of them - Hitler, Pol Pot, al Qaeda, ISIS etc - are or were convinced that they are good and stand for a noble cause, and that if they are harsh, it is only because it is necessary. I'm also sure that many, if not all, are fundamentally bullies - and bullies are fundametally cowards; it's just that what they are afraid of is not necessarily what normal people are afraid of.
So how can we act against these bullies - what are they really afraid of, when they clearly aren't afraid of dying? They think they are going straight to Paradise if they go out and get themselves killed in a 'jihad' - so one way of might be to start teaching them that actually, it doesn't quitework that way. God is clever enough to understand that if you strive to get killed, it is no more than suicide with a bit of extra emphasis; dying for God may be right if you do so reluctantly, to protect what is holy, but being eager to die, hiding behind a feeble excuse and compounding it with crimes like murder is never going to be more than a perverse form of suicide. Probably the harshest punishment we can inflict on these people would be to force them to live, having to contemplate the vileness of their crimes - that and castration plus being force-fed pig blood.
There is no doubt that we will wipe ISIS out in terms of military, but we have to look deeper and understand better why there are so many, who turn against normal society. We have to be willing to recognise our own role in creating this situation, not just what the Western powers have done during past imperialism, but also what we allow large corporations to do and perhaps even more importantly, how we treat immigrants, who come to live in our neighborhoods - if we regards them with suspicion and treat them as second class, it is hardly any wonder that they and their children become resentful. And when you have nothing to live for, maybe you can find something to die for? Some thing that can hurt the smug society that didn't let you in? We have to break out of this vicious cycle.
This is just part of their thing. This guy obviously was part of the in crowd, and didn't realize how unpopular ISIS actually is. I mean, ISIS uses the SJW's blockbot for twitter. Go figure.
Mr. Kimmel is actually correct: ISIS is NOT necessarily evil; albeit it certainly seems they do relatively evil things - from OUR perspective. ANY intelligent human can see that Mr. Kimmel's remark reflects that understanding the deeper MO of ISIS as being reactionary for their cause seems an important consideration in getting to an effective mitigation for ultimately ending the violence. I get nearly nowhere when I yell at my subordinates (i.e. proverbially cut off their heads). I get MUCH further when I take the time to understand my subordinates' mistake and work to show them a more effective and mutually beneficial resolution (i.e. explain the part they apparently misunderstood). (I guess I am luck that I have friends that do this for me!)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Sanders was on TeeVee the other day claiming that the Paris attacks were due to climate change. Faced with dwindling arable lands to grow their crops, farmers are pushing north.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/15/bernie-sanders-explains-connection-between-climate-change-and-paris-attacks/
“If we are going to see an increase in drought, flood and extreme weather disturbances as a result of climate change, what that means is that people all over the world are going to be fighting over limited natural resources,” Sanders said. “If there is not enough water, if there is not enough land to grow your crops, then you’re going to see migrations of people fighting over land that will sustain them, and that will lead to international conflicts.”
“But how does drought connect with attacks by [the Islamic State] in the middle of Paris?” Dickerson asked.
“When you have drought, when people can’t grow their crops, they’re going to migrate into cities, and when people migrate into cities and they don’t have jobs, there’s going to be a lot more instability, a lot more unemployment and people will be subject to the types of propaganda that al-Qaeda and ISIS are using right now,” Sanders said, using an alternative name for the Islamic State. “So where you have discontent, where you have instability, that’s where problems arise, and certainly, without a doubt, climate change will lead to that.”
But Americans don't want that, they want to be lied to. They don't want to hear that we created ISIS, or that the USA is detested because we've meddled in their regional affairs and killed people's kids. Or that the USA supports murderous regimes and horrific Islamic violence in countries like Saudi Arabia. Nope, everybody is too busy covering their ears shouting USA USA USA.
Let's turn his comment and audience around. If an up-and-coming ISIS leader said "America 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." what would happen? You'd find his corpse being used as an illustration for others who question their ideology of violence. When you have no right to speak freely without fear, you have no rights at all.
Organization? You must be joking..
I’m not sure if this was his point or not, but there is a point to make about what motivates some people to join a terrorist group.
Many huge companies are psychopathic in that they will “be evil” against consumers in order to maintain capital growth, but the individuals working there are not necessarily fully aware of what otherwise seemingly innocent decisions are causing the harm. The Nazi regime was pure evil and killed millions of innocent people, but Adolf Hitler thougth he was doing the right thing for his country. There’s this little boy who has been bullying my daughter, and he thinks it’s perfectly okay to grab her and push her around despite her objections, but as innocent as he thinks he is, he still has to be stopped.
So probably the majority of people in ISIS think they’re doing the right thing. From their perspective, they are not evil. And this is because they have been brainwashed into an extreme form of a religion that already has belligerent tendencies. They’re taught that the West and non-Muslims in general are enemies of Allah, and that what Allah wants is to cleanse the world of those sinners and infidels who would otherwise corrupt their children with immoral ideas.
It’s important to realize that a minority of these people, if any, are doing this because they enjoy violence and hurting people. They are urged to do this on the basis or an outrage that they have been indoctrinated into. ISIS as an organizatinon is evil. But its members? No, they’re just sad, ignorant, misinformed people. They’re also dangerous and must be stopped, and I am saddened that the only way to stop them is that many of them have to die. Because, sadly, they’re way beyond having their minds changed on this. A grizzly bear thinks you’re a threat, and no matter what you do, it’s going to try to kill you if you come upon each other in the woods, so your only option for saving your own life may be to kill the bear. And that’s sad for the bear.
This is just one example of a general phenomenon found in many humans. Christianity says not to like and cheat, but many have been found to do just those things when they feel that the ends justify the means. There are non-believers who are a danger to their world view, and they’ll do whatever it takes to fight that, even if it means that they get to exempt themselves from the very same morals they insist on other people having. (See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District and recall that there is a paper trail where people substituted “intelligent design” in place of “creationism” in literature, using clever wording an deception in order to trick educators into putting religious beliefs into science classes.) Muslims and Christians aren’t all that different. Go back 1000 years, and we have Catholics traipsing all over Eurasia killing heretics and nonbelievers.
So, when you fight this evil, keep in mind that those people think they’re doing the right thing. This is an important element of the psychology of the situation and that awareness will make you more effective at fighting it. That’s because you’ll be fighting the real problem and not an “all those people are pure evil” fiction you’ve made up in your mind. The outrage felt by the victims is totally valid, but the response needs to be surgical to prevent future harm, as opposed to some disorganized blind rage where we go killing Syrians indiscriminately.
It’s all terribly sad. It’s sad that terrorist organizations exist and kill innocent people, and it’s sad that they only way to stop them is millitary action, which results in even more deaths. You may have a different opinion, but I think every human life is important, not to be thrown away over differences of world view.