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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 the 1A protects you from the law, not public opinion. He voluntarily resigned.
Another circumstance where the court of public opinion rules political correctness to be a greater virtue than the first amendment.
Because the first amendment is supposed to prevent people from judging political candidates based in part on what they say?
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.
Huh? Did he get arrested over this? Or was this just a case of a politician saying something that caused the electorate to decide not to vote for him? I wasn't aware the first amendment was able to protect you from that.
Maybe you were modded down for false equivalency.
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.
What's politically correct about pointing out that ISIS are a bunch of murderous selfish thugs that qualify as 'evil' by almost any definition of the word, and mocking the fuckwit that claimed otherwise?
I think perhaps the real issue here is that he's grossly under educated on a subject and he opened his ignorance hole on the subject. Because (so far) murdering 10,000 non-combatant Men, Women and children for not following Islam is totally just trying to protect their community, right?
Disclaimer: There is an application of sarcasm here. Please read carefully.
It seems like he was actually trying to be PC. He reflexively put out a PC-type spin on a tense situation to try to look wise.
And you seem at least as necessarily evil as ISIS is.
How so? Are you seriously comparing silly quotes from historically insignificant people to von Clausewitz and Aristotle? You think blowing up and shooting random people is equivalent to eliminating those who are sworn to do this? Sorry but you are the one who is misguided. If I tie you to a table, knock you out and stick a knife in you, that could be assault with a deadly weapon or surgery. It depends on the reason. THE MEANS DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE END.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Except for the religion which says Death to the Infidels... then those who don't use violence are wrong. Those evil moderates.
There is a reason why there seems to be a common theme amoungst the daily occurrence of violence. Psychedelic drugs and Islam.
So I got down modded for pointing out religious righteousness. Fuck you, whoever you are; probably a evangelical Christian.
Yep, the evangelical Christians are deadly.
Look at how they went on multiple murderous rampages over Piss Christ. They're STILL tossing gay men off rooftops, stoning rape victims for besmirching their family honor, cutting the hands off thieves, hijacking airliners and killing thousands, taking an entire school of children hostage then massacring them, recruiting 12-year-olds to conduct suicide bombings, beheading entire groups of non-believers.
And then there are the morons who use the events of a thousand years ago to excuse the barbaric actions of today's Christians.
I tell you, Christians are evil.
Extremists of any dogma who use violence are wrong.
Fixed it for you, religion like any other dogma is what leads to the extremists views. When any authority lays down a set of principals that are believed to be true by a group of people. Then all others are wrong and if they dont accept it they must be punished in some way. It does not matter if the dogma is religious, (IE: Christian, Muslim, etc) or national pride (IE: Natzies, communism, socialism, or even Americanism)
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
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.
This first amendment gives him the right to tweet whatever he wants. It gives the rest of us the right to say we don't approve! The right to vote gives the rest of us the right to make it clear to him he might as well not bother standing for election.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
And so was bombing Iraq. While I don't agree with the terrorists, I can understand that they return the "favour" that has been done to them (one of the terrorists apparently came from Iraq). I mean, the main difference between "shock and awe" and "terrorism" is "us" and "them". I just don't understand why they do this to France.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
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.
Actually, it may be even more than that. According to the Atlantic article What ISIS Really Wants, the goal of ISIS is to bring about the apocalypse and thus end the world. So maybe, they want to be evil, with a capital E. Because, I don't think you can get much more evil than wanting to kill everybody everywhere.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Well duh, you're only supposed to judge them by how much money they can scrounge together.
If we judged politicians by their words or actions, both Trump and Hillary would be in jail (and poor Bernie would be sedated in a looneybin somewhere).
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.
Factually incorrect.
Reality calling. It would like to remind you of:
the Lord's Resistance Army? Christian
abortion clinic bombings? Evangelical Christian
Muslim villages massacred in northern India? Nationalist Hindus
and others.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I'm glad you know all 1-2 some billion Christians on earth and countless billions throughout history are all assholes because your ex-wife was an asshole.
I guess all the Christian missionaries and religious throughout the world that are feeding and clothing the poorest of the poor should pick up their bags, go home, and be much better people as secular atheists, so they can contribute something meaningful to the world like your shitpost Slashdot comments.
" religion like any other dogma is what leads to the extremists views"
And Christian extremist views are, what, advocating for different things, the verb being 'advocate', not 'engage', as in 'engage in violence'?
Christian - inspired violence is so rare as be not merely exceptional, but aberrant. Christians are, sadly, humans, and do engage in violence, but such violence is rarely in the name of their faith. Most other organized religions are also largely non violent, and like Christianity are so because that is a core tenet of their theologies.
"Then all others are wrong and if they don't accept it they must be punished in some way."
Christians believe and teach that such punishment is for their God to exact. Most other religions seem to believe similarly, where they preach punishment at all - some do not.
There is, however, one religion that teaches violence against all non believers, and even against their own who are insufficiently devout. This religion is, sadly, alone against the world. Sadly, because it will cause great suffering to defeat them.
And you know the name of this religion. Play games, engage in logic puzzles, minimize and excuse it all you want, it is so. To not call them by their name and for what they are is to permit them to continue to kill and oppress.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
Third: I cringe watching how those stupid terrorists are killing our open society "by proxy" -- the dirty job being taken up by all you right-wing nutjobs. Go get a life. Go to Syria or Irak and enjoy your phantasies.
The right wingers just want to go kill the stupid terrorists. It's the left wingers who won't "let a good disaster to go to waste" (taking away rights) and actively seek such disasters when no options present themselves (growing ISIS via inaction).
Factually incorrect. Reality calling.
You bubble burster you!
AC is going to have to go back to watching a weeks worth of Bill O'Reilly and Fox News to undo the damage you did to his truthiness bubble.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
But virtually every Christian condemns abortion clinic bombings, where a terrifying number of global Muslims support terror, Sharia theocracy, death for apostates, punishment for homosexual activity, the abolition of freedom of expression in the name of suppressing images they find offensive, etc.
See: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... , http://www.pewforum.org/2013/0... , and virtually any other similar survey.
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.
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.
Of the hundreds of abortion clinic bombings, I've only been able to find one which resulted in a fatality. It's almost as if the bombers were carefully trying to avoid human fatalities. Which makes sense since their whole rationale for doing it was to stop what they perceive as widespread murder of unborn children. i.e. They did it because they value life; their definition of life just happens to be a superset of yours. They only resorted to bombings and arson to in their view stop a greater violence (buildings and equipment being less valuable than lives), the opposite of your implication.
The lone exception was the bombing carried out by Eric Rudolph. You may know him better as the Centennial Olympic Park bomber, so clearly he had no qualms about using indiscriminate violence in support of his beliefs. (There have been several shootings of abortion clinic workers. But shootings are targeted, not indiscriminate like bombings.)
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
It might be that ISIS knows that Israel has no qualms about sending the lot of them straight to hell if they get involved.
Or perpahs it is becuase they don't need Israel as an enemy. Most of the people in ISIS held territory already hates Israel and wants them dead. Spending resources attacking them won't provide any new converts.
Now, attack France, UK, United States, Russia... the response will be bombs dropped from the sky... which ISIS actually needs. This is how they create new terrorists in those countries.
Of course, the solution isn't to simply "ignore them". I don't know how to break the hate cycle. Maybe it can't be done.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
You are horribly incorrect. The Bible does not say bomb abortion clincs. The Koran does say go kill non-muslims approximately 20 times.
California proposal to legalize killing gays hard to stop
Actually, this is a good example of the strength of a true democracy and even a civil society. The title of the article is quite misleading. The California attorney general cannot prevent the proposal writer from proceeding to the signature gathering stage. That's good, i.e., that ideas, even the crazy ones, can be stomped out by a single person. At that point, no one (including those that are anti-gay) will sign his petition, and it will die. This is exactly how the system should work.
We can only dream that such a scenario would be possible in ISIS or even most moderate Muslim countries.
Actually, this is a good example of the strength of a true democracy and even a civil society
I think it's an illustration about how California's initiative system is broken. It should be easy to stop an initiative that is clearly unconstitutional, but instead much time and money is wasted by letting them linger. Californians will even vote in unconstitutional initiatives and then act surprised when courts strike them down. Bad initiatives should get caught sooner.
I'm definitely not arguing that California's system is great, but in this case, it's pretty good. If you're arguing that it should be easy to stop really, really bad proposals without wasting too much time and money, then this is the poster child case for that. The only real money spent on this was the $200 paid by the guy who thought of the idea. The guy also has to foot the bill to gather 365,880 signatures. The article opines that 365,880 is a low threshold, but I would argue that this guy not only wouldn't find more than a handful of people willing to sign such a crazy proposal, he probably won't even bother trying. Thus, the process with minimal cost to the state has struck down a really bad idea while preserving freedom of political thought by not allowing any single individual to decide what should or should not be proposed. This is the way it should be.
It should be easy to stop an initiative that is clearly unconstitutional,
How many times was the constitution amended by proposals that seemed to many to be controversial, even unconstitutional, at the time? Or we don't have to go that far - look at the whole gay marriage thing. Before the Supremes ruled, DOMA was the law of the land It was similarly clearly unconstitutional, as was Proposition 8. However, at the time (and even today) there are plenty of people who don't agree with same-sex marriage, and see it as the state acting unconstitutionally by violating the Constitution's "establishment clause".
Let him gather the signatures. It is his right, no matter how stupid most of us think the proposal is. If we do otherwise, WE become the ones practicing discrimination as well as suppressing his constitutional right to freedom of speech. Not so cool. Do you really want an administrative bureaucrat (instead of the courts) to decide what proposed laws should be put to the vote, and what laws shouldn't? This would be no different from that stupid clerk who refused to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Also, given time, both Japan and Germany's peoples realized that they were wrong. I don't think these Daesh assholes will ever figure it out.
But I am sure people said that about the Japanese 70 years ago.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
For me, that "outdated text" proved the central document wasn't the word of God, and that insulated the entire religion because it is built on nothing other than the central text. There is no other thing that can be claimed as "proof".
Only boring people are ever bored.