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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?
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.
I agree with you about violence. But on evil, he's right of course, but as a politician he's a fool to have imagined a cerebral point about moral relativism wouldn't be misinterpreted by the people at large, or misrepresented by his enemies as support for ISIS.
ISIS are evil by my definition of evil, and I'd gladly see them all hang. By their definition of evil, I'm evil, and they'd gladly see me hang. So, I bomb them, and they abduct and decapitate me.
I still think I'm right - I'm not saying that I think there's any moral equivalence between me and them. But I'm able to see that they have exactly the reverse position, and thus that in their minds, they're not just not evil, but even rigtheously good.
Saying "ISIS aren't evil" as a shorthand for all that is not likely to get people's votes. Hell, even saying all that is likely to piss off people who see the world in simplistic black and white (as I believe the majority do).
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.
So the view of "morons" is that ISIS is dangerous?
The view of "morons" is that the world is broken down into the simple black and white camps of the good guys (us, obviously) and the bad guys (anyone with whom we have an armed conflict.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Careful injection reason into these type of conversations. See, the fact is, these people are sub human and evil and there is no reason behind it. /end sarcasm
While we continue to ignore the reasons that people join with these monsters, we will only ever add more monsters. It's as simple as that. We can't fight terrorism by fighting the symptoms alone, we must also fight the cause.
As long as people feel they have no other resource but to join with these people, these terrorists will always have numbers. What makes someone willing to sacrifice their life for a cause? Desperation? Determination? What exactly is it?
It's a fight for survival. Our troops enlist and give up their lives to help our way of life survive. Yet we want to pretend some of the enemy doesn't do this for the exact same reason?
I guess I'm naive to think that a lot of these people are doing this for more reasons that to just straight up murder people. It's like saying all elisted troops are well adjusted people who just want to do the right thing. That's patently false.
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.
I just had this conversation last night. I'm Muslim, at least culturally. I don't really believe anymore.
I don't know too many people who think people who join ISIS just like to kill people.
Yes, they want their way of life, and they get their people to join their fight.
We have our way of life, and we get our people to join our fight.
Yes, people have reasons.
Yes, the leaders rally people around causes, sometimes even with bad/alterior motives.
Yes, the average person normally just wants to live their life.
But in the end, what does this all matter?
They're killing, raping, enslaving people.
Does it matter what made someone a monster? I don't think so.
Even if someone is born purely genertically a sociopathic murderer, that is what they are.
You can do what you can to prevent that kind of person from being born/created, but once there, that is what they are.
People in ISIS are killing people on mass, enslaving people, raping young girls and women, all the while thinking they have a right as per their religion.
What is evil? What is moral? You don't need to get all philosophical. It's been had 1000 times before. In WW2, the Germans bombed London. But the allies did the same to Germany. Who is really evil?
I'm going to opt out of that discussion for this post.
When my relatives sit there and blame everything on the US. The US created ISIS they say. The US created Al-Queda and Sadaam Hussein. It's all done for oil and Israel...
Unless you're a real libertarian/anarchist, you should come to accept one simple rule in life. You will be living under someone's rule. And being in charge is freakin hard. When Syrians were rising against Assad, the demand on our world leaders was to support the rebels. Well turns out that gave the opportunity for ISIS to rise as rebels. What a mind-fuck of a choice. I personally tend to be a little isolationist in these respects for that reason, but it has to be acknowledged that it means I'd let a Rawandan Genocide happen. Unless you're preapred to be the boss and take over and rule a region for a century or massively invest in it, don't jump in. In these global conflicts, all you can do pick the best/least bad ruler.
Just like in WW2, you have to kind of put the tactics used on the backburner. Not totally of course ,but you enter a blackhole of immorality. War is sick and depraved and it reduces all of us. You can't be Ghandi about things. Non-violence only works against nice enemies like colonialists, and even then, backrupt colonialists who were pulling out anyways :P
All you can ask yourself is would you rather have had the Nazi ideology win or the Allies?
Would you rather be ruled by Putin?
Would you rather be ruled by ISIS?
Would you rather be ruled by Saudi Arabia?
Would you rather be ruled by USA.
I'm not even American, but the choice is pretty plain to see in my eyes. At this point in history, give me American Rule any day of the week.
Although, I'll say the Chinese are winning me over to some extent.
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.)