Really? So we can - as everyone does - call them murderers, terrorists, rapists, and thieves... and that's all fine, because that doesn't hurt their feelings and make them go online and tell prospective recruits that the world is being mean to them. But saying that doing those things is evil... well, that's just too much! Mass rapes, decapitating children, keeping slaves... pointing that out is OK, but making a value judgement about them, well that is just MEAN, huh? Are you even listening to yourself?
That doesn't change the fact that we are evil in the view of someone else.
But the difference is that their judgement is based on a moral framework that is, by definition, objectively inferior. The radical Islamist jihaddi's judgement that we (Westerners) are evil is based on things like our unwillingness to do things like kill women for learning to read, or for having been raped. So explaining to me that they find the west to be evil is completely pointless. I don't care. Consider the source of that judgement, and the value system that drives it. Anybody who engages in worrisome hand-wringing over the fact that an objectively evil person doesn't approve of your values... that person is the worst sort of moral relativist, and through their inability (or unwillingness) to call things what they are, gives moral support to the murderers in question.
We can adequately describe the difference between them and ourselves without reducing our own discourse to such absurdly childish terminology.
So I suppose you prefer "naughty" for gang raping mass murders who burn people alive for religious reasons? Or perhaps "miscreants?" Or "rascals?" I detect a big dose of poisonous moral relativsim that's preventing you from "childishly" describing something in honest terms, lest you commit the unforgivable sin of using your OWN moral framework to make judgement.
Evil
adjective
1. morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked:
evil deeds; an evil life.
2. harmful; injurious:
evil laws.
3. characterized or accompanied by misfortune or suffering; unfortunate; disastrous:
to be fallen on evil days.
4. due to actual or imputed bad conduct or character:
an evil reputation.
5. marked by anger, irritability, irascibility, etc.:
He is known for his evil disposition.
Really? You don't think that government-issued identification, which is key to everything from boarding an airplane to cashing a check (just not for voting, of course - anyone can do that using any name they like!) is insignificant? You think that someone simply invoking magic should be able to obscure their features in that government record, and that you - as, for example, a retail merchant - should have to use someone's obscured face on a government document as the basis for whether or not to accept a check? Or rent out a car?
And no, the first amendment is completely silent on whether or not your professed belief in magic should grant you more power of self expression than would your sense of humor, or a family tradition, or your politics, or anything else. You are completely backwards on that. The government is, by the first amendment, explicitly barred from propping up one person's religion over another person's world view. Having capricious rules that say a devoted Yankees fan can't wear a Yankees ball cap in an ID, but a 16 year old girl that's been bullied by her Dad's imam can wind up with a driver's license photo that identifies her as a cloth sack with eyes... that's NOT how the constitution works - that's explicitly counter to the constitution, in more than one amendment. That's establishment of religion, and unequal protection.
These protections have existed since the nation was founded.
Right. Which is why when they are applied unevenly and capriciously, it flies in the face of the constitution.
should those protections be removed, and the government was free to involve itself in the business of religion.
By picking and choosing which lifestyle clothing (religious or otherwise) is more important than another, and thus deserving or not of government sanction and support, the government IS in the business of religion. How are you not getting that? That's the entire point! The first amendment prohibits the government from looking at two people and saying: person number one, your relationship with the government is different and more important than you, person number two, because of your religious differences.
The government also makes laws that states you could be fired from your job for expressing an opinion
You are not forced to have such a job. That's the difference. If you want to go work for the government, you have to agree to be careful about the circumstances in which you say certain things. Why? Because YOU ARE NOW PART OF THE GOVERNMENT. And that changes your relationship with the rest of society. If you don't like being put in that position of having to be thoughtful about the sounds that come out of your mouth, just don't look to be part of the government. Get a job where the boss really doesn't care what you say or when or where you say it. How is this complicated?
Your line logic lead to free speech zones, which yes; you are free to say what ever you want (just like you could in prison), but far away from it being meaningful.
Ah, that old canard. Are you just pretending to not understand that topic, or have you simply never thought through what it's all about?
Let's say your favored political party just won an election. You, as a caucus of legislators and as a group of people who have assembled under the protections of the first amendment, make the well understood arrangements to host a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, to celebrate your candidate's inauguration. Traffic has to be controlled, police have to be around to deal with those who might want to hurt attendees, etc.
Now say that your political opponents would rather that your peaceful assembly is not allowed to go on, just because they don't like you and what you stand for. They didn't make arrangements for the use of the public space in question... but your objection to control over that space would mean that all they have to do is show up in bigger numbers and shout down your assembly. Beautiful, right? Just how you'd like things to go on? Do you really want a bunch of Occupy idiots sitting in the middle of the street stopping your planned, permitted, and carefully-made-safe event? Or the KKK? Or the local chapter of Islamic Jihad? Or Greenpeace, who will do anything for camera time?
EVERY ONE of those groups can do exactly the same thing YOU did: call up the Parks Department, and make arrangements to hold their OWN event in that same public space - with all of the same permitting costs and logistics that YOU had to take care of. And because it's their event, YOU don't get to gather a bunch of your friends and shout down their event. If they want to be magnanimous, perhaps they'll let you use some of the park space for which they obtained a permit, so that you can blow off some steam. And maybe you'll grant them the same courtesy when you hold a similar event.
You ARE free to say whatever you want. But if you want to crash someone else's pre-arranged, permitted, and secured event on what amounts to rented public property, too bad. Book the same space and do your own thing next week... and enjoy the same protections for YOUR free speech that they're enjoying by not allowing you to shout them down if you don't like them.
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.
If you were right about Israel, they'd do exactly what you say the other side would do. And yet they very demonstrably do NOT do that, even when they are attacked by people indiscriminately attacking them with hundreds of rockets.
My only issue with that is that I don't necessarily really know that ISIS is about irrational bloodthirsty marketing campaigns.
In Western media we never actually get to hear the other side of the story
You're just not bothering to consume the media that actually informs on this subject. Read the recent Atlantic article about ISIS. You'll get a thorough and well researched view into their history, motivations, and vision. You, by the way, fit into their vision as a dead guy.
What's wrong with that word? It's succinct, and accurate. People who embrace a value system that makes it acceptable to kill teachers because they seek to educate young girls, or who think their vision of the world is best served by attempting to provoke an apocalyptic war by strolling down a street in Paris and shooting up restaurants full of people on a Friday night specially because those people are enjoying themselves... that's evil. Evil is a handy word, because it saves us the trouble of explaining, each and every time we mention them, "you know, those guys who burn people alive, cut heads off because of religion, line up villagers and gun them down in order to make recruitment videos, and gang-rape women from other religions in order to please Allah"... that's such a lot of fuss to type every time, don't you think?
civilized discourse should not reduce itself to calling people - or organizations of people - "evil"
Oops! I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were trolling for the lulz there. My mistake. Civilized discourse should definitely refer to ISIS as "The Gentlemen from Raqqa" - that's appropriate.
Maybe that's actually the point : there is a bit of good in all of us, even the worst.
So what? If somebody's "good" (say, a moment of affection for one's own children, perhaps - or in whatever form it comes) isn't enough to stop them from gang raping women and burning people alive, then that little bit of goodness is completely meaningless.
That's the thing about evil. It doesn't have an absolute definition, and it is entirely dependent on the point of view.
If your point of view grants you the right to simply kill someone you don't like because you don't like then, then you are objectively evil. It's as simple as that. Morality can be objectively weighed when it bears on how that moral framework defines your relationships with other people. Death is absolute, not relative to your point of view. A value system that tells you that you can dish out death for no reason other than to please an imaginary magical being is a moral framework that is inherently inferior value systems that consider that to be unacceptable.
don't forget that Hitler got to power via popular vote
How does that change any evaluation of his value system, or the values of people who supported him? It doesn't. Millions and millions of Muslims directly and happily say that they support ISIS. 16% of all French citizens approve of ISIS and their agenda. That horrifying little bit of reality doesn't make that world view less objectively evil. It just means there are that many people who embrace it.
And you believe you can accomplish this goal by wearing a colander on your head in your drivers license photo?
No, by doing any number of things that bring attention to the places where irrational/magical thinking and government agency policies intersect. The issue of photo IDs is a very significant one, and the point is that government policies that allow a person to obscure their features while their features are being recorded for legal purposes, and to do so because the government considers that particular person's magical thinking to be officially approved magical thinking, is ridiculous. The woman in question knew that her initial request to have her ID taken with the colander would be denied, and that was her entire point. She then fought it in court specifically in order to shine more light on the capricious way in which government does, and does not, play winners and losers with certain irrational people, and not with others.
She won in court on exactly those grounds. But because the ruling did the opposite of what she wanted (finding it unreasonable for certain myths to be supported by the government, and not others - and instead granting HER myth equal status), she went ahead with the photo so people like you would have to grapple with the government's position. You, alas, continue to completely miss the point - which is why she did it. So that you'd perhaps talk about it out loud enough until somebody gets the big picture through your head.
You mean annoying a few folks at the DMV and, in your best case, wasting tax dollars and the limited resources of our courts.
It didn't have to go that way. The state government could just as easily have looked at her request and said, "You know, she's right. We shouldn't be in the business of propping up one person's imaginary friend while dismissing the next person's - so we'll change our policy that plays favorites." See? They could have done that in a single afternoon's meeting, and been done with it. But no, the state government decided to fight to keep the DMV in the business of supporting specific (but not all) religious idiosyncrasies, and dismissing others. And a judge correctly ruled that the government isn't in that role. Now we just need a LOT of people to wear silly hats to the DMV so that the state government can complete this exercise and conclude that nobody gets to obscure their features with headwear in their official ID photos.
Rest assured, it was not the glorious victory you believe it to be but more along the lines of "we don't want to deal with this, let the nut wear their hat".
But they've already BEEN making the decision to let nuts where things on their heads in official ID photos. Just not all nuts. That's a violation of the equal protection clause of the constitution. That you consider concerns about that to be "delusional" shows how uninformed you actually are on this topic. You're obsessing about one rhetorical device and deliberately covering your ears whenever anyone talks about what's actually at stake.
No, FSM is the combination of a rather pathetic strawman (that religion is as simplistic as the FSM satire)
What's complicated about it? The world is divided into two groups: people who engage in magical thinking, and people who don't. It's that simple. All of the little cultural nuances are secondary to that. The particulars of one religion's own beliefs about how the universe works or what meat is holy or which funny hat or sack of cloth or beard style properly displays one's piety are completely secondary to having given in to magical thinking in the first place. There's no straw man argument involved: satirically illustrating that magical thinkers are not only magical thinkers but also capricious in which other people's magical thinking and thoughts they consider to be valid is dead on. It's accurate observation, illuminated through the use of satire.
combined with lying through your teeth (that you genuinely believe it)
What? Who genuinely believes it WHAT? Are you saying that some poor Muslim woman whose husband will beat her if she doesn't wear a bag over her head genuinely believes that a benevolent all-powerful magical being with a flying-horse-riding prophet wants her to live like that? Now THAT is some lying-through-the-teeth. But you seem to think that firmly holding one's ground in satirically illustrating the absurdity of having a government official decide if that poor woman genuinely believes that Allah wants her drivers license photo to be a cloth bag with two eyes looking out of it is someone insincere. Are you even listening to yourself?
to show how dickish you can be about cultures and viewpoints other than your own
Who's being dickish - the person who bullies their child into a lifetime of guilt-producing twisted magical thinking, or the person who makes an effort to point out how toxic that is?
For all of humanity, which would benefit greatly from a reduction in magical thinking and especially in government endorsement of magical thinking.
The argument from the ID crowd wasn't "I believe this, so it should be taught", as Bobby Henderson seems to believe. It was "there is some legitimate scientific controversy, so it should be taught". That's wrong, but not in any way addressed by the FSM letter that started this nonsense.
The FSM letter challenged the state government to either embrace the FSM as another "legitimate" perspective or explain why the more popular mainstream religious mythology WAS "legitimate" while the FSM was not. That puts the burden squarely on the government to explain in detail their capricious embrace of one particular mythology (something they cannot do) or get out of the business of promulgating religious mythology in the science classroom, as they should. Using absurdity and satire as a tool to illustrate other absurdity is a time-honored and very effective tool. And even when that illustration fails to persuade state government officials, it still provides millions of spectators another tool to use in public discourse. It becomes cultural shorthand, just an Jonathan Swift's fictional characters and scenarios did centuries ago.
It is obviously completely unrelated to the claim it was intended to parody. You'd think that self-described rationalists wouldn't immediately abandon reason the instant something comes along that appears to support one of their positions!
Wow, you are still not getting it at all, are you. Reasonable, rational people don't REALLY believe in the FSM, just like the vast majority of people don't really believe in the fantastical claims of bronze-age desert mystics as re-interpreted by medieval propagandists. Treating the FSM as a symbol for the absurdity of organized, dogmatic magical thinking requires keeping it present in the conversation. Putting the FSM on the bumper of your car isn't meant to say that you REALLY believe there is an FSM, it's meant to show how silly it is to believe in magic in the first place.
All the FSM thing did was highlight how irrational atheists and self-described skeptics and rationalists can be.
Only if you are completely obtuse and are actively trying to miss the point of the satire. You don't think that the people who put on Saturday Night Live really believe that their fake news segment actually IS them soberly reporting the news, do you? Hmmm. Maybe you do!
Wanting to make fun of other people's religions and laugh at them for being superstitious is one thing, and not wanting to have intelligent design taught in schools is fine, but then turning around and calling that whole idea a religion of its own that deserves to be taken seriously by society seems nothing less than self-defeating.
You're not getting it. This case (the colander on the head) is pointing out the absurdity of "god makes me wear this" headware generally, and of state-government-level capricious laws/policies with respect to it in particular.
The only way to point out how ridiculous religion is, is to do something just as ridiculous, and force the government to treat it with the same level of credulity and absurd dignity. So this is just a case of the same tools (satire generally, and the FSM's teachings in particular) to point out another area of nonsense, separate from the intelligent design masterstroke with which it all started.
Oh, well then, that covers it. They definitely should have known about those particular people and their plan to to carry out never before seen suicide attacks of that particular type on those planes on that day.
So this isn't about doing what is right or will lead to a better world, but being stronger and forcing everyone into submission?
No, it's about stopping people who DO think that way, and who will only be stopped through the use of force. I know you'd like to wish those sorts of people away, but they exist. Some of them visited Paris last night, and hundreds of thousands more are now taking over large chunks of Iraq and Syria.
I got the bigger club: Do what I say
When "what I say" is "stop trying to remake the world in your twisted medieval vision by slaughtering innocent people" then yes, that's a reasonable thing to say.
This isn't the best way to instill confidence that the "western way of living" is better or more moral.
What? We already know that. Plenty of people in the middle east already know that representative, constitutional democracy is better. But those are exactly the people that are being killed by regimes like Assad's and groups like ISIS. The sure sign that it's a better way of living is that people who think women should be killed for teaching girls to read are trying to stop it.
If you treat people like shit, it is fairly likely that they won't want to integrate.
They are treated like shit BECAUSE they don't want to immigrate. Because they are giving housing in public facilities, and then spit on women as they walk by. Because they are given food bought and paid for by their hosts, and then protest in the streets because the food isn't the same as back home. Because they destroy property as they show up, leave mountains of trash behind them, and treat places like Greece or France like doormats on their way to what they think will be an easy life in Scandinavia or the UK. Because a high percentage of them are lying about who they are and where they're from and why they're there (see the example of one of the murderers last night in Paris - a "refugee" who came in through Greece just a month ago).
And I just hope the police catches whoever is behind this (organization/financing) and locks them up for good.
As pointed out, the people behind this number in the hundreds of thousands, and get cultural and financial and logistical support from people who number in the millions.
Also I care about the next generation of immigrants which has not been radicalized yet
The next generation of immigrants - almost entirely young men their 20's who are NOT from Syria - are, right now, swamping Europe by the hundreds of thousands. They are ALREADY radicalized.
Of course the immigrants have to change their ways.
Look at the seasonal burning of parts of Paris. Those immigrants are (pretending to be) mad because the French won't change their ways and allow growing parts of that country to become self-contained, Sharia-run Muslim ghettos. They show up demanding that their host countries change to suit them, not the other way around. That problem is now epidemic in the very countries that have gone the farthest to extend such a welcome. They are already regretting it.
There were strong warnings in advance of the 9/11 attack, which the Bush/Cheney administration chose to ignore.
Please cite the specific actionable intelligence that was available to the White House to stop those guys on the airplanes.
While you're at it, please talk about why the same group wasn't stopped by the Clinton administration when it repeatedly HAD attacked (and claimed responsibility for doing so) and killed many hundreds of people, including those in our embassies, onboard a naval vessel, and in the World Trade Center.
They then ignored the reality that Iraq had NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11, and lied their way to get us into Iraq
What? We were ALREADY IN IRAQ. We were there enforcing the no-fly zone to prevent Saddam from continuing to slaughter thousands of his ethnic opponents. We were camped out in the neighborhood because Saddam had invaded Kuiwait and been pushed back - but was left intact following his promises to adhere to a long list of terms... NONE of which he met. And since he continued to obstruct weapons inspections, attacked allied aircraft, DID send cash and support to regional terrorists (including televised cash deliveries to families of suicide bombers in order to garner more regional sympathy), was stealing UN food and support money, was still making long range missiles and on and on... the UN agreed that force was necessary. The US legislative houses saw all the same intel and agreed (including a vote for force by Hillary Clinton), and it was done. Your straw man about 9/11 is nonsense, and you know it.
This broke Iraq, and gave rise to ISIS
No, Iraq fell apart and ISIS rose because Obama prematurely pulled the plug on the stabilizing presence of the US military. That was years too soon.
the millions of others our nation has displaced, maimed, or killed in the service of our empire
Oh I get it now, you're a troll that's only pretending to know anything about history or current events. Silly me.
just like the Nazis did for most of Europe during WWII
The Nazis could never have risen to power or carried out their expansion and countless atrocities without the tacit approval and direct political and financial support of large swathes of the German population. That's exactly the point I was making about large swathes of the Islamic world's support for militant jihaddis, so thank you for reinforcing what I was saying.
performing terrorist drone strikes all over the world
Please cite the use of US air strikes in:
India
Russia
China
Japan
Korea
Continental Europe
Britain
South America
Central America
Australia
New Zealand
Greenland
Iceland
Antarctica
Canada
I know, how about you just talk about where are strikes ARE being used, it's a lot simpler. Perhaps you can also then draw some conclusions about what the militants operating in those areas have in common. And then you can talk about how, instead of simply paving those areas over into glass, which we could do any time we want, we're instead going to as much trouble as possible to hit and limit damage to individual targets that match very specific criteria.
If you look at France: They have a huge problem integrating immigrants
No, they have a huge problem with immigrants who don't want to become part of French culture, don't want to do what's necessary to thrive in that economy, and who show up expecting to be handed a nice standard of living in exchange for... showing up. Just like is happening across Europe generally, now. Europe has only itself to blame for allowing it to happen.
you have to wonder, if this is really about religion or about the youth having no future and then finding a reason for getting violent
It's about culture. The religion in question is the organizing system within the culture that's causing the problems. The voices of that religion are the motivating features of the culture, and the fundamental features of that religion spell out how the people who adhere to it are supposed to interact with those who aren't members. That religion calls for exactly the sort of thing we just saw in Paris. It's a religious culture following the urgings of the religiously authoritative people who are given power within that culture. Young Muslims in France didn't just wake up realizing that their culture doesn't grant them a cushy existence in France, and then roll out of bed and find a backpack full of grenades and an AK-47. They're not leaving Algeria or Syria to come to France, they're bringing Algeria and Syria TO France, and expecting it to become, culturally, what they wish their own countries has been, but fueled magically with French prosperity even as they attempt to erode the Frenchness out of France.
Quit making excuses for medieval-minded theocratic thugs and their willing followers. There are poor people in Appalachia, too. They're getting even more unhappy as the EPA strangles their historical way of making a living. They aren't shooting up concert halls or lopping heads off of people they don't like.
The volume of guns causes more deaths than it prevents.
Except that there are more guns in private ownership now than there were 30 years ago, and murders of all kinds - including those involving guns - have been going down every year. They are lower now than they have been since the 1980's. Multiple studies show that self-defense use (including simple brandishment) occurs thousands of times per month, greatly exceeding the number of times criminals use guns to kill victims.
Yes, children find guns. And also poisons. And the car keys. And more of them die falling down stairs or in sports accidents than through the use of any weapon of any kind. If the ongoing huge uptick in personally purchased guns were the cause of the sorts of things you describe, why are the numbers of such events going down? Please be specific.
In your original post, you were trying to say that, "Muslims were bad then, therefore muslims are bad now."
Don't tell me what I was trying to say. Just read what I actually said.
Muslims were bad 500 years ago, and the ones who are acting that way to day ARE still bad. You really need that explained to you in clearer language than I first used? I reasonably assumed that you are able to parse the conversation in the context of knowing some basic history and knowing some current events. If you're foggy on either of those, you've got more catching up to do before carrying on with this conversation. If not, then my remarks are perfectly in context and you know it.
Because we're talking about a group (ISIS) that employs huge fleets of vehicles, operates oil facilities and transportation systems, conducts international banking, and involves tens of thousands of people operating in the open. They are awash in cash, and have the vocal support of people across the middle east and in little hotspots of insanity around the world. If Timothy McVeigh had been operating with thousands of other people and hundreds of millions of dollars while boasting about what he'd done and would do next... you really think he'd be "operating?"
Slashdot Mirror
Really? So we can - as everyone does - call them murderers, terrorists, rapists, and thieves ... and that's all fine, because that doesn't hurt their feelings and make them go online and tell prospective recruits that the world is being mean to them. But saying that doing those things is evil ... well, that's just too much! Mass rapes, decapitating children, keeping slaves ... pointing that out is OK, but making a value judgement about them, well that is just MEAN, huh? Are you even listening to yourself?
That doesn't change the fact that we are evil in the view of someone else.
But the difference is that their judgement is based on a moral framework that is, by definition, objectively inferior. The radical Islamist jihaddi's judgement that we (Westerners) are evil is based on things like our unwillingness to do things like kill women for learning to read, or for having been raped. So explaining to me that they find the west to be evil is completely pointless. I don't care. Consider the source of that judgement, and the value system that drives it. Anybody who engages in worrisome hand-wringing over the fact that an objectively evil person doesn't approve of your values ... that person is the worst sort of moral relativist, and through their inability (or unwillingness) to call things what they are, gives moral support to the murderers in question.
We can adequately describe the difference between them and ourselves without reducing our own discourse to such absurdly childish terminology.
So I suppose you prefer "naughty" for gang raping mass murders who burn people alive for religious reasons? Or perhaps "miscreants?" Or "rascals?" I detect a big dose of poisonous moral relativsim that's preventing you from "childishly" describing something in honest terms, lest you commit the unforgivable sin of using your OWN moral framework to make judgement.
Evil
adjective
1. morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked:
evil deeds; an evil life.
2. harmful; injurious:
evil laws.
3. characterized or accompanied by misfortune or suffering; unfortunate; disastrous:
to be fallen on evil days.
4. due to actual or imputed bad conduct or character:
an evil reputation.
5. marked by anger, irritability, irascibility, etc.:
He is known for his evil disposition.
The Italians have a colorful expression – to make a hole in water – to describe an effort with no hope of succeeding
Clearly no Italian has ever owned a boat.
And no, the first amendment is completely silent on whether or not your professed belief in magic should grant you more power of self expression than would your sense of humor, or a family tradition, or your politics, or anything else. You are completely backwards on that. The government is, by the first amendment, explicitly barred from propping up one person's religion over another person's world view. Having capricious rules that say a devoted Yankees fan can't wear a Yankees ball cap in an ID, but a 16 year old girl that's been bullied by her Dad's imam can wind up with a driver's license photo that identifies her as a cloth sack with eyes
These protections have existed since the nation was founded.
Right. Which is why when they are applied unevenly and capriciously, it flies in the face of the constitution.
should those protections be removed, and the government was free to involve itself in the business of religion.
By picking and choosing which lifestyle clothing (religious or otherwise) is more important than another, and thus deserving or not of government sanction and support, the government IS in the business of religion. How are you not getting that? That's the entire point! The first amendment prohibits the government from looking at two people and saying: person number one, your relationship with the government is different and more important than you, person number two, because of your religious differences.
The government also makes laws that states you could be fired from your job for expressing an opinion
You are not forced to have such a job. That's the difference. If you want to go work for the government, you have to agree to be careful about the circumstances in which you say certain things. Why? Because YOU ARE NOW PART OF THE GOVERNMENT. And that changes your relationship with the rest of society. If you don't like being put in that position of having to be thoughtful about the sounds that come out of your mouth, just don't look to be part of the government. Get a job where the boss really doesn't care what you say or when or where you say it. How is this complicated?
Your line logic lead to free speech zones, which yes; you are free to say what ever you want (just like you could in prison), but far away from it being meaningful.
Ah, that old canard. Are you just pretending to not understand that topic, or have you simply never thought through what it's all about?
... but your objection to control over that space would mean that all they have to do is show up in bigger numbers and shout down your assembly. Beautiful, right? Just how you'd like things to go on? Do you really want a bunch of Occupy idiots sitting in the middle of the street stopping your planned, permitted, and carefully-made-safe event? Or the KKK? Or the local chapter of Islamic Jihad? Or Greenpeace, who will do anything for camera time?
... and enjoy the same protections for YOUR free speech that they're enjoying by not allowing you to shout them down if you don't like them.
Let's say your favored political party just won an election. You, as a caucus of legislators and as a group of people who have assembled under the protections of the first amendment, make the well understood arrangements to host a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, to celebrate your candidate's inauguration. Traffic has to be controlled, police have to be around to deal with those who might want to hurt attendees, etc.
Now say that your political opponents would rather that your peaceful assembly is not allowed to go on, just because they don't like you and what you stand for. They didn't make arrangements for the use of the public space in question
EVERY ONE of those groups can do exactly the same thing YOU did: call up the Parks Department, and make arrangements to hold their OWN event in that same public space - with all of the same permitting costs and logistics that YOU had to take care of. And because it's their event, YOU don't get to gather a bunch of your friends and shout down their event. If they want to be magnanimous, perhaps they'll let you use some of the park space for which they obtained a permit, so that you can blow off some steam. And maybe you'll grant them the same courtesy when you hold a similar event.
You ARE free to say whatever you want. But if you want to crash someone else's pre-arranged, permitted, and secured event on what amounts to rented public property, too bad. Book the same space and do your own thing next week
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.
If you were right about Israel, they'd do exactly what you say the other side would do. And yet they very demonstrably do NOT do that, even when they are attacked by people indiscriminately attacking them with hundreds of rockets.
My only issue with that is that I don't necessarily really know that ISIS is about irrational bloodthirsty marketing campaigns.
In Western media we never actually get to hear the other side of the story
You're just not bothering to consume the media that actually informs on this subject. Read the recent Atlantic article about ISIS . You'll get a thorough and well researched view into their history, motivations, and vision. You, by the way, fit into their vision as a dead guy.
civilized discourse should not reduce itself to calling people - or organizations of people - "evil"
Oops! I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were trolling for the lulz there. My mistake. Civilized discourse should definitely refer to ISIS as "The Gentlemen from Raqqa" - that's appropriate.
Maybe that's actually the point : there is a bit of good in all of us, even the worst.
So what? If somebody's "good" (say, a moment of affection for one's own children, perhaps - or in whatever form it comes) isn't enough to stop them from gang raping women and burning people alive, then that little bit of goodness is completely meaningless.
That's the thing about evil. It doesn't have an absolute definition, and it is entirely dependent on the point of view.
If your point of view grants you the right to simply kill someone you don't like because you don't like then, then you are objectively evil. It's as simple as that. Morality can be objectively weighed when it bears on how that moral framework defines your relationships with other people. Death is absolute, not relative to your point of view. A value system that tells you that you can dish out death for no reason other than to please an imaginary magical being is a moral framework that is inherently inferior value systems that consider that to be unacceptable.
don't forget that Hitler got to power via popular vote
How does that change any evaluation of his value system, or the values of people who supported him? It doesn't. Millions and millions of Muslims directly and happily say that they support ISIS. 16% of all French citizens approve of ISIS and their agenda. That horrifying little bit of reality doesn't make that world view less objectively evil. It just means there are that many people who embrace it.
And you believe you can accomplish this goal by wearing a colander on your head in your drivers license photo?
No, by doing any number of things that bring attention to the places where irrational/magical thinking and government agency policies intersect. The issue of photo IDs is a very significant one, and the point is that government policies that allow a person to obscure their features while their features are being recorded for legal purposes, and to do so because the government considers that particular person's magical thinking to be officially approved magical thinking, is ridiculous. The woman in question knew that her initial request to have her ID taken with the colander would be denied, and that was her entire point. She then fought it in court specifically in order to shine more light on the capricious way in which government does, and does not, play winners and losers with certain irrational people, and not with others.
She won in court on exactly those grounds. But because the ruling did the opposite of what she wanted (finding it unreasonable for certain myths to be supported by the government, and not others - and instead granting HER myth equal status), she went ahead with the photo so people like you would have to grapple with the government's position. You, alas, continue to completely miss the point - which is why she did it. So that you'd perhaps talk about it out loud enough until somebody gets the big picture through your head.
You mean annoying a few folks at the DMV and, in your best case, wasting tax dollars and the limited resources of our courts.
It didn't have to go that way. The state government could just as easily have looked at her request and said, "You know, she's right. We shouldn't be in the business of propping up one person's imaginary friend while dismissing the next person's - so we'll change our policy that plays favorites." See? They could have done that in a single afternoon's meeting, and been done with it. But no, the state government decided to fight to keep the DMV in the business of supporting specific (but not all) religious idiosyncrasies, and dismissing others. And a judge correctly ruled that the government isn't in that role. Now we just need a LOT of people to wear silly hats to the DMV so that the state government can complete this exercise and conclude that nobody gets to obscure their features with headwear in their official ID photos.
Rest assured, it was not the glorious victory you believe it to be but more along the lines of "we don't want to deal with this, let the nut wear their hat".
But they've already BEEN making the decision to let nuts where things on their heads in official ID photos. Just not all nuts. That's a violation of the equal protection clause of the constitution. That you consider concerns about that to be "delusional" shows how uninformed you actually are on this topic. You're obsessing about one rhetorical device and deliberately covering your ears whenever anyone talks about what's actually at stake.
No, FSM is the combination of a rather pathetic strawman (that religion is as simplistic as the FSM satire)
What's complicated about it? The world is divided into two groups: people who engage in magical thinking, and people who don't. It's that simple. All of the little cultural nuances are secondary to that. The particulars of one religion's own beliefs about how the universe works or what meat is holy or which funny hat or sack of cloth or beard style properly displays one's piety are completely secondary to having given in to magical thinking in the first place. There's no straw man argument involved: satirically illustrating that magical thinkers are not only magical thinkers but also capricious in which other people's magical thinking and thoughts they consider to be valid is dead on. It's accurate observation, illuminated through the use of satire.
combined with lying through your teeth (that you genuinely believe it)
What? Who genuinely believes it WHAT? Are you saying that some poor Muslim woman whose husband will beat her if she doesn't wear a bag over her head genuinely believes that a benevolent all-powerful magical being with a flying-horse-riding prophet wants her to live like that? Now THAT is some lying-through-the-teeth. But you seem to think that firmly holding one's ground in satirically illustrating the absurdity of having a government official decide if that poor woman genuinely believes that Allah wants her drivers license photo to be a cloth bag with two eyes looking out of it is someone insincere. Are you even listening to yourself?
to show how dickish you can be about cultures and viewpoints other than your own
Who's being dickish - the person who bullies their child into a lifetime of guilt-producing twisted magical thinking, or the person who makes an effort to point out how toxic that is?
For whose benefit is this being done?
For all of humanity, which would benefit greatly from a reduction in magical thinking and especially in government endorsement of magical thinking.
The argument from the ID crowd wasn't "I believe this, so it should be taught", as Bobby Henderson seems to believe. It was "there is some legitimate scientific controversy, so it should be taught". That's wrong, but not in any way addressed by the FSM letter that started this nonsense.
The FSM letter challenged the state government to either embrace the FSM as another "legitimate" perspective or explain why the more popular mainstream religious mythology WAS "legitimate" while the FSM was not. That puts the burden squarely on the government to explain in detail their capricious embrace of one particular mythology (something they cannot do) or get out of the business of promulgating religious mythology in the science classroom, as they should. Using absurdity and satire as a tool to illustrate other absurdity is a time-honored and very effective tool. And even when that illustration fails to persuade state government officials, it still provides millions of spectators another tool to use in public discourse. It becomes cultural shorthand, just an Jonathan Swift's fictional characters and scenarios did centuries ago.
It is obviously completely unrelated to the claim it was intended to parody. You'd think that self-described rationalists wouldn't immediately abandon reason the instant something comes along that appears to support one of their positions!
Wow, you are still not getting it at all, are you. Reasonable, rational people don't REALLY believe in the FSM, just like the vast majority of people don't really believe in the fantastical claims of bronze-age desert mystics as re-interpreted by medieval propagandists. Treating the FSM as a symbol for the absurdity of organized, dogmatic magical thinking requires keeping it present in the conversation. Putting the FSM on the bumper of your car isn't meant to say that you REALLY believe there is an FSM, it's meant to show how silly it is to believe in magic in the first place.
All the FSM thing did was highlight how irrational atheists and self-described skeptics and rationalists can be.
Only if you are completely obtuse and are actively trying to miss the point of the satire. You don't think that the people who put on Saturday Night Live really believe that their fake news segment actually IS them soberly reporting the news, do you? Hmmm. Maybe you do!
Wanting to make fun of other people's religions and laugh at them for being superstitious is one thing, and not wanting to have intelligent design taught in schools is fine, but then turning around and calling that whole idea a religion of its own that deserves to be taken seriously by society seems nothing less than self-defeating.
You're not getting it. This case (the colander on the head) is pointing out the absurdity of "god makes me wear this" headware generally, and of state-government-level capricious laws/policies with respect to it in particular.
The only way to point out how ridiculous religion is, is to do something just as ridiculous, and force the government to treat it with the same level of credulity and absurd dignity. So this is just a case of the same tools (satire generally, and the FSM's teachings in particular) to point out another area of nonsense, separate from the intelligent design masterstroke with which it all started.
There must have been some.
Oh, well then, that covers it. They definitely should have known about those particular people and their plan to to carry out never before seen suicide attacks of that particular type on those planes on that day.
So this isn't about doing what is right or will lead to a better world, but being stronger and forcing everyone into submission?
No, it's about stopping people who DO think that way, and who will only be stopped through the use of force. I know you'd like to wish those sorts of people away, but they exist. Some of them visited Paris last night, and hundreds of thousands more are now taking over large chunks of Iraq and Syria.
I got the bigger club: Do what I say
When "what I say" is "stop trying to remake the world in your twisted medieval vision by slaughtering innocent people" then yes, that's a reasonable thing to say.
This isn't the best way to instill confidence that the "western way of living" is better or more moral.
What? We already know that. Plenty of people in the middle east already know that representative, constitutional democracy is better. But those are exactly the people that are being killed by regimes like Assad's and groups like ISIS. The sure sign that it's a better way of living is that people who think women should be killed for teaching girls to read are trying to stop it.
If you treat people like shit, it is fairly likely that they won't want to integrate.
They are treated like shit BECAUSE they don't want to immigrate. Because they are giving housing in public facilities, and then spit on women as they walk by. Because they are given food bought and paid for by their hosts, and then protest in the streets because the food isn't the same as back home. Because they destroy property as they show up, leave mountains of trash behind them, and treat places like Greece or France like doormats on their way to what they think will be an easy life in Scandinavia or the UK. Because a high percentage of them are lying about who they are and where they're from and why they're there (see the example of one of the murderers last night in Paris - a "refugee" who came in through Greece just a month ago).
And I just hope the police catches whoever is behind this (organization/financing) and locks them up for good.
As pointed out, the people behind this number in the hundreds of thousands, and get cultural and financial and logistical support from people who number in the millions.
Also I care about the next generation of immigrants which has not been radicalized yet
The next generation of immigrants - almost entirely young men their 20's who are NOT from Syria - are, right now, swamping Europe by the hundreds of thousands. They are ALREADY radicalized.
Of course the immigrants have to change their ways.
Look at the seasonal burning of parts of Paris. Those immigrants are (pretending to be) mad because the French won't change their ways and allow growing parts of that country to become self-contained, Sharia-run Muslim ghettos. They show up demanding that their host countries change to suit them, not the other way around. That problem is now epidemic in the very countries that have gone the farthest to extend such a welcome. They are already regretting it.
There were strong warnings in advance of the 9/11 attack, which the Bush/Cheney administration chose to ignore.
Please cite the specific actionable intelligence that was available to the White House to stop those guys on the airplanes.
While you're at it, please talk about why the same group wasn't stopped by the Clinton administration when it repeatedly HAD attacked (and claimed responsibility for doing so) and killed many hundreds of people, including those in our embassies, onboard a naval vessel, and in the World Trade Center.
They then ignored the reality that Iraq had NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11, and lied their way to get us into Iraq
What? We were ALREADY IN IRAQ. We were there enforcing the no-fly zone to prevent Saddam from continuing to slaughter thousands of his ethnic opponents. We were camped out in the neighborhood because Saddam had invaded Kuiwait and been pushed back - but was left intact following his promises to adhere to a long list of terms ... NONE of which he met. And since he continued to obstruct weapons inspections, attacked allied aircraft, DID send cash and support to regional terrorists (including televised cash deliveries to families of suicide bombers in order to garner more regional sympathy), was stealing UN food and support money, was still making long range missiles and on and on ... the UN agreed that force was necessary. The US legislative houses saw all the same intel and agreed (including a vote for force by Hillary Clinton), and it was done. Your straw man about 9/11 is nonsense, and you know it.
This broke Iraq, and gave rise to ISIS
No, Iraq fell apart and ISIS rose because Obama prematurely pulled the plug on the stabilizing presence of the US military. That was years too soon.
the millions of others our nation has displaced, maimed, or killed in the service of our empire
Oh I get it now, you're a troll that's only pretending to know anything about history or current events. Silly me.
Like the more than 150,000 Iraqis killed during Bush's invasion?
Almost all of whom were Muslims killed by other Muslims with whom they'd been having a sectarian bloodletting for centuries. Those Iraqis?
just like the Nazis did for most of Europe during WWII
The Nazis could never have risen to power or carried out their expansion and countless atrocities without the tacit approval and direct political and financial support of large swathes of the German population. That's exactly the point I was making about large swathes of the Islamic world's support for militant jihaddis, so thank you for reinforcing what I was saying.
performing terrorist drone strikes all over the world
Please cite the use of US air strikes in:
India
Russia
China
Japan
Korea
Continental Europe
Britain
South America
Central America
Australia
New Zealand
Greenland
Iceland
Antarctica
Canada
I know, how about you just talk about where are strikes ARE being used, it's a lot simpler. Perhaps you can also then draw some conclusions about what the militants operating in those areas have in common. And then you can talk about how, instead of simply paving those areas over into glass, which we could do any time we want, we're instead going to as much trouble as possible to hit and limit damage to individual targets that match very specific criteria.
If you look at France: They have a huge problem integrating immigrants
No, they have a huge problem with immigrants who don't want to become part of French culture, don't want to do what's necessary to thrive in that economy, and who show up expecting to be handed a nice standard of living in exchange for ... showing up. Just like is happening across Europe generally, now. Europe has only itself to blame for allowing it to happen.
you have to wonder, if this is really about religion or about the youth having no future and then finding a reason for getting violent
It's about culture. The religion in question is the organizing system within the culture that's causing the problems. The voices of that religion are the motivating features of the culture, and the fundamental features of that religion spell out how the people who adhere to it are supposed to interact with those who aren't members. That religion calls for exactly the sort of thing we just saw in Paris. It's a religious culture following the urgings of the religiously authoritative people who are given power within that culture. Young Muslims in France didn't just wake up realizing that their culture doesn't grant them a cushy existence in France, and then roll out of bed and find a backpack full of grenades and an AK-47. They're not leaving Algeria or Syria to come to France, they're bringing Algeria and Syria TO France, and expecting it to become, culturally, what they wish their own countries has been, but fueled magically with French prosperity even as they attempt to erode the Frenchness out of France.
Quit making excuses for medieval-minded theocratic thugs and their willing followers. There are poor people in Appalachia, too. They're getting even more unhappy as the EPA strangles their historical way of making a living. They aren't shooting up concert halls or lopping heads off of people they don't like.
The volume of guns causes more deaths than it prevents.
Except that there are more guns in private ownership now than there were 30 years ago, and murders of all kinds - including those involving guns - have been going down every year. They are lower now than they have been since the 1980's. Multiple studies show that self-defense use (including simple brandishment) occurs thousands of times per month, greatly exceeding the number of times criminals use guns to kill victims.
Yes, children find guns. And also poisons. And the car keys. And more of them die falling down stairs or in sports accidents than through the use of any weapon of any kind. If the ongoing huge uptick in personally purchased guns were the cause of the sorts of things you describe, why are the numbers of such events going down? Please be specific.
In your original post, you were trying to say that, "Muslims were bad then, therefore muslims are bad now."
Don't tell me what I was trying to say. Just read what I actually said.
Muslims were bad 500 years ago, and the ones who are acting that way to day ARE still bad. You really need that explained to you in clearer language than I first used? I reasonably assumed that you are able to parse the conversation in the context of knowing some basic history and knowing some current events. If you're foggy on either of those, you've got more catching up to do before carrying on with this conversation. If not, then my remarks are perfectly in context and you know it.
Why couldn't they operate?
Because we're talking about a group (ISIS) that employs huge fleets of vehicles, operates oil facilities and transportation systems, conducts international banking, and involves tens of thousands of people operating in the open. They are awash in cash, and have the vocal support of people across the middle east and in little hotspots of insanity around the world. If Timothy McVeigh had been operating with thousands of other people and hundreds of millions of dollars while boasting about what he'd done and would do next ... you really think he'd be "operating?"
Your point doesn't matter when it's not the Catholics we're talking about. You do actually understand that, right?