I think it's pretty obvious at this point that religion is a sickness. I don't claim to think that some religions are necessarily more harmful than others, all of them encourage an us vs. them mentality which is detrimental to everyone.
That's the head in the sand approach to religion. The fact is that Jesus was a hippie that preached peace, love, and virtue, while Mohammad was a conquering warlord. And while there's some horrific shit in the Old Testament, and Christianity had some dark periods, Judaism and Christianity today have mellowed out. Islam, on the other hand, has never shed it's violent and authoritarian roots.
The problem is non-stop violence in the middle east, not whatever religion those people follow.
"Nevertheless, there is a problem that goes back to the very beginnings of Muslim history: From the time that the first Muslims established themselves as the rulers of Medina, Islam was a political and increasingly a legal system as well as a faith. In Medina Muhammad continued to be a prophet, but he also became the head of a state and a military leader. With the exception of Southeast Asia (where Islam was spread by traders from the the subcontinent), what we now know as the Muslim world was established by conquest. It is no accident that in traditional Muslim thought the world is divided into two spheres--the realm of Islam (dar ul-Islam) and the realm of war (dar ul-harb). Put simply, it is assumed that the border between Islamic rule and the rest of the world marks a state of war, even if periods of armistice are possible. One should be cognizant of the important fact that there are Muslim thinkers today who are reformulating the nature of Islamic law (sharia) and of Islamic war (jihad) in a much more liberal manner. But one must also recognize that there is a weighty tradition to the contrary and that a large number of Muslims, possibly the majority, does not favor these reformulations."
It would also be a good idea to realize that Trump is doing exactly what ISIS wants.
ISIS has also had goals to infiltrate the West with immigration flows. I don't give a fuck about this "doing exactly what ISIS wants" argument. What's dumb is to import a hateful ideology incompatible with Western values.
When you force a Muslim, or a member of any other religion, to choose between their religion and anything else you're creating a clear path for them to choose violent resistance because they feel justified or "righteous" in doing so.
So you're advocating for violence to impose Sharia law?
This is how we defeat ourselves - we ban members of an entire religion, forcing them to pick a side in what they now see as a war against them
No, nobody is "forced to pick a side". If we wanted to bomb Muslims into the stone age we could. There's a difference between a sane immigration policy and "war against Islam". But if you think not allowing a hateful, foreign ideology into your country justifies violence against your country it is you who are playing into the hands of ISIS.
This argument is so far away from the point that I don't even know how to respond.
I'll take that as you have no response because what I said is fundamentally true. You were talking about "basic human rights" and trying to shame me into thinking people had a right to immigrate here because of hardship. I pointed out why this is not the case by making an analogy to healthcare and food. It really isn't difficult, but keep on pretending me no understand.
What? What the hell are you talking about? There are about 3.3 million Muslims living in the US.
Again, voter blocks have an outsized influence. Just look at Jews, Cubans, blacks, etc.
The US has about 319 million people. So those Sharia-loving Muslims are 0.5% of the population.
And already you can't even draw a cartoon of Muhammad without death threats and assassination attempts. There's a lot that can go wrong before reaching Constitution change.
How close is the UK to being a Muslim state, anyway? There's a much higher percentage of Muslims living there, so how close are they to throwing out the monarchy and living under Sharia?
Again, you think until the entire country is turned upside down everything is fine. You ignore the Sharia courts operating in parallel with the state, you ignore the Muslim neighborhoods with Sharia imposed by gangs, and you ignore the terrorists attacks.
I don't think it does.
That's because you want to ignore facts and stick your head in the sand.
We are the richest country on the planet. A hundred thousand refugees is hardly a blip on the radar. Other poorer European countries are taking in more refugees than we are and somehow they still manage it.
Yeah, and they're fucking over their countries in the process. Hello Germany and Sweden. Rather than walk in their direction, we should walk in the other direction. Islam is uniquely the most violent and authoritarian mainstream religion in the world today. Until they get their house in order, we shouldn't be inviting them into our house.
If the problem is with vetting, then let's change the vetting process.
No, you are by trying to say Trump's actions were fundamentally different. They were both temporary halts to immigration to examine the vetting process.
Trump campaigned on a promise of banning Muslims, it was a specific campaign promise and frankly a foundation of his campaign's support.
And he also backpedaled and talked about extreme vetting. The fact is he did not implement a Muslim ban.
That is quite different than Obama changing the vetting procedures and needing to re-vet everyone and causing delays
Erm, except that is actually what Trump's executive order set out to do. Funny how nobody said a peep about all the hardships that Obama's order must have caused.
He was reacting to terrorists getting through the vetting process, which obviously needed to be tightened.
So is Trump. He's just not waiting around for more terrorist attacks to happen.
Hair Fuhrer's goal is to stop Muslim immigration completely, even if he can't legally just do that.
Constitutionally he may be able to do so. You can find arguments for and against, such as this one, which cites specifically 8 U.S.C. sec. 1182(f):
"Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the "
The only way to conflate those two things is if you think both of them are in response to a threat, except Trump thinks that the threat is "all Muslims" instead of terrorists.
While I think you'd have to have your head in the sand to not recognize the problem with Islam as a whole, Trump's executive order specifically targeted countries that Obama identified as dangerous hotbeds of instability.
The sentence you quote says it is censorship, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.
You claimed it was only "technically" correct. I claim your view is myopic.
No, it isn't. That's a stupid comment to make, and you're a stupid person. And it doesn't address anything in my comment either.
It's comments like these that make me glad Slashdot allows free speech, so that people like you don't get to censor other people for being "trolls" or "misbehaving".
If you're saying "Bigot"
I'm saying it's an inflammatory strawman so you can toss around the word bigot. That makes you a bigoteer. If you want to argue honestly, don't bring in external inflammatory topics.
And if you're living in a country where you're being oppressed, or your government decide to start killing everyone, well fuck you for living there, you probably deserve it.
You don't have a basic human right to immigrate to the United States. Period. Just like you don't have a basic human right to receive health care or food from the United States, despite lots of people in the world who could benefit from such things. Nations have borders for a reason.
The percentage of Muslims in the US who want Sharia law is not a super majority, and when you combine that with the percentage of people in the US who are Muslim it is a very small percentage of the total population.
They tend to vote in blocks and have an outsized influence.
If you want to live under Sharia you wouldn't come here, you would move to a place like Saudi Arabia.
Except we have evidence to the contrary. Plenty of Muslims have immigrated to the West and made all kinds of demands, including violent gangs that impose Sharia in some Muslim neighborhoods like the UK.
You have numbers to show that the majority of Muslim immigrants to Europe are not working to support themselves?
I quoted some numbers here. And let's be clear on who made what claims. You said, "the vast majority of people who want to come here are ready and willing and able to work to support themselves". I said, "Muslims place a vast strain on welfare and prison systems." My linked comment supports what I said.
I don't know how that is supposed to relate to the fact that conservative states take the most federal aid, but whatever.
It means I don't believe in welfare, but until you solve the problem, bringing in more people that will strain the system is just aggravating problems.
Yeah, you know why that's there? Because that's how this country got its start, and that's what helped make the country great.
Times have changed. The United States is a mature country. And you still missed the point that we were selective about who we allowed to immigrate. You'd like to ignore what's going on in Europe and open the flood gates to the "huddled masses".
That's because that never happened. Obama never banned Iraqi immigrants. At one point the rules for vetting changed and people had to be re-vetted, but there is no month when no Iraqis arrived here.
I didn't say, "banned Iraqi immigrants", I said "Obama temporarily halted immigration from Iraq". Both Trump and Obama temporary halted immigration to establish vetting procedures. Trump's version may have been applied to more people, but you can't say Obama "never banned Iraqi immigrants" but then claim Trump did.
Yes, technically banning trolls is censorship, but when we protest censorship and say it's bad, we're not talking about forums removing people for misbehaving.
Actually, we are. It's just that you don't want to admit that it really is censorship. And more to the point, "troll" is often synonymous with "I disagree" or "How dare you have that opinion!"
Another prime example, I guess, would be "bigot". As in "Oh, so you criticize ME for hating homosexuals and wanting to restrict what they do? Well that makes you a bigot!"
Thanks for bringing in a strawman on a completely unrelated topic so you can toss around the word "bigot". That makes you a bigoteer, not a bigot, though.
It wasn't Syria that overthrew two democracies just during the Obama years - that was you.
What two "democracies" would those be?
It wasn't Libya that invaded Iraq over lies and got a million people killed and created million more refugees - that was you.
Congratulations, you got one, but let's not pretend Saddam didn't help dig his own grave or was anything but a brutal dictator that earned the ire of the US and our Middle East allies after invading Kuwait.
Here, let me help you out of your narrow view of the world:
"to examine in order to suppress (see suppress 2) or delete anything considered objectionable <censor the news>; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable <censor out indecent passages>"
I'm all for censorship if it means that people don't need to put up with arsehats.
That sounds fine until people think you are the "arsehat". What I love about Slashdot is the commitment to free speech.
By the way this isn't "censorship" [..] Anti-censorship means the government can't silence you
Yes it is censorship. Censorship isn't limited to just the government. That doesn't mean it is wrong, per se. I think there is a place for moderated discussion, but in general I'm wary, and I find the shadow ban style of censorship particularly odious due to it's lack of transparency.
Like basic human rights and freedom, that kind of thing?
Nations have borders for a reason.
Freedom to practice your religion, freedom from oppression, those kinds of things right?
Muslims here have freedom to practice their religion as long as they follow the law. That does not mean we shouldn't recognize the unique threat to freedom from Islam and import hordes of Muslims.
Which part of that is telling people that they can't come here because they grew up in Iran, or they had the audacity to be attacked by Al-Assad?
They can migrate to other Muslim countries, where they would fit in better.
How about my wife's parents
Yes, there will always be individual cases that seem unjust. That doesn't make the fundamental problem go away.
I would suggest that the vast majority of people in the world share American values like basic human rights
Unfortunately, no, far too many Muslims favor Sharia law over US law.
And I would also suggest that the vast majority of people who want to come here are ready and willing and able to work to support themselves.
That's not the case in Europe. Muslims place a vast strain on welfare and prison systems. And they are not integrating with the rest of society.
If you want to talk about welfare, let's talk about all of the red states that take the most federal aid.
I believe in workfare.
How the mighty have fallen.
I never liked the idea behind that poem. Really, send us all your overflow? Thanks, let us be the dumping ground! I suppose it was somewhat reasonable when America had a small population and growing demand for workers. Even then, the general policy was to prioritize Europeans.
You're suggesting that diversity and refugees are the thing that is going to ruin the country?
I'm suggesting that letting in a bunch of people from the 3rd world who are predominantly Muslim will ruin the country over the long term, yes. In fact, it's happening already in places like Sweden and other European countries.
Not that I want to collect on this, but I'll bet that over the next four years we end up with something that the founders would have been appalled at
That's rather vague, and people have been making these kinds of claims for a long time. Many claim that the current state (before Trump) would have appalled the founding fathers. In other words, your hypothetical bet is meaningless.
Our tradition of being a safe haven for people who are oppressed isn't what is going to destroy is, it's the overreaction of people who think that America is for white people and want to shut us away from the world.
America should be for those who share American values and have something to offer the country, not hordes of economic migrants or those who will end up on welfare.
First off, shutting down another person's speech is authoritarian, hence they are the thing they say they're against. Second, they claim the people they are shutting down are authoritarian, but if you listen to the actual talks, it's about freedom from the authoritarian left.
As for being nationalist, is it so wrong to put your country first? The "progressive" left would bring their own nation to ruin in the name of "diversity" and "refugees".
This is the same type of thinking that groups all Muslims into suicide bombing America hating crazies.
Islam has a problem with terrorism and authoritarianism. It's the most violent and authoritarian mainstream religion today. That doesn't mean every Muslim is a "suicide bombing America hating crazy", but it does mean Islam as a whole has earned the negative associations of terrorism and tyranny.
Similarly, it is the left in America that has demonstrated it's propensity for violence in the last several years. They are the ones shutting down speakers, rioting, assaulting, and blocking public access.
Hillary should be considered "Lawful" Evil. The Clintons made a pretense of following the law, but I think if they were held to the same standards as normal people they would have been convicted a long time ago.
I haven't seen Hillary or Barrack speak out against the violence at Berkeley, so I guess they condone it. They managed to speak out about Trump's immigration policies.
Meanwhile, plenty of leftist media and celebrities have given their nods of approval to leftist violence.
Does that work the other way? Because the left has become extremely racist against white people. It's gotten to the point where a candidate for the DNC chair thinks it's her "job" to "shut other white people down" if they dare to disagree with Black Lives Matter or other race baiters.
I believe white people are smarter than other people but really I'm not a racist.
Objectively, they are, at least statistically, except for Asians, which are smarter than Whites. If believing in objective reality makes you racist, then I'll gladly be called racist.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's pretty obvious at this point that religion is a sickness. I don't claim to think that some religions are necessarily more harmful than others, all of them encourage an us vs. them mentality which is detrimental to everyone.
That's the head in the sand approach to religion. The fact is that Jesus was a hippie that preached peace, love, and virtue, while Mohammad was a conquering warlord. And while there's some horrific shit in the Old Testament, and Christianity had some dark periods, Judaism and Christianity today have mellowed out. Islam, on the other hand, has never shed it's violent and authoritarian roots.
The problem is non-stop violence in the middle east, not whatever religion those people follow.
Islam has bloody borders that go beyond the Middle East:
"Nevertheless, there is a problem that goes back to the very beginnings of Muslim history: From the time that the first Muslims established themselves as the rulers of Medina, Islam was a political and increasingly a legal system as well as a faith. In Medina Muhammad continued to be a prophet, but he also became the head of a state and a military leader. With the exception of Southeast Asia (where Islam was spread by traders from the the subcontinent), what we now know as the Muslim world was established by conquest. It is no accident that in traditional Muslim thought the world is divided into two spheres--the realm of Islam (dar ul-Islam) and the realm of war (dar ul-harb). Put simply, it is assumed that the border between Islamic rule and the rest of the world marks a state of war, even if periods of armistice are possible. One should be cognizant of the important fact that there are Muslim thinkers today who are reformulating the nature of Islamic law (sharia) and of Islamic war (jihad) in a much more liberal manner. But one must also recognize that there is a weighty tradition to the contrary and that a large number of Muslims, possibly the majority, does not favor these reformulations."
It would also be a good idea to realize that Trump is doing exactly what ISIS wants.
ISIS has also had goals to infiltrate the West with immigration flows. I don't give a fuck about this "doing exactly what ISIS wants" argument. What's dumb is to import a hateful ideology incompatible with Western values.
When you force a Muslim, or a member of any other religion, to choose between their religion and anything else you're creating a clear path for them to choose violent resistance because they feel justified or "righteous" in doing so.
So you're advocating for violence to impose Sharia law?
This is how we defeat ourselves - we ban members of an entire religion, forcing them to pick a side in what they now see as a war against them
No, nobody is "forced to pick a side". If we wanted to bomb Muslims into the stone age we could. There's a difference between a sane immigration policy and "war against Islam". But if you think not allowing a hateful, foreign ideology into your country justifies violence against your country it is you who are playing into the hands of ISIS.
It must be "can't even be arsed to read teh fucking summary" day on Slashdot!
Obligatory, "You must be new here."
This argument is so far away from the point that I don't even know how to respond.
I'll take that as you have no response because what I said is fundamentally true. You were talking about "basic human rights" and trying to shame me into thinking people had a right to immigrate here because of hardship. I pointed out why this is not the case by making an analogy to healthcare and food. It really isn't difficult, but keep on pretending me no understand.
What? What the hell are you talking about? There are about 3.3 million Muslims living in the US.
Again, voter blocks have an outsized influence. Just look at Jews, Cubans, blacks, etc.
The US has about 319 million people. So those Sharia-loving Muslims are 0.5% of the population.
And already you can't even draw a cartoon of Muhammad without death threats and assassination attempts. There's a lot that can go wrong before reaching Constitution change.
How close is the UK to being a Muslim state, anyway? There's a much higher percentage of Muslims living there, so how close are they to throwing out the monarchy and living under Sharia?
Again, you think until the entire country is turned upside down everything is fine. You ignore the Sharia courts operating in parallel with the state, you ignore the Muslim neighborhoods with Sharia imposed by gangs, and you ignore the terrorists attacks.
I don't think it does.
That's because you want to ignore facts and stick your head in the sand.
We are the richest country on the planet. A hundred thousand refugees is hardly a blip on the radar. Other poorer European countries are taking in more refugees than we are and somehow they still manage it.
Yeah, and they're fucking over their countries in the process. Hello Germany and Sweden. Rather than walk in their direction, we should walk in the other direction. Islam is uniquely the most violent and authoritarian mainstream religion in the world today. Until they get their house in order, we shouldn't be inviting them into our house.
If the problem is with vetting, then let's change the vetting process.
There's only so much "vetting" can do.
You're splitting hairs.
No, you are by trying to say Trump's actions were fundamentally different. They were both temporary halts to immigration to examine the vetting process.
Trump campaigned on a promise of banning Muslims, it was a specific campaign promise and frankly a foundation of his campaign's support.
And he also backpedaled and talked about extreme vetting. The fact is he did not implement a Muslim ban.
That is quite different than Obama changing the vetting procedures and needing to re-vet everyone and causing delays
Erm, except that is actually what Trump's executive order set out to do. Funny how nobody said a peep about all the hardships that Obama's order must have caused.
He was reacting to terrorists getting through the vetting process, which obviously needed to be tightened.
So is Trump. He's just not waiting around for more terrorist attacks to happen.
Hair Fuhrer's goal is to stop Muslim immigration completely, even if he can't legally just do that.
Constitutionally he may be able to do so. You can find arguments for and against, such as this one, which cites specifically 8 U.S.C. sec. 1182(f):
"Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the "
The only way to conflate those two things is if you think both of them are in response to a threat, except Trump thinks that the threat is "all Muslims" instead of terrorists.
While I think you'd have to have your head in the sand to not recognize the problem with Islam as a whole, Trump's executive order specifically targeted countries that Obama identified as dangerous hotbeds of instability.
The sentence you quote says it is censorship, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.
You claimed it was only "technically" correct. I claim your view is myopic.
No, it isn't. That's a stupid comment to make, and you're a stupid person. And it doesn't address anything in my comment either.
It's comments like these that make me glad Slashdot allows free speech, so that people like you don't get to censor other people for being "trolls" or "misbehaving".
If you're saying "Bigot"
I'm saying it's an inflammatory strawman so you can toss around the word bigot. That makes you a bigoteer. If you want to argue honestly, don't bring in external inflammatory topics.
And if you're living in a country where you're being oppressed, or your government decide to start killing everyone, well fuck you for living there, you probably deserve it.
You don't have a basic human right to immigrate to the United States. Period. Just like you don't have a basic human right to receive health care or food from the United States, despite lots of people in the world who could benefit from such things. Nations have borders for a reason.
The percentage of Muslims in the US who want Sharia law is not a super majority, and when you combine that with the percentage of people in the US who are Muslim it is a very small percentage of the total population.
They tend to vote in blocks and have an outsized influence.
If you want to live under Sharia you wouldn't come here, you would move to a place like Saudi Arabia.
Except we have evidence to the contrary. Plenty of Muslims have immigrated to the West and made all kinds of demands, including violent gangs that impose Sharia in some Muslim neighborhoods like the UK.
You have numbers to show that the majority of Muslim immigrants to Europe are not working to support themselves?
I quoted some numbers here. And let's be clear on who made what claims. You said, "the vast majority of people who want to come here are ready and willing and able to work to support themselves". I said, "Muslims place a vast strain on welfare and prison systems." My linked comment supports what I said.
I don't know how that is supposed to relate to the fact that conservative states take the most federal aid, but whatever.
It means I don't believe in welfare, but until you solve the problem, bringing in more people that will strain the system is just aggravating problems.
Yeah, you know why that's there? Because that's how this country got its start, and that's what helped make the country great.
Times have changed. The United States is a mature country. And you still missed the point that we were selective about who we allowed to immigrate. You'd like to ignore what's going on in Europe and open the flood gates to the "huddled masses".
That's because that never happened. Obama never banned Iraqi immigrants. At one point the rules for vetting changed and people had to be re-vetted, but there is no month when no Iraqis arrived here.
I didn't say, "banned Iraqi immigrants", I said "Obama temporarily halted immigration from Iraq". Both Trump and Obama temporary halted immigration to establish vetting procedures. Trump's version may have been applied to more people, but you can't say Obama "never banned Iraqi immigrants" but then claim Trump did.
Yes, technically banning trolls is censorship, but when we protest censorship and say it's bad, we're not talking about forums removing people for misbehaving.
Actually, we are. It's just that you don't want to admit that it really is censorship. And more to the point, "troll" is often synonymous with "I disagree" or "How dare you have that opinion!"
Another prime example, I guess, would be "bigot". As in "Oh, so you criticize ME for hating homosexuals and wanting to restrict what they do? Well that makes you a bigot!"
Thanks for bringing in a strawman on a completely unrelated topic so you can toss around the word "bigot". That makes you a bigoteer, not a bigot, though.
It's not Muslims who are bombing 7 countries on the other side of the world of them for bullshit reasons - that's you
The Religion of Peace:
Attacks 195
Killed 1386
Injured 1644
Suicide Blasts 39
Countries 30
It wasn't Iran who had a wordwide kidnapping and torture program - that was you.
Iran and state-sponsored terrorism
It wasn't Syria that overthrew two democracies just during the Obama years - that was you.
What two "democracies" would those be?
It wasn't Libya that invaded Iraq over lies and got a million people killed and created million more refugees - that was you.
Congratulations, you got one, but let's not pretend Saddam didn't help dig his own grave or was anything but a brutal dictator that earned the ire of the US and our Middle East allies after invading Kuwait.
Here, let me help you out of your narrow view of the world:
"to examine in order to suppress (see suppress 2) or delete anything considered objectionable <censor the news>; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable <censor out indecent passages>"
I'm all for censorship if it means that people don't need to put up with arsehats.
That sounds fine until people think you are the "arsehat". What I love about Slashdot is the commitment to free speech.
By the way this isn't "censorship" [..] Anti-censorship means the government can't silence you
Yes it is censorship. Censorship isn't limited to just the government. That doesn't mean it is wrong, per se. I think there is a place for moderated discussion, but in general I'm wary, and I find the shadow ban style of censorship particularly odious due to it's lack of transparency.
You know, I see far more people complaining about SJWs than I do actual SJWs.
That's because you've gotten so used to the smell you no longer think it smells.
Funny how when Obama temporarily halted immigration from Iraq nobody said a peep.
Like basic human rights and freedom, that kind of thing?
Nations have borders for a reason.
Freedom to practice your religion, freedom from oppression, those kinds of things right?
Muslims here have freedom to practice their religion as long as they follow the law. That does not mean we shouldn't recognize the unique threat to freedom from Islam and import hordes of Muslims.
Which part of that is telling people that they can't come here because they grew up in Iran, or they had the audacity to be attacked by Al-Assad?
They can migrate to other Muslim countries, where they would fit in better.
How about my wife's parents
Yes, there will always be individual cases that seem unjust. That doesn't make the fundamental problem go away.
I would suggest that the vast majority of people in the world share American values like basic human rights
Unfortunately, no, far too many Muslims favor Sharia law over US law.
And I would also suggest that the vast majority of people who want to come here are ready and willing and able to work to support themselves.
That's not the case in Europe. Muslims place a vast strain on welfare and prison systems. And they are not integrating with the rest of society.
If you want to talk about welfare, let's talk about all of the red states that take the most federal aid.
I believe in workfare.
How the mighty have fallen.
I never liked the idea behind that poem. Really, send us all your overflow? Thanks, let us be the dumping ground! I suppose it was somewhat reasonable when America had a small population and growing demand for workers. Even then, the general policy was to prioritize Europeans.
You're suggesting that diversity and refugees are the thing that is going to ruin the country?
I'm suggesting that letting in a bunch of people from the 3rd world who are predominantly Muslim will ruin the country over the long term, yes. In fact, it's happening already in places like Sweden and other European countries.
Not that I want to collect on this, but I'll bet that over the next four years we end up with something that the founders would have been appalled at
That's rather vague, and people have been making these kinds of claims for a long time. Many claim that the current state (before Trump) would have appalled the founding fathers. In other words, your hypothetical bet is meaningless.
Our tradition of being a safe haven for people who are oppressed isn't what is going to destroy is, it's the overreaction of people who think that America is for white people and want to shut us away from the world.
America should be for those who share American values and have something to offer the country, not hordes of economic migrants or those who will end up on welfare.
Oh, no, somebody call the waaaahmbulance! Somebody is complaining about privilege!
First off, shutting down another person's speech is authoritarian, hence they are the thing they say they're against. Second, they claim the people they are shutting down are authoritarian, but if you listen to the actual talks, it's about freedom from the authoritarian left.
As for being nationalist, is it so wrong to put your country first? The "progressive" left would bring their own nation to ruin in the name of "diversity" and "refugees".
I have to say though, I do find it unnerving that so many people in the country are opposed to anti-fascists. That's a little bit unsettling.
That's like saying you find it unnerving that so many people are opposed to Democratic People's Republic of Korea, because, "democracy!"
While I prefer to challenge people like Yiannopoulos in public, in this case I can see a reasonable justification for not inviting him to speak.
He was invited by a student group at a public university and had every right to speak.
safety of students
Bull-fucking-shit. Students safety were threatened not by the speakers, but the intolerant assholes violently protesting against him.
That is not tacit approval. When a crime happens without an arrest, that doesn't mean that the police approved of it.
You have to admit it's extremely suspicious that amid all the violence and destruction, not a single person was arrested.
The left is all about racial and gender discrimination, against white males.
This is the same type of thinking that groups all Muslims into suicide bombing America hating crazies.
Islam has a problem with terrorism and authoritarianism. It's the most violent and authoritarian mainstream religion today. That doesn't mean every Muslim is a "suicide bombing America hating crazy", but it does mean Islam as a whole has earned the negative associations of terrorism and tyranny.
Similarly, it is the left in America that has demonstrated it's propensity for violence in the last several years. They are the ones shutting down speakers, rioting, assaulting, and blocking public access.
Hillary should be considered "Lawful" Evil. The Clintons made a pretense of following the law, but I think if they were held to the same standards as normal people they would have been convicted a long time ago.
I haven't seen Hillary or Barrack speak out against the violence at Berkeley, so I guess they condone it. They managed to speak out about Trump's immigration policies.
Meanwhile, plenty of leftist media and celebrities have given their nods of approval to leftist violence.
I voted for Trump but I don't support racism
Does that work the other way? Because the left has become extremely racist against white people. It's gotten to the point where a candidate for the DNC chair thinks it's her "job" to "shut other white people down" if they dare to disagree with Black Lives Matter or other race baiters.
I believe white people are smarter than other people but really I'm not a racist.
Objectively, they are, at least statistically, except for Asians, which are smarter than Whites. If believing in objective reality makes you racist, then I'll gladly be called racist.