While you clowns wax righteously indignant about the definition of torture, about impeachments, crude oil and racism (both real and fabricated) to name but a few topics, our very freedom is being undermined by the appeasers in our media and government.
While you blather on about infringements on our freedom of speech, the president at Harvard is forced by the school's faculty to resign for daring to state the obvious and an art school in St.Paul, MN "voluntarily" decides to discontinue depicting the human form as part of class cirriculum so as to not "offend" Muslim students.
You guys really kill me. You're all so intellectually enlightened that you aren't able to see the forest from the trees. I watch Paul repeatedly capitulate to his brother Tom's and friend Nadir's viewpoints with nary a bit of reciprocity in the other direction. But then, why should there be, when Tom and Nadir are obviously so much more enlightened and progressive than neanderthals such as Paul and myself?
Nadir would prefer to join the "World Can't Wait" kids to "Drive out the Bush Regime!", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Hey, here's an idea Nadir; how about getting your WCW pals together and take part in a real, worthwhile protest and support one of the few countries in the world right now with a spine? That's too much to ask though, I know. You might actually have to admit you were wrong about something for once in your life.
You know what it all comes down to? It's all clear to me now. It's fear. Plain and simple fear. It's so much easier and safer and stylish and hip and cool to blame everything that's wrong in this world on that idiot, Chimpy Bush-Hitler, isn't it? It would take a lot more courage and cahones to publicly protest radical, militant, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-freedom, anti-Christian, anti-Jew, anti-Buddist, anti-Hindu, anti-American, anti-Israel Islam, wouldn't it? Hell, it might even get you fucking killed!
Tom and Nadir, your utter contempt for you own country and the President causes you to root for our defeat, because after all, we deserve the comeuppance, right? Sick.
By the way Nadir, speaking of racism; the last time I checked there are approximately 280 million fucking people in this country, so yeah, I think it's safe to assume that at least a few of them still "hate them n*ggers". But what do you want to do about it? Are the firemen who hung those nooses idiots? Obviously, yes. Should they be fired from their jobs? Yes, absolutely. But what do you want beyond that? What's next, thought control? You cannot force people to not be racist. They have to see the light for themselves.
Enough said on that topic.
Yeah, you guys really are something. Peronally, I think you're enlightened to the point of idiocy. Since I do not posess the higher-education verbosity that you three do, I have trouble keeping up with the dialogue a good part of the time, but I always read what you have to say, and I must say I walk away pretty disgusted most of the time. That's the reason for my absence recently.
I think it's high time you boys take a step back and look what's really at stake here. Wanna live under Sharia? I didn't think so. Then you'd better wake the fuck up and start worrying about what really matters.
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Yo, Six: I don't think that I've capitulated as much as you think I have. Have you read my recent postings on the subject of free speach? I've hit the muslim retards pretty hard, and the Harvard faculty. I think all I've done is try to keep people like you and me -- who clearly abhore drooling mobs lynching people who violate religious superstitions -- mindful of the more civilized mobs who impose other speach bans. This includes the Harvard profs who have succeeded in firing their president for stating an opinion that they didn't like, and the Bush supporters who successfully got Bill Mahr fired for saying that *they* didn't like.
I urge you to read my recent posts, and my responses to Nadir's posts, especially the one where he equated christian Nigerians who fatally rioted in response to fatal riots, with muslim Nigerians who fatally rioted in response to some cartoons. And my ten responses to his racist firefighter story.
Have you read Hitchy's latest essay? It addresses the maurauding muslims, and the US press and president who have failed to fully support the Danish press.
I agree with the article, Six. The authors point out that the press responded to 911 by surrendering free speech on the issue of muslim superstitions. But our government -- with popular support and bipartisan support -- responded to 911 by surrendering other freedoms. And here I'm not talking about unwarranted tapping of phone calls from muslim nations to people in the US, which all presidents have done in war time. I mean all that homeland security hokem.
Actually Paul, your occasional capitulation to your brother's and Nadir's points of view, while often, in my opinion anyway, misguided, tells me that you're willing to at least consider another's point of view. Tom and Nadir on the other hand strike me as so smug and self-righteous in their beliefs that they just could never admit to being wrong about anything.
Their inabilty to discern between right & wrong (except of course when it comes to President Bush and the United States of America, in which case both are always in the wrong) and to draw a moral equivalence between everything, even between us (America) and our enemies who would destroy us at the drop of a hat if they could, is maddening.
Actually, I don't know if it's so much an inabilty to discern between right & wrong, or an unwillingness to do so. Either way it's maddening.
Wow, Six. Tell us how you REALLY feel.
The U.S. is not in danger of falling under Shariya law. This threat doesn't even exist in Dearborn. So I don't think you have anything to worry about there.
I certainly would admit that I am wrong when I feel that I am wrong, and I would change my view to your's or Paul's if you changed my mind during the course of debate.
And I agree with one of your statements: much of the emotion on both sides of the political debate are affected by fear. You guys like other Westerners are afraid that your cultural dominance of the planet, earned through centuries of war and conquest, is in danger. That may be true in some instances, but starting wars and insulting other cultures is not the way to maintain that status.
Tom and I are afraid that our civil liberties will be taken away because we disagree with you guys and the nuts in power. The fact that a VA nurse can be investigated for sedition (http://progressive.org/mag_mc020806) and American citizens can be held without charge proves that our fears are justified.
I am not afraid that the U.S. will be overrun by Muslim extremists. I am more concerned about the extremists in the White House who would allow our ports to be run by a foreign country without a security investigation, wiretap my phone calls, and start wars all over the planet. Those people pose a real threat to me, my family and to the American way of life.
And trust me, it takes a lot of courage to protest the Bushies. There are people who have been disappeared since 911. There are founders of charities who have been imprisoned or deported.
I do not have utter contempt for the U.S. and I do not root for our defeat. My cousins are the ones who are fighting these wars. But it is my duty as an American citizen to support and defend the Consititution against all enemies foreign and domestic.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
So Bush has got to go. It is my duty as a citizen to get him out. If you agree that his lies and deceit are good for the country, and that's the type of world you want for your children, then it is your duty to defend the bastard.
I agree with another of your statements as well. You can't force people not to be racist. My arguments with you and Paul stem from your belief that racism is not a threat to minorities in this country.
Perhaps I haven't endured much racism myself, but if I have seen its effects on others, and if I know that Westland is the home of the American Nazi Party, and if I know that Michigan once had the largest Klan membership outside the South, then I would be foolish not to be on guard. When you see the sign with a deer on it, you keep an eye out for something that my run in front of your car and cause you bodily harm. I just recognize the signs.
I definitely wouldn't defend Denmark for provoking Muslims. They have shown no remorse that people were offended.
Paul is a good friend of mine. If he were in need I would be there to help him in a heartbeat. But I would not lift one finger to help him if he got his ass kicked because he called someone's mother a whore. That's a lesson he should have learned in elementary school. I don't think Denmark is right, so I won't protest on their behalf.
What else? Oh. You're upset because a school chose to show respect for ALL of its students instead of just some of them? They found a win-win solution. They didn't ban pictures at all. That would be going to far. But they found a way to teach the subject without offending anyone. Who loses in that situation? No one.
Why do you see that as a problem? I think this is the example that the world needs to see. We talk about our differences - hell, let's embrace our differences - and find a way to coexist.
Why not create a world where everyone, regardless of religion, race, creed, gender, metrosexualism and whatever has the chance at a happy and meaningful life? Just try not to hurt others. If you hurt someone and you didn't mean to apologize and find a way to correct the offense. This is what Jesus and Muhammad would have done.
How can you find fault in a scene like this one? http://www.twincities.com/images/twincities/twincities/13891/192962213688.jpg
I certainly have the ability to discern between right and wrong. To me right means everyone is happy and we live in peace. To others right means that we beat the hell out of the other guy and take his shit.
Sorry. That just isn't my worldview.
But I don't mean to be smug in my righteousness. Only righteous.
I just read the article. The only thing that I agree with is this statement:
"So far as we can tell, a new, twin policy from the mainstream media has been promulgated: (a) If a group is strong enough in its reaction to a story or caricature, the press will refrain from printing that story or caricature, and (b) if the group is pandered to by the mainstream media, the media then will go through elaborate contortions and defenses to justify its abdication of duty."
This has long been the case in the American press whether the "strong group" was slaveholding Southern plantation owners, or the Jewish anti-defamation league.
There is nothing wrong with tolerating another culture's practice when that practice doesn't harm anyone. The fact that Muslims believe the prophet's image should not be shown has never harmed anyone until the Danish paper actively pursued a course of provocation and others followed suit.
Torture is wrong. The photos of those abuses caused more people to doubt what most people around the world already believed was an unjust war.
The publishing of the those cartoons serves no journalistic purpose. It never did. Why exacerbate the situation? It's just stupid.
Six,
As Gore Vidal said of William F. Buckley, after the latter took a misaimed swing at the former, "Once again, the tiny fist." I had wondered where you had gone; I've baited you several times.
Curious that you find my concern about our government's torture problem appalling, yet howl like a banshee when Harvard's faculty exercises its right to lose confidence in its president.
Which is more corrosive of "American values," a government that blatantly tortures, shrilly defends its right to torture, and then (how does this work, again?) denies that it torture--or a bunch of professors exercising what has traditionally been a normal faculty function? Remember, Summers' academic freedom hasn't been comprised. He remains a tenured professor who can write anything he wants (and I expect a hell of a book).
By the way, "what's really at stake here" is the neocons' legacy, which is growing more tattered by the day.
=======Nadir
There is nothing wrong with tolerating another culture's practice when that practice doesn't harm anyone. The fact that Muslims believe the prophet's image should not be shown has never harmed anyone until the Danish paper actively pursued a course of provocation and others followed suit.
==============
Nadir: You keep making comments like this, but never answer my questions which address the preposterousness of your view in this matter. What "harm" are you talking about, here? Your definition of "harm" apparently includes images and words? Who gets to decide whhat images and words are harmful? For one thing, a growing number of muslims are stepping forward to disagree with you here, and to fault only the violent reactionaries, not the cartoonists or their publishers. So, which muslims are we to respect?
Further, if we are to respect the demands of these anti-cartoon muslims, what about, say, KKKers who don't want you living in Westland or whistling at white girls? Should we respect them as well?
=======Tom
Curious that you find my concern about our government's torture problem appalling, yet howl like a banshee when Harvard's faculty exercises its right to lose confidence in its president.
===============
Tom: You've painted yourself into a box here. Like Nadir, you refuse to address any of my many points against your tolleration for the Harvard professors in using their rights to silence other people. We all agree that the profs have this right. I argue that using this right in the way that they has exactly the same effect as the government enforcing a law that bans people from serving as university presidents if they say something deemed "offensive"; the profs have thus nullifed the first ammendment.
So in the view of me and Six, the Harvard profs are acting legally, but immorally.
On to the torture question: you and I agree that torture is immoral. But by your stance with the profs, morality doesn't matter, only observance of rules and tradition. As for the toruture rules, combatants who do not wear a military uniform do not qualify for the Geneva Convention. As for tradition, go study how US troops behaved in WWII and the Civil War.
===Tom
Which is more corrosive of "American values," a government that blatantly tortures, shrilly defends its right to torture, and then (how does this work, again?) denies that it torture--or a bunch of professors exercising what has traditionally been a normal faculty function?
=======
I agree with you that the torturing problem is worse, and causing more problems for us all. If the US loses in Iraq, freedom will have taking a big blow, and the turtoring will be a big factor contributing to a loss. But the Harvard sitation, Tom, represents merely one example of countless were we Americans are utilizing our freedoms to punish people for saying things that "offend" us, creating a climate of intimidation wherein people do not feel free to speak freely. This factor is much larger than one prof losing his presidential job.
====Tom
Remember, Summers' academic freedom hasn't been comprised. He remains a tenured professor who can write anything he wants (and I expect a hell of a book).
==========
Do you want to bet than un-tenured professors (or those who want to hold onto their administration jobsS) will have anthing to say about females on average scoring lower on technical tests? Tom, you are disappointing me. Even our famous leftist professor father would have supported Summers from the professors who sought to punish him. And what do you think our dad would have said about Naidir's chastisement of those would draw or publish blaspheme?
===Nadir
You guys like other Westerners are afraid that your cultural dominance of the planet, earned through centuries of war and conquest, is in danger.
=========
Nadir: I don't mind you articulating my views, but only when you do so acurately. I have zero interest in "cultural dominance" (and what do you mean by "your"; your culture and mine are the same). I have interest only in freedom and democracy, which are two sides of the same coin. Primarily, I am interested in my own, and secondarily for others, especially of their lack of freedom can threaten my own.
Please define "cutlure" and "cultural dominance."
Paul,
If Bill Ford declared tomorrow that the car was a huge historical mistake, and that everyone should sell theirs and donate the money to the government to build out public transport, would the PC-is-everywhere police howl when the board dismissed him? Bill ford answers to the Board, and he'll toe its line as long as he wants to be CEO. That's an article of faith in US business.
Well, in a proper world, a university's faculty is its board, its governing body. And when the president loses its confidence, he goes. Neither the 1st Amendment nor the tenants of academic freedom explicitly or implicitly grant Larry Summers the right to be Harvard president. Now, tenure is a different thing. There are people who want Ward Churchill fired, tenure and all. That's dangerous.
And what, I can't resist adding, if the White House spokesman declared before the press that he could no longer countenance our torture policy? How long before he lost the confidence of his bosses?
Do I agree with the Harvard faculty's assessment? I honestly find Ivy league politics, and university politics in general, impossible to get excited about. Remember, I spent years immersed in them. Didn't he say that women do worse in math in men for some genetic reason? (Correct me if I'm wrong). Eugenics have been pretty hardily discredited. I can see losing confidence in a president for that. But fire him as a professor? No.
As to torture, I'm truly flummoxed by the ability to countenance torture displayed on some corners of the right (not yours, Paul). And I find Six's dichotomy between accepting the current torture-and-spy-on- citizens regime or be ruled by the Taliban to be a parody of something a White House flack might have to say, while losing all self-respect. It's fear-mongering, and I reject it.
Tom: I grant your position on Harvard's factulty more respect than before. Yes, the president is an employee serving at the pleasure of the board, as I hold my job at the pleasure of my boss, who certainly does ban me from making certain statements in team meetings (such as, "You're mom is a whore!"), and I accept that as not impinging on my free speach rights. I concede this point, and I do respect that you would defend Summers from getting fired from his professor post at an institution that explicitly claims (unlike an engineering firm) to effect a special "academic freedom" policy, that it further proffers as a special and neccessary contribution to a free and democratic society.
HOWEVER: I remain troubled that these professors are making a point to withhold that noble concept from their administrative office holders. For me this still falls under the heading of punishing people for speaking freely. In the case of a university administrator (as opposed to an engineer), the question of why women fail to compose 50% of the professional scientific ranks is absolutely germain to the office. Please consider what Summers said; I have carefully and accurately represented his comment on this forum several times in recent posts. He did say of a female presenter, "all that and nice tits" or "how come none of the fine bitches ever present so well". I grant you that such comments would have violated what I consider to be reasonable standards of behavior for a university administrator.
But for the people who got "offended" by his actual comments, I cannot imagine them being any *more* offended than if he had uttered the above comments. Instead he simply wondered if perhaps there is a genetic component that explains the gender descrepancy in technical aptitude tests, and encouraged research to settle the question. What could possibly be wrong with saying something like that?
I do not propose 100% free speach in all circumstances. For example, if Nadir comes over while Alexis and her friends are around and starts loudly describing the details of his father's first experiance as the passive partner in an act of buggery. I would probably choose to excersize my right to expel him from my house. Or if at the Ben Carson program, if I were the head coach and one of the math coaches was using class time to describe to the kids what a great, funny, and brilliant person I am. I would excersize my right as head coach to make the coach return class time to solving math problems.
But I think that all of us who present ourselves as free-thinkers and advocates of free speach (including you, me, and the Harvard faculty) should strive to be as tolerant as possible of ideas that oppose. In the case of Summers, he didn't make some rude comment outside of the scope his position. Instead, he expressed a scientific hypothesis (without even stating if he considered it correct or not) that addressed a topic formally considered by event at which he was participating. It is indeed sad for free speech that we have yet more proof that university professors are banning the expression of hypotheses. No?
I hope that you do recognize that I consider it even more important that Ward Churchill keep his professor's job. I even want him to survive chargest that he lied about having American Indian ancestory and plagarized, as these charges only came about as retailiation for making "offensive" comments. But in exchange for protecting Churchill, I want university faculty to also protect and hire scholars who make similarly "offensive" remarks, but "offensive" to *THEM*.
Do you agree with me, Tom, that a person's support for Free Speach is defined by their tolleration for speach that they find offensive?
=========Nadir
The publishing of the those cartoons serves no journalistic purpose.
====
According to whom? You? And what of possible christian or muslim nuts who assess some of your songs, such as "Sanctified," as "serving no artistic purpose", which blaspheme their deity and "offend" their sensabilities, and which as a result compel them to issue a million dolar hit on you and to riot, kill, and burn? Who decides which lunatics to appease?
And which publications do *you* (and the murderous rampagers) deem as "serving no journalistic purpose"? The original publications? The publications as acts of support for the original publications? The publications that attended articles describing the murderous retailiatory rampages?
==========Nadir
But I would not lift one finger to help him if he got his ass kicked because he called someone's mother a whore. That's a lesson he should have learned in elementary school.
===============
I am frightened to learn that a person like Nadir feels this way. It raises important questions that desearve answers:
1. Do you think that it should be legal for a person to call another person's mom a "whore"? How about other names, such as "liberal" or "idiot"?
2. Do you think that it should be legal for a person to assault another person in response to the assult victim calling the assaulter's mom a "whore"?
3. I recently posted an article about a middle school kid who got arrested for beating and threatening to kill another student for calling his mom a name. Do you think that the world would be a better place if the "offended" kid did not respond with violence or threat of violence to a verbal "offense"?
4. Do you think that your mom is a whore? If not, why do you care if I call her one?
5. If your mom *is* a whore, then why would you care if I called her one?
6. Would you purchase tootphaste made from all-natural ingredients, sold at the cheapest price, that yeilded the best results, if it's brandname was: "Your Mom Is a Whore Toothpaste... with Myrrh!"
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