for all you pinko lefties

[Frikadeller]

They might not be doing any beheadings, but they and their friends in Washington are doing nothing but polarizing American society, fomenting a culture of fear, mistrust, and hatred, and spending us down the shitter. That worries me more than a few Islamic jihadists with pipe bombs.

 

So if you had a daughter engaged in a divorce proceeding brought about by a husband who claimed infidelity, and you had to decide whether the case would be tried in a Western court, or in a court which enforced Sharia law - you'd flip a coin? Ditto for deciding whether a suitcase nuke would end up in the hands of a Baptist congregation in Lubbock Texas, or in a Mosque in northeastern Pakistan? Riiiight.

so are you prepared to do battle w/ every culture that rejects our values?

 

Apparently the United States is ready to... At the sacrifice of our soldiers... Which, by the way, if you are so much for a war with these people, then, why dont you enlist? Serve you fool.. Too old, I think not!! They just raised the minimmum age to enlist in the Army to 42!!

 

 

Yeah, thats gonna be good...42 year old E1's... Hmm... Thats gonna be sweet!

[JayB]

They might not be doing any beheadings, but they and their friends in Washington are doing nothing but polarizing American society, fomenting a culture of fear, mistrust, and hatred, and spending us down the shitter. That worries me more than a few Islamic jihadists with pipe bombs.

 

So if you had a daughter engaged in a divorce proceeding brought about by a husband who claimed infidelity, and you had to decide whether the case would be tried in a Western court, or in a court which enforced Sharia law - you'd flip a coin? Ditto for deciding whether a suitcase nuke would end up in the hands of a Baptist congregation in Lubbock Texas, or in a Mosque in northeastern Pakistan? Riiiight.

so are you prepared to do battle w/ every culture that rejects our values?

 

They can reject whatever values and norms they wish, but when they do so I think it's odd that so many folks in the West are convinced that it's an ethical duty to withhold comment and suspend their moral judgement entirely. It's not like we are talking forks versus chopsticks here. There's a wide variety of cultural practices out there, but acknowledging that is one thing, accepting every manner of barbarity practiced in a particular culture without comment is quite another, as is trivializing them with glib pc analogizing. "We have domestic violence in this country, so who are we to criticize: 1. Stoning a pregnant woman to death. 2. The widespread practice of honor killings. 3. Public beatings of women who shed the beekeeper suits in public. 4. Genital mutilation, etc." Does that really help the folks who are on the receiving end of these practices? Do they take comfort in the notion that while they are being stoned to death, at *least* they haven't been subjected to the indignity of outsiders pointing fingers and critiquing the practice?

 

Anyone remember the Sutee? If not, give it a Google. The reason that it's unfamiliar is because the British ended it. A quote from general Napier summarizes the moral perspective that lead to it's abolition.

 

"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."

 

I'm sure there were a million wonderful things about the culture in which this practice occured, but most widows in the region are probably quite thankful that this particular practice is no longer commingled with them. Appreciating other cultures and acknowledging their merits is one thing, failing to critique barbarity is another, especially when it seems to have widespread approval in that culture, and is unlikely to cease without external pressure.

 

It's also worth mentioning that just like it was the widows who would have suffered if the British wrote off the widow-B-que as a harmless cutlural quirk, it's the kids in the video who are ultimately going to bear the cost of the "cultural practices" that we're busy apologizing for. What kind of future are they going to have in a society which instructs them that their highest aspiration should be to detonate themselves amongst civilians in a cafe? Thanks to a few decades of Western "understanding" of ever-more-inhuman practices and tactics, the Palestinians are now saddled with a political culture that bears more resemblance to a death cult than a governing class that's actually capable of bringing them either statehood or a viable economy. Even if they got a state, what are the odds that it would be either stable or prosperous, ever? In a world of intense competition for capital, is IBM going to set up a new facility in Bangalore, or the place where they danced in the streets after 9-11, mourned Zarqawi's passing, and march kids through the streets with mock suicide belts?

 

And finally, anyone here remember the campaign that ended Apartheid? I don't seem to recall many folks who are ostensibly opposed to cultural imperialism arguing against the divestment campaigns, diplomatic pressure, and widespread public criticism that helped bring an end to Apartheid were unconscionable assaults on the Afrikaaner's unique cultural heritage. It was okay to condemn Apartheid and criticize the culture that produced it, but it's wrong to do the same for suicide bombing?

[chucK]

With respect to your Apartheid comment: I think you are falling into the same trap that you rail against, "unwillingness to distinguish between grades of evil".

 

Are you implying that widespread bombing, invasion and long term occupation are equivalent to divestment campaigns coupled with diplomatic pressure?

[ivan]

but my question was would you do battle - not critque - there is no questioning our right to harsh on and use non-violent means to discourage behaviors in the international world that are reprehensible to us - as for the wife-immolation thang the british were in fact in the wrong in colonializing india and all the postives they did there were outweighed by the evils of commercial exploitation the positives were intended to justify - would india be right to subjugate our own nation in the interest of imposing vegetaranism on us? many there deeply feel the practice of harming animals horribly wrong...i sorta dig on sutee too as insurance against my wife fahqing murdering me - a more probably occurence every passing day of summer!

[JayB]

With respect to your Apartheid comment: I think you are falling into the same trap that you rail against, "unwillingness to distinguish between grades of evil".

 

Are you implying that widespread bombing, invasion and long term occupation are equivalent to divestment campaigns coupled with diplomatic pressure?

 

Of course they aren't equivalent, but neither is the nature of the objectives that they are intended to accomplish nor are the targets.

 

You can effectively target specific cultural practices, like, Slavery, apartheid, female genital mutilation, and even eating meat with argumentation and various kinds of diplomatic pressure. Sometimes, but not always, you can get rid of a regime that alligns itself with the values that you are campaigning against, as was the case with the Apartheid regime, or the Indians getting the British out of India.

 

If your primary objective is to elminate a regime that has stated its intention to kill or conquer you, then the odds that you'll be able to bring about your intended objective with anything other than force are pretty slim. Wouldn't have worked with Hitler, or Hirihito, and it wasn't the threat of widespread condemnation and dissaproval that kept the Soviet Union's tanks from rolling into Western Europe.

I doubt that a loud chorus of "tisk, tisks" will do much to dissuade the Jihadis either, but I don't think that we have much to lose by criticizing behavior that's outside the parameters of civilized behavior in any culture.

[JayB]

but my question was would you do battle - not critque - there is no questioning our right to harsh on and use non-violent means to discourage behaviors in the international world that are reprehensible to us - as for the wife-immolation thang the british were in fact in the wrong in colonializing india and all the postives they did there were outweighed by the evils of commercial exploitation the positives were intended to justify - would india be right to subjugate our own nation in the interest of imposing vegetaranism on us? many there deeply feel the practice of harming animals horribly wrong...i sorta dig on sutee too as insurance against my wife fahqing murdering me - a more probably occurence every passing day of summer!

 

To answer the do battle question, nope.

 

With regards to eating meat and spit-roasting the wife, do you really think that the the two are morally equivalent practices under any framework? If not, then the Indians-invading-the-US-to-put-an-end-to-the-Quarter-pounder analogy seems like a bit of a stretch.

 

There's probably a marginal subculture somewhere that would take issue with any given aspect of civilized existence, but recognizing that there may be a culture somewhere that's a marginal left-over from the paleolithic era which thinks that flaying left-handed toddlers is the moral thing to do is one thing, pretending that any critique that they would level against a culture that spares left-handed tykes that treatment carries a moral force equal to the arguments against the practice is quite a stretch. Far fetched, but training kids that politically motivated murder-suicide is the highest good that they can achieve in this world is not too far off.

[Punter]

Damn JayB.....you're making a lot of sense today (could be that your posts just look good next to that idiot ZimZam). I have a hard time sleeping at night knowing that there are nuts like ZimZam wasting space on this planet.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

They might not be doing any beheadings, but they and their friends in Washington are doing nothing but polarizing American society, fomenting a culture of fear, mistrust, and hatred, and spending us down the shitter.

 

pot. kettle. black.

[sexual_chocolate]

Your historically myopic view of the "civilized world" is a dangerous shortcoming.

 

Glad you're back to recite more of the limpdick WWU undergrad-colloquia calliber discourses for me.

 

Speaking of civilization - what is it, exactly, that you'll be contributing to civilization when you graduate? Another monograph on the Latent Homo-Eroticism in Late Victorian Poetry?

 

Quite the boner you sprung there, tough-guy.

 

And what will you be contributing, besides your insolent drivel on the internet, and of course blue-prints for the Hadrean Wall? (How's that proj coming along by the way? I like how when faced with something beyond the abstractions you are most familiar with, you sprang back with one of the silliest incontinencies I have yet witnessed from someone so imprisoned by ideological refrain.)

 

But seriously, what are you about to contribute? Please tell me it's a little bit of Econ code that'll be the final piece in the puzzle?

[JayB]

Hey. Prole and SC in a single thread. What a treat.

 

If you would have read the thread a tad more closely the first time through, you wouldn't have needed to ask your question. Take it one word at a time, and sound things out one syllable at a time if you get stuck.

[sexual_chocolate]

oh come on jayb, i'm giving you a chance to display your offerings for a second time in a single thread; what a treat!

 

what materials will you be using in your wall?

[sexual_chocolate]

And finally, anyone here remember the campaign that ended Apartheid? I don't seem to recall many folks who are ostensibly opposed to cultural imperialism arguing against the divestment campaigns, diplomatic pressure, and widespread public criticism that helped bring an end to Apartheid were unconscionable assaults on the Afrikaaner's unique cultural heritage. It was okay to condemn Apartheid and criticize the culture that produced it, but it's wrong to do the same for suicide bombing?

 

Are you serious when making this comparison? Is this a comparison that you have spent any time reflecting upon?

 

Is this another Hadrean Wall knee-jerk simplism?

 

Or perhaps you are simply trolling for those simpleton lefties that inhabit this board?

 

Please say it's the latter, so that future dialog (haha) is possible.

[Fairweather]

Religious fanatics whether from Pakistan or Canada or Virginia are uniformly scary. The enigma is how to combat the brainwashing.

 

A quick review of twentieth century body-counts will reveal that modern man has much more to fear from the secular left than from the 'religious right'. The only brainwahing I see going on is in primary schools and universities. Gov't sponsored, no less!

[Crux]

Religious fanatics whether from Pakistan or Canada or Virginia are uniformly scary. The enigma is how to combat the brainwashing.

A quick review of twentieth century body-counts will reveal that modern man has much more to fear from the secular left than from the 'religious right'. The only brainwahing I see going on is in primary schools and universities. Gov't sponsored, no less!

 

Interesting point.

 

But 20th century examples show us that it is not from excesses exclusively on the left or exclusively the right that we can expect high body counts. We can reflect upon Hitler and fascism on the right and Stalin and communism on the left, and observe extremely high body counts occurred in both directions.

 

I believe it is all institutions that promote totalitariansim that we should beware, and it is arguable that religious fundamentalism, as an institution and regardless of its location, sometimes promotes totalitarianism.

[foraker]

Lumping all of 'the secular left' into the same bin as, say, Stalinists, is about as intelligent as lumping all of your average church goers into the same bin as Nazis.

[Fairweather]

Lumping all of 'the secular left' into the same bin as, say, Stalinists, is about as intelligent as lumping all of your average church goers into the same bin as Nazis.

 

But it is exactly what you regularly practice here with your constant use of terms like "reich-winger". Additionally, while I will cede Hitler was a right-winger (something not all conservatives will do), his murderous quest was certainly not rooted in religion.

[sexual_chocolate]

oh my god it just hit me! again! i go through these silly phases of online banter, wasting my time arguing with people i don't even know about inanities, pure inanities amounting to nothing! if i met any of you in person, i might like you and enjoy your company, but instead i engage in the most negative of drivel, spouting off like an idiot, getting riled up.

 

i'm so done! my apologies for any personal attacks. may all of you be well now and in the future!

[TREETOAD]

We are one!