Just above your post, we have LHoD agreeing that similar comparisons have been made, but not by “people we respect.”
I will say it’s fascinating how much attention is being devoted to this, when it’s obviously not a key factor in the OP. The debate should theoretically be on whether, and if so to what degree, the teacher should be disciplined.
Here are some comments from previous threads.
[quote=The important thing, it seems to me, is to ask the questiion – “Are they beginning to get too much power?” – and remind ourselves of how the liberties of the Jews were lost a little at a time.
I refuse to be intimidated by Godwin’s Law.
[/quote]
when you adopted the priniciple of collective punishment. You may recall its ancient lineage, but herewith a hint:
“Ten off our ovizers haff been vounded, in a cowvardly azault by ze zo called Maquis…
Ve vill hang vun man from ze village each hour until ze resistors are identivied…
Ven you come to your zenses, I vill be in my office. Azk for oberstormfuhrer Netanyahu”
Well, I am not cheering him; he got too many details wrong.
I certainly do not agree that Bush is similar to Hitler–but then I noticed when I actually listened to the recording in context that he did not say that Bush was similar to Hitler, so that is no reason to suspend him.
I also do not believe that Captialism is at odds with human rights, but that is an opinion that can be expressed in the way that he did–i.e. posing a series of statements and questions–without bringing down the wrath of the school board or a bunch of outsiders.
They get debate, and challenge, but not universal condemnation, no. Again drawing a comparison between my Christmas thread – there was a great deal of effort, by a large number of posters, to debunk the admittedly unsupported claims I made there.
You show me one thread where the Bush/Hitler comparison is attacked with anywhere near the same level of interest in setting the record straight.
And of course you’d support a teacher bringing religious views into his class by means of statements and questions, since, clearly, there is nothing coercive about this approach… right?
Or are the cases different when it’s something you don’t want?
You’re demanding universal condemnation?
Good fucking luck, Jack.
Never read it. I’m not a Christian, so I don’t care if Christmas gets splattered, though its increasing intrusion into the month of October convinces me that it’s alive and well.
How about this one, when I declare that such comparisons are dumb and unworthy of serious consideration? You want me to express it in interpretive dance or something?
And it would have been if you hadn’t poisoned the well. You said, and I quote:
“I expect the usual crowd here to privately cheer this teacher for his cogent analysis of Bush’s similarity to Hitler, and privately agree with him that capitalism is at odds with human rights, and publicly support him without explicitly endorsing those particular claims.”
I publically supported the teacher in this very thread without explicitly endorsing his claims. Does that mean I privately cheer the teacher? Of course not, and of course you haven’t said as much. You’ve just associated people who support the teacher to people who equate Bush with Hitler. That’s what “poisoning the well” IS. By making statements like that you’re just giving yourself an out whenever you want to dismiss my position out of hand.
You ignore the responses which do in fact debate “whether, and if so to what degree, the teacher should be disciplined”, throw out inflammatory accusations that have nothing to do with that debate, and then express such profound shock that attention gets devoted to those accusations. :rolleyes:
More non-answers. I didn’t ask you for examples of “Bush=Hitler” comparisons. I’m not even going to debate the validity of your example, because that’s not the point. I asked you to name anyone in this thread whom you believe secretly supports this teacher’s position while publically only supporting the teacher. Name one, or else you accusation is nothing but irrelevant mud-slinging.
What sort of religious views? I would not want to see a teacher proselytizing for a religion, but a discussion in a humanities type course regarding how beliefs were characterized and transmitted would be fine with me, even if the teacher explained his own beliefs.
On the other hand, this is simply a red herring. Bennish was teaching a civics related course and made a number of observations about civics. He expressly accepted questions and challenges to his statements (to which he responded with information rather than with abuse) and he made it clear on several occasions that he he was not providing the Truth, just things about which the students should think.
It looks pretty much like an overreaction on your part to the fact that Bush and Hitler happened to get mentioned in the same paragraph.
(I am plesed to see the further information that his leave is not (yet) being considered a punishment by the school.)
You want to know my opinion on this? Doesn’t matter, here goes:
In most cases, a Bush/Hitler comparison is made on such flimsy grounds and with such little evidence that a drive-by sniping suffices as a response. Your threads, on the other hand, are generally so well thought out and so articulate that it requires the big guns to respond. You’re a victim of your own competence.
The main problem is not thelocation of the views on the political spectrum, it is the fact thata teacher is swpewing crap. It is not much different than a teacher talking about Intelligent Design.
Alessan, any such effort will depend in part on educating people who currently have extremely limited knowledge of Middle East history, and a bizarrely distorted impression of right and wrong based on the slogans they have absorbed.
It’s a long-term project.
You know, if this thread goes any further downhill for Bricker, you’re going to force him into something drastic like a Pit thread denouncing right-wingers for putting up with Pat Robertson.
What’s fascinating is that you make this statement, and then spend the rest of this post and most of the rest of your posts in the thread pursuing this tangent. If you want others to let it go, you might want to let go first.
(emphasis added)
Standard 5 deals with distribution of resources, but you get the idea: talking about capitalism isn’t out of place in a Colorado geography class.
You know… I wondered, when I selected this quote, if you’d have the bald-faced effrontery to offer a defense like this.
Your qualifier indicates that any such comparison would be unfair to HITLER. A person who believes that Bush and Hitler may legitimately be analogized is off base; a person that eschews such comparisons because Bush is worse is an even better example of what I’m talking about.
At least it’s something that could be debated, an accusation that the accused could challenge or not as he or she see fit. Instead of an irrefutable, unprovable pre-emptive attack against anyone who might disagree with you.
So have you abandoned the idea that the teacher ought to be suspended in favor of exploring whether we sufficiently condemn people who compare Bush to Hitler, or are you still up for debating that point?
