Arab newspapers claiming that Jews eat babies, schoolbooks teaching anti-semitism, popular religious leaders calling for indiscriminate murder of the heathens, marchers demanding death to America/Israel/Tony Blair/Miss Universe/ etc. … all leading to a now depressingly routine series of bombings, kidnappings, and massacres.
On the other:
In the last 18 months we have exactly one person killed from anti-Arab violence in the US, the Sikh gentleman you mentioned.
What else do we have in your cites …
– A guy drives a truck into the side of a Mosque (no injuries) and yells some threats … and he gets sent to jail.
– Some reports of things that were alleged to be hate crimes in 2001. No word on convictions or even if charges were pressed
– A CNN article from three days after 9/11 about the fears among Arab-Americans about what might happen, which doesn’t go a long way towards proving what actually did happen.
– A racist editorial cartoon was published (and apologized for)
– some people got yelled at, and some crank calls were made
– Some people on the internet are idiots
Yeah, those two are about equal.
Oh I forgot:
– Some soldiers strung up a Saddam Hussein effigy
OH THE HORROR! They insult and defame a mass murderer! The Iraqis must be furious! Or something.
Blowero’s cite:
I gotta say it takes a special, special mind to read that story and come out concluding that it reflects badly on the Americans.
These are still on the table for you if anyone cares to try again:
When Arabs express hatred for Americans, it’s proof that Americans are morally superior.
When Americans express hatred for Arabs, it’s just “some cranks”, or “a few nutballs”. (BTW, a death threat is not the same as a “crank call”.)
When they burn an effigy of Bush, it proves they are savages.
When we burn an effigy of Saddam, it’s OK, because he was really, really evil.
Way to backpedal there, furt. Now it’s not the acts themselves, huh? Now it’s “they did it more”, or “when we did it, it was justified”. You’ll really go a long way to justify your hatred, won’t you?
I especially like how you say there was “only one” Arab death in the U.S., and then compare that to how many deaths there have been in a WAR with Israel. Let’s count how many innocent Arab people have died in the world, and then maybe you can make a comparison.
Well take that crap off the table, because it has been discredited.
Originally posted by blowero
I don’t think my point is really sinking in, so let me reiterate - I am NOT condoning any terrorist activity. I think what they are doing is wrong. My only point is that the view many seem to hold that the U.S. and Isreal are morally superior, and that all Arabs are evil, is naive at best. If peace is ever going to be acheived, people will have to get beyond such simplistic thinking. **
I guess I didn’t address this point clearly enough. Most people do not view “all Arabs as evil”. This is not a war of the USA vs Islam. You seem to be equating “America is morally superior to terrorists” to “America is morally supperior to the Islamic world”. That is a false assumption.
The issue is not a matter of which country is morally superior. The issue is how does the US government, which has an obligation to defend it’s people, deal with the threat of foreign, possibly state sponsered, terrorists.
Terrorism CAN be an act of war. 9/11 was an attack on the American nation and a nation has every moral right to defend itself.
So…if you can show me where the terrorists, who were mostly Saudi, have ANY justification for their action, I will concede their moral equality.
Amusing to find myself being labeled as having hate for Arabs: I live quite happily with a Syrian roommate, with whom I often enjoy discussions on geopolitics.
The specific point I made was that there is a quite massive difference of degree. Yes there are anti-arab idiots in the West, and they are detestable. They are also investigated, prosecuted and jailed. Make a death threat against an Arab in this country, and you will likely face legal action. The reverse is not true in the Arab world.
Way to keep on putting words in my mouth. You manufactured “morally superior” and “savages,” but I decline to use them.
I tend to think burning leaders in effigy, on either side, is not a big deal. If anger is aimed at an individual leader, that’s the price he pays for getting into politics. I am more concerned when anger is directed at undifferentiated members of a group, which, IMO, is implied by things such as flag-burnings. “Down with Bush” is political discourse. “Death to the Americans” is incitement.
Ummm, yeah, pretty much. I do tend to look at action more than rhetoric. And I do look for patterns of data, rather than anecdotes. If I say that New Zealand has a greater respect for human rights than China, it does not follow that I am saying that NZ is perfect, nor that China has no regard at all. I am merely observing the quite obvious general pattern.
And if something is justified, then it is justified. You might want to look up what that word means. Note that I am not attempting and have not attempted to justify anything.
**
Once again, you attack the things you wish I had said. I never referred to, and was not thinking about, the Palestinian sitation. I was thinking about 9/11, the Saudi bombings, Bali, as well as all the many, many smaller incidents in which American civilans have been delibertaely targeted over the years.
**
And each and every time an Arab dies anywhere in the world, it’s America’s fault and morally equivalent to suicide bombing a tourist disco?
I’m glad to hear you say that, because I’ve run across many Americans who seem to think otherwise.
Yes, but we don’t have a moral right to arbitrarily attack Arab countries that are no real threat to us.
So your point seems to be that those who don’t deliberately kill innocent people are morally superior to those who do. I’ll agree with that, although it’s really almost a truism. But since there have been American terrorists (Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kazinsky, etc.), one can’t say that Americans, as a group, are morally superior to anyone else, as a group. I guess I’m not sure exactly what you’re trying to say. People who are moral are morally superior to people who are not moral? Well, duh.
Yeah, I apologize for that - I went a little too far, there.
Again, you are generalizing. You need to give a specific example of what you are talking about, rather that just saying it’s something that “Arabs” do.
Well then I’m baffled as to why you used that as an example of America’s moral superiority:
(my emphasis)
I agree that it is detestable, but I don’t understand how you can dismiss the fact that many Americans spew the same type of invective. I understand your point that targeting and killing innocent people is wrong, and I fully agree. But I don’t get what flag-burning has to do with it.
I merely responded to your assertion that Americans don’t do x, y and z, and are therefore morally superior. That’s how you stated it, and that’s how I refuted it. If you are making a point about a particular country having a pattern of human-rights violations, that’s another matter entirely. So far you have just thrown out vague assertions about “The Terrorists”, or “The Arab People”.
You most certainly did. After decrying the practice of burning effigies, you then sarcastically implied that it’s o.k. for the U.S. to do it:
And you implied that it was justified because the effigy was of a murderer. I am well aware of what “justify” means, are you?
Again, I am NOT claiming any such thing. That is not my term, nor my belief.
I am not dismissing it. It is real, and should be stopped. It is also quite obviously far less common here, and is treated quite differently. See my example of China v. NZ.
The fact that we see it as a problem at all is evidence of the difference. Can you even imagine a westerner living in, say, Saudi Arabia threatening to sue or making a report because someone used ethnic slurs against them? Can you imagine large numbers of clerics – even Falwell types – actively, literally telling their parishioners to kill people? Can you imagine American School books in 2003 that explicitly teach racial inferiority?
Cite or retract.
Please note that (for better or worse) I am not msmith537.
I did not decry “burning of effigies,” neither did I imply it was OK. I did agree with msmith537’s point about large-scale protests.
ME on effigies: They are a simplistic and cheesy way to make a point, but compared to a lot of other things and in themselves no big deal. US soldiers stringing up SH is not real great IMO, but if it lets off some steam for them, I can live with it. The same goes for anyone anywhere who wants to do the same with Dubya, Sharon, Clinton, The Pope, whoever. They can string me up for all I care (I should be so lucky).
I do see something very troubling, however, in frequent large protests with hundreds or thousands of people chanting “death to group x.” I see something troubling with state-sponsored media endorsing racist ideas. I see something troubling about encouraging teenagers to blow themselves up in a nightclub and then giving their parents a reward.
Do you see these things happening in the US?
I’m perfectly willing to admit that there is racial/religious hate in the US that is qualitatively the same: The Klan, Aryan Nation, etc. My point is that the quantitantive difference is massive. Here the true racists are marginalized and discredited. In the much of the Muslim world, and especially the Arab nations, they are tolerated and allowed to grow.
I was extrapolating, perhaps unfairly, from:
(Emphasis original)
I have already said I was not solely thinking of, and did not mention, Israel. I was pointing out was US violence intentionally aimed against civilian Arab Muslims had resulted in one death. You said that I must think about “how many innocent Arab people have died in the world,” from which I inferred that you felt the US is responsible for Arab suffering and death all over the globe.
If you were not adopting his arguments, then why did you re-post them and say they were “still on the table”?
Again, you are being vague. Are these things you claim are happening in Saudi Arabia? Are you suggesting that the U.S.A. is morally superior to Saudi Arabia? Are you saying these things about all Arabs? Which Arabs, then?
See quote above.
Well then you shouldn’t have adopted his arguments.
Your retraction is noted.
So it’s the number of people who hate that determines the relative morality of a country? If we could say, for example, that there are fewer French people than Americans who hate Arabs, does that make France morally superior to the U.S.?
But the same could be said of the Israelis on the other side. They are at war with the Palestinians, and a climate of hatred for Arabs is most certainly tolerated there. Conflict tends to bring out the ugly side of people. 9/11 notwithstanding, the U.S. still enjoys relative peace compared to the Middle East. Just take a look back to WWII if you want examples of blatant and widespread U.S. racism and hatred for the Germans and Japanese.
I see your point, but the reason I posted the links was as a response to msmith537s assertion that the U.S. is morally superior because we don’t do certain things. To disprove such an assertion, I need only provide ONE example of the U.S. doing those things. If I say “I’m a good driver because I don’t run red lights”, you would need only to show that I ran a red light ONCE, and my assertion is disproved. And if you put the assertion “back on the table”, I am going to slap it down again.
No, but all the latter are the former, and many of the former foment, support and defend the latter.
Yes.
No.
I already answered this: Fundamentalist Arab Muslims.
Once more, with feeling: I reject utterly the term and the idea of “moral superiority.” And as to the question, given the premise, I would say that in that regard, the French people were behaving more morally. “In that regard” because I do not think any one action or trait can define a person or a nation.
I have not defended or even addressed the situation in Israel, which I see as a compex one with sins on both sides. I am not on either “side.” However, fundamentalist Muslim terrorism is by no means confined to Palestine.
Sigh. Your last paragraph seems, as far as I can see, to indicate that you believe that (in contra the proverb) half a loaf is the same as no bread.
For the last time: I reject the idea of anyone being “morally superior” (i.e. better by intrinsic nature) to anyone else. I believe that some actions are good and some evil, and that all human beings (all nations, all governments) do both good and bad things, in varying proportions and degrees — Yet I say the fact that good and bad are always mixed in and tangled does not mean that we can never make distinctions between good and evil.
I do not think that I am, in my moral nature, superior to a Klansman; I am persuaded of this because on several occasions in my 33 years I have thought racist thoughts and/or said racist things – Yet I do not think that some ugly jokes in college or some ephithets uttered in anger equate with cross-burning. They are the same in nature, but differ in degree.
I have no problem saying that a person who makes racism his hobby/passion/raison d’etre, and spends his weekends printing White Power newsletters and sending hate mail to Tiger Woods is doing horrible, terrible things and needs to stop: and that if he goes beyond that to violence then he must BE stopped – Yet I still claim no “moral superiority.” I have no idea what demons chase him, what his biochemistry is, what history lies behind his hate and fear. I can honestly feel sympathy for someone that dysfunctional; and it is because I feel sympathy that I want to see him snap out of it: because he’s a human being, every bit as valuable and beautiful as any other, and as such too damned important to waste his life wallowing in his anger.
Thus, the fact that my own nation is clearly not guiltless and still has need for improvement does not and should not hinder me from condemning the repeated pattern of pointless (because counterproductive) and xenophobic violence coming from Radical Muslims in many countries.
To adopt the position you seem to is, in my view, a surrender to despair, a moral abdication wherein we conclude that only those who have never stolen a paper clip from the office have the right to condemn Enron. You obviously see it otherwise, which is fine.
But I am saddened that you seem determined to believe that despite my repeated protestations, the concerns that I and others share could only be rooted in arrogance, when the opposite is true: I reject hatred all the more because I have been guilty of it. I condemn evil because I know it lies only shallowly buried on my own breast.
I refer you to Ayn Rand and her book, Philosophy Who Needs It. Published in 1982, it contains her own condemnation of “open mindedness” on certain inviolable moral topics. The “open-mind fallacy” is not a decade old. People have been detesting undesirable moral flexibility for a long time. You may wish to read her book, it may help you to avoid some of the Pit threads around here.
Author(s): Ayn Rand, with an introduction by Leonard Peikoff
Year Published: **1982 **
Background: This is a collection of essays. Although the book was published posthumously with final editing by Leonard Peikoff, Rand had begun work on the collection prior to her death. Most of the essays originally appeared in The Ayn Rand Letter.
[sub]BOLDING ADDED[/sub]
Nope. I didn’t say that at all. I was making a very specific argument against what msmith537 wrote. (He seems to have dropped out of the thread). I’m sure I was clear about that. I think you made a wrong turn when you adopted his arguments in your previous post, but I’m glad to hear that you aren’t buying into the “moral superiority” thing. I think that’s where we as a people and as a nation get into trouble - when we dismiss an entire race or an entire religion as “evil”.