So the rest of us have noticed that you are spending an awful lot of time on minutiae and apparently completely avoiding the practical idiocy of your ideas–namely, as amply discussed a few posts above, what is your heuristic by which “me”, as a self-respecting American who wants to protect myself and my family, can determine who to be wary of. No magic, please, tell me how I PERSONALLY am supposed to detect Muslims in order to be wary of them.
Why do you constantly refer to not caring if you fear Muslims or not as ‘political correctness’? I, for one, am not telling you to be nice and respect Muslims. I really don’t care what you think about Muslims or anyone else. Buy a gunnie-wunnie and build a Muslim-proof compound if you like. But why should your cowardice inconvenience anyone else?
And why aren’t you arguing on behalf of being wary of Christians, who are responsible for most of the awful things Americans do to themselves and others?
I have been referring to what LE should be doing, in order to identify threats before they are turned into dead bodies. I’m not afraid to play basketball with Muslims, or go have dinner or a beer with them afterwards. As I do. The threat is not that some Muslim walking down the street will stab me. It’s that some are planning some future mayhem on a grand scale. Let me ask you this: how much of what I’ve actually said in this thread that you seem to be uncomfortable with would you, in retrospect, allow, if it could have avoided 9/11?
Double post.
Political correctness is the thing that prevents some people from taking steps that will make us safer. The threat from radical Islam toward Americans is real. It makes sense to attempt to identify those who wish to cause us harm by looking at the larger set, Muslims, and then try to narrow the scope. This is so basic, so common-sensical, so logical, so benign, it astounds me that there is so much push back. Even here. But then, no one has been able to point to any actual thing I’ve said that is racist, blah, blah, blah. It seems that the general proposition strikes a nerve, so they read words not on the page. Nothing new around here, really.
And pants-wetting cowardice is the thing that causes some people to sacrifice their freedom and that of others for the illusion of safety.
Does it matter that the intelligence agencies had acquired information that might have prevented 9/11 if it was handled right without adopting your suggestions? The problem pre-9/11 was compartmentalization and poor sharing of information rather than being insufficiently “wary” of Muslims. For that matter, why do you think things would have been better pre-9/11 if the intelligence agencies were in the middle of an analysis of every single US mosque on top of everything else they were doing?
Personally, I’d rather just ADHERE TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FUCKING COUNTRY I LIVE IN, you disgusting racist who’s too cowardly to even come out and admit what a scumbag you are. And when I say scumbag, please envision that I’m using it in the original sense of a used condom.
If you don’t like it, move to North Korea, where you’ll probably find people in power more apt to appreciate your ideas.
I thought they hated our freedom? I’m so confused.
Actually Bosstone, all kidding aside, well said.
Zero. I would not be comfortable with any of it. I’d rather have a solid, unbreakable 1st Amendment for my children and their children, even if I was taped to the front of one of those planes on 9/11. There is no level of official increased scrutiny of any particular religion that I am prepared to accept.
Basically, fuck your “wary” with a sharp stick. “They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”, as the man said.
Phrased in those terms, would it not then be correct to say that it would be wise for you to be wary of Americans, in general, as a first pass, where the only thing we know about them in their Americanship?
It’s not really the creation of euphemisms, but the avoidance of anti-euphamisms, for which there’s probably a word but i’m not sure what it is. And I think this is an instance where it’s helpful. Possibly it’s my psych degree talking, but when you want to look at people’s opinions, you have to be damn careful you don’t lead them with emotive language (it was the subject of my dissertation, in fact). That doesn’t mean remove all emotion entirely - i’m not talking about changing “killing innocents” into “the removal of non-military targets” or something. I’m talking about trying to avoid potentially misleading results.
If I go out and conduct a study to find out how many conspiracy theorists there are in the country, and my question is “Are you a conspiracy theorist?” i’m not going to get particulaly useful results, because people don’t like that term being applied to them or their beliefs. If you change the question to whether they hold a particular view, then you might get a better response. And it is the view that’s what you’re looking at, not the label. If you go out and ask people whether they support terrorism, you’ll get a lot of no’s, because it’s an emotive word. If you go out and ask people whether they support specific acts you could call terroristic without using that word, you’ll probably get better results, because while the emotive potential of the act remains, the added emotive aspect of the label in particular doesn’t. And we’re not interested, after all, in whether people support the label; we want to know whether they support the act. That’s kind of the important thing. We want an honest and accurate assessment. On occasions, certainly, we want to ratchet up the emotion. But not when we’re trying to find out something.
My point is not to not look at Muslims; my point is that Muslim, in and of itself, is simply not a useful nor actionable nor theoretical standard by which to judge. That, essentially, “it is wise to be wary of all Muslims” is not a wise nor even reasonable thing to say, nor is it particularly helpful. If you want to start there, sure, go ahead, as you will start with many broad categories, but don’t slip in a “suspicion” of the overall group before stepping forth to differentiate further down.
This all kinda presupposes that your children don’t get blown up, now doesn’t it.
What liberty am I suggesting we abandon? Feel free to search the thread and use my own words, as opposed to the ones in your head.
I’ve called you a coward calling for religious persecution, but I haven’t mentioned racism. And you still haven’t explained why you aren’t in favour of ‘looking at’ all Christians then narrowing the scope in order to track down murderers, even though far more Americans die at the hands of one another than at the hands of anyone else.
And I really don’t care how benign you consider the persecution you favour. As I said, your fear should inconvenience no one but you. Given the choice between you living in fear and people who have nothing to do with you being hassled by The Man, well, get used to living in fear.
If you’re in America, as I am, trying to protect Americans from a radical Islamic threat, looking at “Americans” is just about as useless as starting with “Earthlings”.
Starting with “Muslim” here is not useless. It cuts the pool in one fell swoop from 300 million to 2.5. In what world is a 99% reduction of the suspicion pool not helpful—as a first step? Now let’s say I can reduce the pool by another 99%, to under 25,000, would that not be very helpful?
And, lest you forget, you disgust me.
Cite, please, for this “persecution” I’ve called for. Please use my actual quotes.
And yes, it is very brave of you to call me a coward on the internets. You seem very tough yourself.
Surely you understand sets and subsets. Not all murderers are Christian, but all barbarians killing Americans in the name of Allah are Muslims. What this thread is about is the threat from radical Islamists. It’s not about trying to stop all individual murders. It’s about trying to prevent another 9/11, or something even grander. If you want to discuss how to best go about stopping ALL murders in the U.S., feel free to begin another thread.
So, what is the “inconvenience” you’re referring to. Again, feel free to use actual quotes.
Wow, you really don’t get this whole debate thing, do you? Well, maybe I’m wrong. If I am, you’ll be able to show quotes of mine that run afoul of each of the two passages you chose to cite.
I’ll wait.
We aren’t in Great Debates, idiot.
Whew! Then it’s a good thing I didn’t say we were.
Tell me, is it possible for you or others to have a debate on the SDMB without big type across the top that says, “Great Debates”? Is it possible for you to have a debate in real life without a two lecterns and a moderator.
You persnickety little dummy, you.
For a bigoted coward you do like to throw stones.