Whatever you say, Chucklehead.
Because you have no guarantee that even that smaller number is a helpful one. A 99% reduction of the suspicion pool isn’t helpful if you’re still got an enormous number. Yes, 2.5 million is a fraction of 300 million. But it’s still 2.5 million people. It’s still a huge number! How is it that you know that one number is far too big and unhelpful and too general to make a basic point, but the other is specific enough to be able to make a basic statement of worthiness of suspicion? Is it a simple matter of the number being between 300 million and 2.5 million?
You aren’t just trying to protect Americans from a radical Islamic threat, or at least, I would hope you’re not. You’re looking to protect Americans from threats, full stop. My question was not, “in the context of the threat from radical Islamic elements, would you agree it would be fair to treat all Americans with suspicion?” It was in the context of any potential harm, and source of threat.
But that’s NOT what I’v e been talking about during this whole thread. You’re telling me that my idea is not effective in preventing something I never set out to or claimed I was preventing with this particular idea. My starting point was to protect against the attacks like 9/11, the failed Times Square bomber, the failed subway attacks, etc. And now you’re criticizing a tactic because it doesn’t go to solving a different problem? WTF?
I grant you, as I think I mentioned earlier, that the discussion to stop all individual murders is a different one, and am not in favor of adopting what I suggest here to some other problem willy nilly.
This is getting freakin’ old. Please take the trouble to look at what I’ve actually been arguing.
As far as the reduction to 2.5 million, no one says to stop the culling there. As I’ve stated NUMEROUS times in this thread, that would just be one of hopefully many reductions.
No, i’m criticizing an approach which seems at odds with your approach to similar problems. You seem to be taking one threat, one group, and treating them differently to other threats, other groups. Now, it may well be that those different treatments are correct, wise; after all, no issues are the same. But I suppose what i’m trying to get at, with all my questioning about other threats and other groups, is how we come up with these approaches in the first place.
And no, i’m not claiming your idea is ineffective in preventing some other point. I’m suggesting that it is not effective in an of itself, and using other situations to try and make an analogous situation, to try and understand your reasoning. I do not get, basically, what seems to me to be a double standard on your part.
You have, and we’ve talked about those point which make such situations different, and as to how severity of threat and so on change the situation (and in turn, change the response). You’ve said that there are several factors that go to make up the decision of how to respond. But what you haven’t said is how you know that this situation calls for this response, while other situations don’t.
It’s sort of as if we’d agreed that you could call some people tall, and some people short. We’ve even agreed that you could measure these people with a tape measure. But we haven’t nailed down the particular measurements, or the general area of those measurements, that would mean we call some people “tall” and some “short”. We agree there are different situations; but I am unconvinced by your arguments as of yet that one group’s situation suggests a course of action but another doesn’t. Americans are too large a group to be wary of, even if it’s just as a first step; Muslims aren’t. Why? Where’s the cutoff point? What’s the proportion? Where do we draw the line, even generally speaking?
I could say the same to you, apparently. I was under the impression we were actually understanding each other.
I recognise you have said this. However, you have said you would stop the culling there in terms of accepting a level of wariness.
Look, here’s the simple question; we’re trying to discover who we should look at to stop radical Islamic threats. As part of that, we look closer at Muslims, before passing on to more specific attributes and narrowing down the search. Let’s say we’re now at that more specific level; we have a list of various useful attributes which denote a person we should be suspicious of. We’re at the end of our narrowing, or at least we’ve gone past the “just Muslim” stage.
At this stage in our differentiation, would it be wise to be wary of Muslims in general?
No, reading your posts once is plenty. Are you going to play the game in which you pretend you aren’t calling for religious persecution because you didn’t use that word? That’s a game for one. I’m reminded of all the Bush apologists who tried to pretend Bush wasn’t claiming attack was imminent because he didn’t use the word ‘imminent’.
What do I have to do with any of this? You’d live in fear of Muslims whether I posted or not. Whether you think I’m tough or not has no effect on the fact of your cowardice.
And yet a much larger threat is posed by your fellow Americans, almost all of whom are Christian. Why don’t you want to remove this much larger threat coming from people who aren’t radical Muslims? Since your fellow Americans - most of whom are Christian - pose a much larger threat, one would think you’d favour officially looking at them far more than Muslims. Yet you don’t.
And yet you have a much higher chance of being murdered then dying in a terrorist attack. I see this isn’t about actual safety or security but about you being scared and wanting someone to make it go away.
But not 14 000 murders annually, even though you stand a much higher chance of being murdered than dying in a terrorist attack. Once again, this is obviously not about practical safety concerns but about what scares you most.
Why would I want to discuss that? You’re the idea man here, I don’t think I could top your strategic thinking. Being wary of all Muslims is a fucking brilliant plan.
Having my life change in any way for the sake of assuaging your cowardice would be inconvenient, and that would include being spied on (or ‘looked at’) whereas before I was not. And once again I’m reminded of all the Bush apologists who tried to pretend Bush wasn’t claiming attack was imminent because he didn’t use the word ‘imminent’.
Your fear of Muslims is no one’s problem but yours, and it would be best if it stayed that way.
They’re currently something going on 300 times more likely to die in a car accident per year, I’ll take my chances.
The freedom for Muslims to practice their religion (aka the First Fucking Amendment) without undergoing increased scrutiny (oh, I’m sorry, “wariness”) for the mere fact of said religion.
Look, I’m Buddhist. My wife is Jewish. I KNOW where “you gotta watch out for them, even if most of them are harmless” can lead, and has lead historically. Frankly, I feel my children are in more danger from steadily eroding freedoms in the name of bullshit security than they are from EVILSCAERYMUSLIMBOMBERSOHNOES.
Frankly your attitude is a threat to America far greater than any mere terror bombing–mere terror bombings don’t erode the very heart of what the hell this country is supposed to stand for.
I’m British and don’t give a shit about the First Amendment, especially the bit about freedom of religious expression. This was obviously written and approved by people who were at least a little biased towards believing in such bollocks, and is therefore invalid. Keep your religious thoughts inside your fucking heads, where they belong, and nobody is going to come looking for any of you, unless you start acting on those beliefs to the detriment of the society you live in.
So, ol’ ivan doesn’t care about his own country’s guaranteed freedoms. Sounds a lot like magaellan, huh?
Not if they allow people to believe in imaginary entities and who wish to impose these views on people who are far from convinced of their relevance in a 21st century context.
Well, yeah, of course they do. That was the whole point of the Patriot Act and similar - take away the freedoms *they *hate one by one, and they should stop hating. Safety achieved !
My fucking first amendment permits you to be a atheist without molestation, in my opinion, as well, and I’ll go to the barricades for that just as fast as I have for the Muslims.
So really, what the hell be you whining about.
Actually, if we ever get another whackjob like Shrubya, and he invades GB on account of them harboring an atheist, I don’t think the articles of impeachment will prominently feature his violation of England’s rights under the First Amendment.
I prefer to call it moaning. It’s a British national pastime.
One of the problems is that you’ve adopted the Underpants Gnome approach to fighting terrorism. Your big plan so far is:
- Get lists of Muslims from mosques
- ??? *
- Safety!
Perhaps its a severe failure of imagination on everyone else’s part, but some of us seem to be having trouble coming up with a step 2 that doesn’t result in harrassing a bunch of people whose sole offense is being Muslim. Perhaps you could allay those worries by explaining just what the heck you think step 2 should be.
*And, in case there’s any protest, “There’ll be further culling” is indistinguishable from “???”
Well, they should have thought about that before becoming Muslim, shouldn’t they?
I for one eagerly await an honest answer.
I’m curious why magellan01 thought using the word culling was a good idea if he’s trying to prove he’s not bigoted.
From the Daily Show: Wish You Weren’t Here. What the hell has happened to America? Freedom of worship was the founding principle of the whole damn country!
Nice to see FoxNews referring to the “Ground Zero mosque”, BTW. Fair, balanced and committed to the truth as ever.
No laws are set in stone, and any that can’t be adapted to societal changes are as good as useless. If I lived in the USA, I wouldn’t have any right to live free from hearing religious bs, so why should I respect those who are religious being favoured by the state?
I have no idea how you got from “people should be free to worship” to “religious people are being favored”. It may well be true that they are (and it is), but it’s not the same thing as what I was talking about.