thats the thing. The Church has been remorseful over its past in the last few years, and is doing everything in its power to attone for its previous crimes (at least towards other religions, as for its reaction to its own members is a matter for another debate.)
The Vatican has been proactive in supporting calls to reach a peaceful resolution in disputes all over the world. It arranges audiences with people of many different perspectives. World leaders who so wish an audience with the Big Hat will be granted it.
But to say that the Vatican unilaterally condones and even supports the politics and policies of everyone who meets with the Pope is ridiculous.
December tossed off a one liner in a thread. “The Pope supports a regime that murders the Jews, what else is new?”
Now lets look at his words. He is implying that the Pope is happy with the fact that Saddam Hussein’s regieme has killed Jews.
Where is the debate here? what is not justified with this pitting?
I agree that people are sometimes too quick to dismiss anything he says, but ferchrissakes, look at what he is saying here! He’s gone too far.
See Twisty, that’s making arguements against the statement he made. I am a firm believer that any statement, no matter how outrageous, that a poster has backed up with references and cites, needs to be refuted, not by insulting the poster, but by providing counter cites and arguements. Elvis proves my point, look at his last two posts:
These are all concerned with the individual, not with the claims he has made, thus proving my point. Elvis also said:
I say, by all means, fight it, but ad homin attacks are not the way to do that. December has made statements and backed them up with cites. Refute those statements and cites, not the poster himself, That would be fighting ignorance.
“I don’t like so and so, so FUCK YOU!” acomplishes nothing.
I’m going to say this now, and for the final time: I made this thread
a. as so not to hijack the thread in GD
b. because a thread about this in GD would not have been appropriate, as it would have been a pile on and a rant and calling out disguised as a GD thread.
december is more than welcome to start a GD thread on anti-semitism in the Catholic church. However, I would hope they do not consist of simple drive by bigotry.
Sorry for the brief diversion, but as one of the ‘virtually nobody’ who said that the term was inappropriate because the gist, or context, of the post was unrepentently racist, I must say something. For some reason, people who disagreed with the sentiment that the story was not racist did not feel comfortable posting their opposition in that thread. I doubt that it was the banning of I am Spartacus, but for some reason, I got emails from people agreeing that the little story was actually offensive and racist who did not feel that they could post such there. Some of the other posts in the thread also suggested to me that I, in detailing the racism in the post, was suggesting that the emperor had no clothes on (in that the poster of the racism was established here as a fine teller of touching stories).
I don’t disagree that the manner in which I am Spartacus went about voicing his opposition was inappropriate, however.
I was implying that whatever unhappiness th Pope has with the regime of Saddam Hussein (and Yasser Arafat as well) was not sufficient to stop him from providing moral support to them. These regimes have murdered Jews. When challenged, I provided cites supporting my POV. What more do you want?
Posts earlier in this thread explained ways that the Pope is providing moral support.
But, I want to make one point clear. Even if you disagree with my premise, it has enough factual support to not deserve pitting. OTOH you have done little to counter my arguments, except for irrelevant sarcasm, like the quote above.
The bottom line in all this is that what december did was cram a volley with:
1: a highjack
2: a rude statement
3: an accusation
And incredible feat I grant you! And I think this charade of justification after the fact is pathetic, I saw better excuses for the president when he called a reporter a mayor league asshole, but after all the smoke and mirrors put forward on this thread, it remains that NO one that supports december thinks he should say that again in a similar circumstance. Just like in the president’s case, only an obtuse would think it would be ok to do that again, regardless of his pile of justifications.
I think his justifications, while possibly relevant to point 3, are irrelevant to points 1 and 2. I am sparticus justifications were more valid, but by missing the context, being insulting and high jacking the thread, he was banned.
[aside]
When one checks those december’s justifications one finds them to be of:
“facts” done by a different pope before Vatican II
Facts put in a misleading fashion by a blogster.
Instapundit (I still can not see anybody saying this is a reliable source)
And a cite I found from Rome showed that one of his points was full of ignorance.
So the justifications in the end are soso and this is the best he could do to say his out of place remark was justified?
[/aside]
Even though all the alchemists here are thinking everything is peachy with december the reality is that they are making sure he will pull these derailments again and again.
At least the president does not think he has the right to continue insulting reporters near a mike, just because he and his minions found a way to justify what he did.
I’m picking on Scylla here because this post is a particularly good example of the disconnect between the sides of this arguement. Plus I know his ego can take it.
First off, believe it or not, he is a moderate conservative. Conservatism, taken to extremes, is totalatarianism. I don’t think anyone here believes december is advocating such a position. Add in abortion rights(which he supports) and several of his positions on other issues and you’ve got a fairly solid, and vocal, moderate conservative.
Where is the issue with this statement then? Simply this. I, and others I’m sure, don’t object to what december believes. Speaking for myself, I don’t give a shit if he thinks the Pope is a mass murderer. So where’s the problem? Two problems really, and they’re completely independent of his ideology. First, the minor problem.
He states his opinion as objective fact. “The Pope supports a regime that murders Jews.” instead of “I believe the Pope is, regardless of his intentions, supporting a regime which murders Jews.” One is clearly opinion, the other is highly spun, emotionally charged, and presented as fact. The fact that the position is arguable, using some little-known definition of “support” and lots of new-think, is beside the point. It is presented as if it was as certain as the statement “the sun rises in the East”. This is dishonest, but it pales in comparison to the major problem people have with him.
The major problem is that his characterizations of people who disagree with him are generally highly inaccurate and seemingly tailored to demonize. It is the imposition of his black-and-white worldview on everyone he comes into contact with which draws him the ire he receives. Either you support an iminent American-led war against Iraq, or you support Saddam Hussien as he builds nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. This type of black-and-white thinking simply doesn’t fly in a world with shades of grey. If you happened to occupy one of those shades of grey, and suddenly someone is calling you an Anti-Semitic bigot because you support sanctions/inspections/whatever over outright war, surely you can see that being demonized in this manner is offensive.
No other positions are available in a “debate” with december, and he’s ruthless at twisting the posts of others to try to force them into one of his defined positions. The comment which earned him this thread was him ruthlessly twisting the actual position of the Pope, wanting a bloodless resolution to the problem in the middle east, into some sort of “Hey Saddam! You go ahead and wipe out those Jews, I got your back!” kind of nonsense.
In a nutshell: It is not the positions december holds which are offensive. It is the positions he represents others as holding.
Note the words “they want” didn’t appear in my statement. In this context, adding them to my statement changes the meaning and misrepresents my position. I resent that, and oddly enough, when it happens to him, so does december. Witness this exchange on page 1 of this very thread.
Loves to dish it out, cries foul when he’s on the receiving end. The problem with december isn’t his position. It’s his dishonesty in debating. It’s the sure knowledge that you can’t expect a fair debate with him on the other side because he’s more interested in “winning” than learning or teaching.
