Monty berates the bigot, msmith537.

The BBQ Pit
41

Yes, I know I don’t have to understand it to debate the point, I was just saying that I don’t understand it. I’m sorry if it isn’t completely relevant.

I don’t think it’s the same type of judgement at all. I think that it is, in fact, the criteria involved which are being criticised here.

No, it wouldn’t. I don’t value the lives of strangers from my country any more than I value the lives of strangers from any other country. I’m sorry if you can’t believe that, but it’s true.

As far as the geographic location of an earthquake or any other tragic incident is concerned, I can understand that the closer it is to someone, the more it would affect them. But we are discussing (or at least I am) the tendancy for some people to feel more sympathy for their own countrymen no matter where they are, just because they are citizens of the same nation.

42

Gary - About a dozen years ago, around 100,000 Bangladeshis died in a typhoon. Just this year, lord knows how many Indians died in a major earthquake. While lots of money was raised in the US to aid in recovery from each event, it certainly didn’t affect Americans to the extent that WTC did. And the converse, of course, is that I am sure that Bangladeshis and Indians were much more saddened and horrified by the disasters in their country than by WTC. But if we, the Indians and Bangladeshis all valued life equally, how all of us were affected would have no relation to where the event occured, only by how many people died. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, bin Laden would have to launch hundreds of attacks on the scale of WTC to meet the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia.
But, WTC has affected us far more than Cambodia (or Rwanda). We identify more closely with those who have more similarities to us. For that reason, I would not be surprised if Europeans are more deeply affected by WTC than Cambodia, as well - in general, Europeans identify more closely with the US than with Southeast Asia. You may call this assigning more “value” to certain peoples.
That is just how humans are. Whether this is good or bad is certainly open to discussion, but to call it bigotry is to empty that term of meaning - if everyone is a bigot, what’s the point of the word?

If the attack had happened in France rather the US, Americans would of course be outraged. Would it have affected Americans as deeply? Of course not - much as I’m sure WTC has not affected the French as deeply as they would be affected had it happened there.

Sua

disclaimer - I’m only responding to Gary’s point, not commenting on msmith’s writings.

43

Just for the record I am am guy. My name isn’t MsMith537, it was supposed to be MrSmith537 but I am not a very good typist. Since I am apparently also a bigot, It is important for me to not be identified with the “weaker sex”.

I am just being honest when I say that I don’t look at everyone equally. I AM concerned about American lives more than Afghan (or British or Canadian for that matter). Maybe in todays PC world, it is considered bigotry, but that’s how I feel.

I don’t really care if Monty thinks I’m a bigot or not. He is just some anonymous on a message board who means nothing to me. I guess some people just get off by setting themselves up to be morally superior to others (although it’s obvious that he does not “value” me as highly because I was never in the military).

As for his Navy experience (if he was actually in the Navy) I am not impressed. Quite franky, I imagine his childish behavior would be an embarassment to anyone who served in the Armed Forces (“bigot!! bigot I say!!! To the Pit with you!!”). I also suspect that he has never been in combat otherwise there is no way he could assert that the guy fueling the plane on the carrier is under the same pressure as the pilot who flys into harms way.

That’s about all I have to say on this matter. Monty, feel free to fill up the 'Dope server with all the profanity you can type.

44

Well, on the London_Calling scale he’s currently ranking as more of a Hank Hill than a Boomhauser. Just thought I’d share…Bye !

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But he means more to you than an Afghan, right?

But . . . but . . . isn’t that what you’ve admitted to as well?

46

Is it possible that the OP and others are failing to distinguish between

and

FTR, I agree with the position of msmith537, Gaspode et al.

47

Maybe, but the point is that I admit it. I am not so hypocritical to say “I treat everyone equally” and then lash out at those who don’t think the same way I do.
In any case I have to go. My Jewish boss is to cheap to pay me overtime and I want to finish up early so I can take my shirts to that Chinese drycleaner down the street. If I get out too late, I have to walk past those black kids (who are obviously gang-bangers) and it makes me uncomfortable.

Which reminds me. My buddy and I are going out to a bar later and he drinks like an Irishman. Since the subways are always full of Hispanics that time of night I’ll probably take a cab. That’s probably the safest way to travel since there’s no way the terrorists can infiltrate that organization.

[for those of you who are thick, I am using irony to make a humorous statement. Or humor to make an ironic statement. Either way I’m just kidding and don’t actually think this way]

48

I know that each soul has value. I know that tragedy is universal to man. I have wept over the misfortunes of people I never knew, or shared experiences with. I disagree with blanket statements of the value of one group of people over the value of another.

But I grieve more when death takes those I know. I am moved to passion more when injustice takes freedom from those I have met. I despise more strongly those who visit sorrow upon my own land, than the tyrants of other nations. No, my life has no more value, my friends are not better humans. But they are my life, my friends, and my own world. I have not tears enough for every sorrow, nor can I take arms against every tyrant in the world. I am human, and frail.

But I will guard my heart against the insular view that Americans are more important than Ethiopians, or Whites are more important than Blacks. Prejudice is in each of us. Surrender to that temptation is still wrong.

Tris

“The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.” ~ Albert Einstein ~

49

I honestly don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it much. I wouldn’t be so much “sorrier” for the people, however, as I would be shocked at the event itself. I guess I have become jaded to bombings and conflict happening outside the U.S. borders, yet such instances are a rarity inside our borders. As such, if I heard of a clinic bombing in Afghanistan, my concern/sorrow for the people hurt or killed wouldn’t depend on their nationality… but my shock over the event itself would be diminished due to distance.

Perhaps that makes me a little shallow, maybe? Or just cynical? I don’t know. I’ll have to think about your question a bit more.

50

The criteria for making the judgement may differ, but the criteria for defining the value of humanity are exactly the same as your own. You apparently only feel emotionally attached to people you have met, with all strangers lumped together as abstract strangers with whom you have little connection. We feel emotionally attached to people we’ve met and with strangers with whom we can readily identify , with all abstract strangers with whom we identify little lumped together.

There is no difference in criteria between us, we are all basing our valuations of human life entirely on degree of emotional attachment. The only difference is that we feel such attachment to the familiar more readily than we do the unfamiliar whereas you apparently feel as little attachment to the somewhat familiar as you do to the completely abstract. That isn’t a difference in criterion, it’s a difference in psychology. That doesn’t make our view better or worse than yours. We could argue that either way and it becomes meaningless. What we do know is that we all place values on human life and that none of us are bigots as a result.

Couldn’t agree with you more. But as Izzy has said, there is a world of difference between ‘Americans are more important than Ethiopians’ and ‘Americans are more important to me than Ethiopians’. No one has said that Americans are more important than any other group and as such your statement is a strawman.

Consider the following statement ‘My car is more important to me than the limousine of the American president’. That is a statement of fact. It isn’t open to debate,it’s indisputably true. I could seriously not give a rats if the presidential limo breaks down in the street. If it happens to my car it’s a disaster. However the statement ‘My car is more important than the limousine of the American president’ is very much open to debate. Those two little words make all the difference.

51

If by some magical force I was forced to choose where the next thousand deaths in this war would be, and my choice was only between America and Afghanistan[sup]1[/sup], then I would choose Afghanistan.

Each and every time.

1[sub]France Vs. Afghanistan might be a harder choice.

52

I just can’t see how msmith537 is being a bigot. We’ve established that by definition, a bigot is a person that is partial to his/her own race, religion, etc., and is intolerant of others. Maybe if he had posted “but the lives of Americans are worth more to me than the lives of those fucking towel-headed Afghans,” you could label him a bigot. But he showed no antagonism towards the Afghanis. To him, they are simply a group of people he can’t identify with, and so he places less value on them than he does Americans, a group that he can identify with. That is not unreasonable.

The discussion was about natives of Afghanistan. msmith537 thus chose to include the word “Afghans” in his statement. This does not mean that he values them less because of their nationality. They happened to be the group under discussion. If the discussion had been about Rwanda, he would have said he values Rwandans less than Americans. Not because they are Rwandans, but because they are an abstract entity to him (to me, and I’d venture a guess, to most others here as well).

Maybe msmith really is a bigot. Maybe a majority of the posters here are. I seriously doubt it, but my point is that msmith537 certainly hasn’t said anything that would lead me to believe he is bigoted. If he is, then I am a bigot, too. I can’t honestly say that 5,000 Afghan civilian deaths would register in the same way as 5,000 American deaths. I am, therefore, placing more value on American lives than Afghans. Am I a bigot, or just a normal human being? I also place more value on my friends and family than on the rest of the people of my town. But I am not intolerant of them, just as I am not intolerant of Afghans.

I think Monty should reconsider his OP. He seems to have been pretty riled up in the thread he referenced in the OP. Freedom had him going pretty good in that thread. I think msmith537 may have spoken up at exactly the wrong time.

53

The thing is, for me it’s not a matter of closeness or empathy. It’s a matter of responsibility. I can’t be responsible for everybody in the world - that’s just too many people. I can only be responsible for my countrymen, and them for me.

I’m an individual, yes, but I’m also a member of a group (I don’t think that’s in any way unnatural - humans, like all the other great apes, are social animals). So when members of the group do something wrong, I bear responsibility. If they succeed, I feel pride. And if they are in trouble, I have an obligation to take care of them.

This does not make me a bigot. In fact, the same responsibility I feel towards my group I also feel towards the rest of humanity, if not as strongly. But my first priority is to protect those who would protect me. This is not bigotry. It’s a survival trait.

I am responsible for the lives of my countrymen not because I know and love every one of them, but because of duty and honor and an ineffable sense of shared destiny.

These are difficult concepts to explain.

54

Yes, I was actually in the Navy. As to you being impressed or not, big whoop.

What childish behaviour? And your parenthetical…very poor parsing of the message.

Again, you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not a military person. Four words for you: USS COLE.

55

Isn’t that more like three letters and one word? :smiley:

Just being a smartass, and needlessly hijacking a thread. Carry on, please.

56

While I do think her choice of words was pretty bigotted, by bombing them to keep ourselves from being bombed we are inherently saying that our lives are more important than theirs, whether we admit to it or not. That does not make what happened less of a tragedy, and the mistake SHOULD be looked into. However, unfortunately, in war civilians casulaties are a job hazard that is taken with the territory. If you don’t like it, then you aren’t really supporting the war.

Erek

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Reading more of the thread, what people don’t seem to realize is that Nationalims IS bigotry, while it may be formed from a coherent purpose, IE protecting your tribe from other tribes, it is still bigotry. When you fight against another nationality for your safety, you are saying that their safety is less valuable than yours, to you. And they are saying the same thing, so it is bigotry, you are claiming a higher value on one than the other. Now I think war is bad no matter what, but that doesn’t make it not necessary, and I am willing to deal with a certain level of bigotry on my end just to keep me and my wife from being killed. It’s horrible what’s happening in Afghanistan, and trivializing the plight of Afghani’s is an unacceptable level of bigotry IMHO. and it will color my judgement of that person in the future, then that’s how it goes. War is ugly and this is just one of those byproducts. Nationalism IS bigotry as it places a value judgement on one side over the other.

Erek

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Gaspode, I’ve said it before, what I can’t understand is the idea of feeling varying degrees of emotional attachment to people whom you don’t know.

So if you were to say that white people were more important to you than black people, would that be okay? I’m not trying to be shocking, as I think that in fact some black people would probably say that they value other black people more highly than white people. I think that this is due to the fact that people who consider themselves members of an oppressed minority group feel that it is important for that group to be united. I think that this is a feeling common among Muslims as well, some of whom would probably value the lives of other Muslim people more than they would the lives of non-Muslim people, regardless of nationality.

Personally, Gaspode, I wouldn’t call you a bigot and I expect most people to think like you do. That’s not to say that I consider you unintelligent or immoral. Most people identify themselves with some group - be it members of their country, religion, or race - and would value the lives of people within that group more than the lives of other people. Unfortunately for me, I don’t really belong to any group, so I can’t pretend that I have overcome or thought through this temptation and am now more enlightened than you.

If you value the lives of other Americans more highly than the lives of foreigners simply because of your sense of unity with other Americans, then you are simply being patriotic. This is quite an understandable sentiment, especially considering the fact that America has just suffered such a terrible terrorist attack. But what I cannot understand is the claim that you share some sort of familiarity with Americans that wouldn’t apply to Canadians or Europeans. I have met Americans who are utterly different from each other, who would literally be unable to carry out a conversation together in the same language, and who would probably try to kill each other if they ever met. I have met Americans who think that Usama bin Laden is a “modern-day Che Guevara” and are thinking of converting to Islam so that they can follow his example, and others who want to pour pigs’ blood on him, torture him to death and kill his children. I haven’t found such a vast range of opinion in all other countries combined.

But Gaspode, I am not debating that your family, friends and possessions should be more important to you than those of others. Who but Jesus himself could be so selfless?

Personally, I don’t have a car, but if I ever see a broken-down VW beetle I’ll feel a lot worse than I would if it were any other car. Because I like VW beetles more than other cars. Which is not to say that I wish harm upon other cars. But I would be guilty of preferential treatment to cars, based solely on the car’s group identity and not on its individual merits.

59

Or you’re saying that they have attacked you.

60

Have you read the rest of this thread? Can you provide any coherent argument as to why “Devotion to the interests or culture of one’s nation” neccesitates an intolerance of other nations? Bigotry requires intolerance. That’s been pretty well established. Nationalism doesn’t. There’s a good reason why nationalism and bigotry have separate entries in the dictionary. It’s because nationalism is definitely not bigotry by any stretch of the definition.

Or you are saying that there behaviour is unacceptable. Or you are saying that they have resources you believe to be rightfully yours, or any of a plethora of other messages that have nothing to do with the relative importance of the saftey of the two nations. I believe my neighbour’s safety is as important as mine, but if he tries to move our boundary fence so he can take some of my yard he can expect a punch in the nose. He can expect the same if he starts having wild parties until 2am on weeknights or starts kicking my dog. Protecting one’s citizens and preventing unacceptable behaviour is in no way a reflection of belief in relative values of personal safety. It is entirely related to acceptable behaviour within ones own soveriegnty.

Ahh, i see now. Circular reasoning. Saying that you value Americans over Afghans is bigoted because it is nationalism and nationalism is bigoted. Nationalism is bigoted because it claims a higher value on Afghans than Americans. Saying that you value Americans over Afghans is bigoted because it is natioanlism… :rolleyes:

Then I find you to be a moral coward who is prepared to embrace that which he knows to be wrong for personal gain. That to me is far worse than someone who embraces evil out of ignorance or genuine belief that it is right. If a war can’t gain my support or the support of my nation wihtout resorting to acts of evil then it doesn’t deserve that support.

Again with the circular reasoning.
Valuing one side over the other is bigotry because that is nationalism and nationalism is bigotry because nationalism values one side over the other, and valuing one side over the other is bigotry because that is nationalism and nationalism is bigotry because nationalism values one side over the other…
Repeat as necessary.

Erek that’s not only circular reasoning, it’s circular reasoning based on the unsupported assertion that nationalism = bigotry. If you want to be taken seriously you’re going to have to demonstrate how ‘devotion to the interests or culture of one’s nation’ is intolerant of other nations. See, you’ve got the firt part of the definition of bigotry right, ie ‘one who is strongly partial to one’s own group’. That’s a necessity for nationalism. Now all you have to do is demonstrate how nationalists meet the second criterion neccesary to qualify as bigots ie “and is intolerant of those who differ”. Until you can do that you’ve presented nothing more than baseless assertion.