No? I invite you to search my posts in this thread for the words:
wary
wariness
caution
vigilance
vigilant
These apply to the dangers of Islam, which are, as far as I know, terrorism and barbaric laws that some Muslims believe they, and the world, should live under.
And you have not presented a single iota of evidence that one of Osama bin Laden’s adherents has been elected to represent the 5th Congressional District of Minnesota.
“Told”? “Told?” Huh?. The choice of that word is telling. It implies the “telling” comes from a recognized source of authority, which is not present in this debate. Since you seem to have forgotten how a debate works, allow me: either side offers up points in support of their respective positions. Whether those points offered actually convince the other side is another matter. The fact that the words were uttered doesn’t mean that they’ve accomplished their goal. In this thread, I have conceded one position due to arguments offered, mainly by Miller. On another point, I find the arguments insufficient. Now if you wish to argue an Appeal to the Masses, by all means…
If you wish to apply more pressure in some jack-booted attempt for me to knuckle under to make a bunch of posters I don’t know (and for the most part do not hold in very high regard) more comfortable, that too is your perogative. Though I can assure you that you have more productive things to do with your time.
It might, if there was any irony in it. You seem to have missed two important facts. An example to the first post of mine that you quoted can be found in this very thread, as I conceded to Miller on a major point of discussion. Funny how you simply ignored that fact. And that contrasts nicely with the point of the second quote you included: your inhuman ability to type and type and type and resist admitting error, never mind apologize. Come to think of it, I don’t think you ever fulfilled my request for you to cite the apologies—you’ve made on these boards. Nor admissions of error.
FYI, that heat you’re feeling right now (or should I say, a normal person would rightly feel), is not irony burning. It’s your own hot air coming back to blast you in the face.
Well, there’s something better than his ‘views’, his actual votes in the Legislature on these issues. Look about 10 posts back to see that.
And how come you never responded to that? You say you don’t see anything from Ellison in “support” of gay rights, so I post specific details, links to ratings, and endorsements by GLBT organizations. You ignore that entirely.
Then a day later you again ‘would like to hear his views’. Did you even read that previous post? What’s the point of posting specific cites in response to your questions if you don’t pay any attention to them?
I’m beginning to think people are correct in saying that you are not really looking for answers here, but trying to bait people.
P.S. Your using a demeaning term like “homosexual rights” rather than “gay rights” tells me pretty much all I need to know about your views!
Do you still go around talking about “negro rights”?
Do the words “Excluded Middle” mean anything to you? Anything at all? :rolleyes:
You are correct. I would point out that I have no such burden.
Well, you’re the one raving about “3,000 people killed” in a thread about an American Muslim elected to Congress as a liberal Democrat. (Actually Democrat-Farmer-Labor.)
t-bonham@scc.netP.S. Your using a demeaning term like “homosexual rights” rather than “gay rights” tells me pretty much all I need to know about your views!
[/QUOTE]
I hope you don’t mind that I switched the order of your statements in my response, but I just have to deal with this.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!! I use the word “homosexual” instead of “gay” and that tells you “all you need to know about my views”?!!! (emphasis mine). Well, let me just say, if that’s true , YOU ARE A COMPLETE—YES, COMPLETE—FUCKING IDIOT. Excuse me if I didn’t get the fucking memo that the word “homosexual” is now a slur :rolleyes: My goodness, this was profoundly assholish of you.
You know I was going to respond in depth to the rest of your post, but I’ll just ask you to go back and read what I wrote and figure out how that does not merit you asking these questions yet again. My point was that I could not see where he advanced the moral argument for, uh…“those” rights. —But that’s it, your other comment was too fucking dumb, asinine, and immature.
No more soup for you!
Yes, they are both Muslims. Ergo (along with barbaric Sharia Law) the call for wariness: vigilance. But “raving”? Don’t see it.
Fred Phelps is a self-proclaimed Baptist. There are many Baptists in Congress. Thus, we must be wary and vigilant lest Congress institute mass stonings of gays on the Mall in Washington.
Which is irrelevant to both your points and mine.
The point of this thread has not been the pretended “dangers” of Islam; that has been merely the pretext to rationalize your xenophobia.*
The point of this thread has been the utterly foolish demonization of a person who had the temerity to do something that differed from a “tradition” that you and Prager invented for the purpose of resurrecting the cancer of Nativism in the U.S.
*( And it is telling that you consider a religion with over a billion adherents to be a “danger” because a few of those adherents have engaged in violence against other adherents of the same religion leading to an attack on the U.S. when we supported one side over the other. You have turned what should have been a pretty clear case of “some people who are Muslims are dangerous” into “Islam is a danger,” even resorting to repeated condemnation of Sharia despite having been provided the information that it is not what you have falsely claimed it to be.)
tom, I was rude earlier, and I apologize. A lot of it had to do with my impatience at your insistence on restraint in labeling another poster, which is something I have no business decrying in a moderator, as opinionated and fallible and often wrong as I am. The Lord knows (only if he pays close attention to the SDMB) that mostly, I’d rather be funny than right, and sometimes I manage it. But not always. And when I fail, it’s usually with this worthless empty pillowcase – go figure.
Since magpie isn’t speaking to me (or apparently listening to anyone whatever), perhaps some non-threatening (be prepared to qualify yourself against the magpie’s Big Boy’s Chart of American-Ness!) person could ask him again, if he needs assurance that Congressman Ellison has his priorities straight, what’s wrong with the oath itself? I mean, it’s binding once it is first taken on the floor, without the props, so what’s wrong with it? Besides that it defends the Constitution instead of white pseudo-christian nativist bigotry? Remember, no congressman swears to defend the homeland against the Barbary Pirates, and didn’t even when there were any. At any rate, magpie (do you think he picked up on the nickname’s connotation of ceaseless, content-free yammering? Or does he just reject the whole, you know, blackness-mixed-with-whiteness-type-thing?) won’t talk to or listen to me. So I leave it to someone else to remind him that his denunciation of Sharia law directly contradicts his own philosophy and interests. Ecstasy itself would be his only possible response to, say, Saudi Arabia’s immigration policy. As you said, magpie has no particularly Christian allegiances, and we all know how he loves to belong. Conversion to Islam and relocation to Saudi Arabia seems to fit everyone’s needs. The magpie knows how easy it is to give up your own language and culture and adopt another: he wouldn’t prescribe it so often otherwise. The poor man has been living in America all these years, doing some menial job, when according to Providence he should have been a concentration-camp guard watching dark-skinned prisoners in an internment camp somewhere convenient to local shopping. He cannot see my sincere and well-intentioned advice: please, someone, help this poor excuse for a man. Allah would agree.
Good grief, man, haven’t you been paying attention? The oath of office is mere toilet tissue to this stealth-Muslim compared to the Qu’ran! Why, taking the oath upon that foul Book is like swearing to tell the truth with your fingers crossed behind your back. Our brave and wise sentinel against the infidel hordes has tried to point out, again and again, how Qu’ran-clutching Islamophiles will rush to betray this wonderful country if their Sharia-wielding masters say so.
sigh You just don’t understand.
Perhaps Thomas Jefferson had more than a passing interest in the Koran.
From here.
You are of course entirely correct in challenging my choice of words.
Try this: It has been demonstrated to you, with cites, that:
[ul][li]The actual oath taken by Congressmen, as opposed to post-oathtaking photo ops, is not aken on any book.[/li][li]While a majority of Americans are in fact Christian, the Christian Bible is not considered by most people to be a symbol of American culture.[/li][li]The Congressman in question is not a fundamentalist Muslim but a liberal Democrat (DFL, technically) of Islamic beliefs.[/li][li]America has always been a melting pot for various cultures, brought to it by its immigrants (plus of course the minor but significant component of cultural traits contributed by the indigenous groups often called Indians).[/ul][/li]You have failed to refute these cited, factual statements.
First off, I’d like to thank you for not getting so caught up in the debate that you are not able to admit a simple error. This should not stand out as exceptional, but sadly it does. This should be an example to all posters, Mods included! Again, thank you.
Now back to the issues. Let me comment in order.
I’m not sure about your first bullet. I’ve acknowledged this all along. That is why I have repeatedly referred to his photo op oath as optional. So I am not sure what your problem is here. Please rephrase.
Bullet 2: I agree with this. For me, the bible, by itself, is not a symbol of American tradition. But when considered certain contexts, it is. Swearing in on the bible is an example. And passages from it are found in courthouses and other government buildings.
Bullet 3: Ellison is not the sole issue, for me. He brings the issue to the fore. He may very well be a fine American. One point I have made is the degree to which a book the populace is not familiar with should be scrutinized to see the degree to which it comports or conflicts with the Constitution. Given the current state of the relationship between many of the Islamic faith and Americans, I think the Koran merits more scrutiny than, say, a Buddhist holy book, which has no violence aganiost America tied to it. The other main point is my first post when this thread was resurrected. His move to use Jefferson’s bible did not change the rightness (or wrongness) of his swearing on the Koran one iota. I am still tickled that many posters who would normally, and rightfully, deride such shoddy logic turn a blind eye to it. Tied to that I think his professtations about the role which the Koran played in Jefferson’s life were grossly misleading. But as you have read, I am still looking into that matter.
Bullet 4: I’ve commented on this a number of times. I’ll just repeat here that the fact that we are such a melting pot makes the few components that do act as a common denominator that much more important. This is the same reasoning I’ve used when arguing that we should have English as an Official language. More on this can be found in the thread, but I have to run.
Thanks again. A small thing that points to your debating in good faith and with honor.
You really do have a serious fixation on the absurd, don’t you?
Let’s see: I generally admit corrections when my facts are demonstrated to be in error. *
You have positively crowed over the fact that several pages after you started this silly defense of Prager’s xenophobia, you reluctantly dropped one single call to make it Law to use only the bible for inaugurations, all the while you continue to deliberately misrepresent Sharia Law (which you continue to abuse in the face of multiple corrections), you insist that there is some “American” connection to swearing on the bible (in contradiction of all the evidence presented while providing nothing to support your position), and you falsely insist that Ellison “lied” about his position which you made up out of whole cloth and continue to repeat after evidence has been presented refuting your imagined claim,
all the while continuing to take cheap shots at me with your lie that I do not admit error.
But Magellan. You say that since we have so few things tying us together we should cling all the more tightly to those things.
Except excluding people based on religion has always been anathema to American culture. Swearing on the Bible is not a bedrock American tradition. Relgious freedom is. And you’re prepared to toss out one of the few things that tie us together, an unswerving commitment to freedom of religion.
That’s divisive my friend, in the exact sense that it divides our nation against itself. You want to throw out a common denominator of American tradition–freedom of religion–because of a temporary crisis that is serious but will someday pass, while we want to keep it.
What do you mean, “no recourse?” You act like the fact that Ellison is a Muslim came as a surprise. I’m fairly certain that the good people of Minnesota were perfectly aware of his religion when they elected him, and decided that they didn’t care enough about it to vote for someone else. His election apparently caught a few non-Minnesotans by surprise, but he’s not their elected representative, so how they feel about him is pretty irrelevant. The fact that people do not share your bizarre paranoia about this man is not evidence that they are lazy and apathetic.
You’ve not shown this to be a lie, and you even admit as such later in this post, so your continued insistance on tarring Ellison as a liar really does not reflect well on you.
And you have yet to show where he has said anything that conflicts with the Constitution. You’re not being vigilant, here, because “vigilant” implies that you’ve actually bothered to look. What you’re doing here is nothing more than scare-mongering. Plenty of cites have been provided to you of the ways in which Ellison’s politics do not remotely match the politics of a radical Islamist or fundamentalist Muslim, and yet you keep repeating that you “don’t know” what Ellison’s beliefs are. Go back to my last post, where I laid out his opinions on every issue I could think of where the extremist Islamic opinion clashes with American values, and on every issue, Ellison is to the left of the American mainstream. What issues have I overlooked in that list, that you want to see answered?
What difference does any of that make? My point was that Jefferson was smart enough not to take one person’s word on what constitutes an entire religion, particularly when that person has poltical/economic motivation for his religious view.
I haven’t forgotten that. I wasn’t referring to your abandoned legal challenge, but rather on your “Biblical tradition” argument and general attitude of suspicion and distrust towards people based on nothing more than their religious beliefs.
How am I degrading history? What part of my argument ignores or denies what has happened previously in this nation?
Who said they were evil? Or unique?
All of which I acknowledged in the part of my post you were responding to. Tell me, do you think there is nothing of value at all in Islamic culture? Because your insistence that Ellison is committing some grave sin by “injecting the Koran into our government” seems to indicate that you want our society to be totally Muslim-free. If that’s not what you want, then you’re going to have to live with a society that has Islamic influences, because an inevitable side effect of allowing people to participate in a representational democracy is that their values will be reflected in the government they elect.
No, but if you can’t point to actual negative results, then you don’t have much basis for arguing that we shouldn’t let people do something. Again, we get back to that oft-ignored conservative principle: people should be allowed to do what they want unless you can show that it’s harmful to other people.
You have provided absolutely no evidence that Jefferson viewed Islam in that way.
Then you can’t really say that Ellison was lying about it, can you? In fact, if it’s not a “settled matter,” your claims that Jefferson’s experiences with the Algierians made Jefferson anti-Islamic is every bit as much a “lie” as Ellison’s claim that Jefferson owning a Koran meant that he was sympathetic to Islam.
And no Muslims who want me killed are getting elected to anything, either. Aren’t we lucky?
Yes, actually. A large percentage of Christians elected to office do not want to kill me, but do want to strip me of legal rights and protections, to bar me from certain professions, penalize me for loving the wrong kind of person, and generally slander me in public. I view all of that as a real and immediate threat, far more than the danger of Islamic terrorism.
The number 3000 is pretty misleading, as they were all the result of one terrorist attack. And it was only the second attack on American soil by Islamic terrorists in this country’s history. And the previous attack also targetted the same building.
On the other hand, there are hundreds of acts of violence committed against homosexuals every year. They happen all over the country, in any place where you can find gay people. And most of these attacks are committed by Christians. So yeah, I’m much, much more likely to be physically harmed by a Christian than I am by a Muslim. Hell, you’re more likely to be the victim of a gay bashing than a terrorist attack, and you’re not even gay. The physical danger represented by extremist Christians in this country is overwhelmingly more common than that represented by extremist Muslims.
Yes, in fact, it does. Because you can’t tell just by a person’s religion if they are wise, fair, or competent. You have to judge each politican by his own merits, not the merits of people with whom he happens to share one or two broad characteristics. To do otherwise is to ask to be led by the corrupt, the incapable, and the venal. I think our current political leadership is sufficient evidence of this maxim.
You might want to take a look at t-bonham’s post again. He lays out some pretty convincing evidence that Ellison is strongly in the pro-gay rights camp.
Wanting evidence to this effect is not unreasonable. Ignoring all of the evidence you’ve already been given, on the other hand, is.