# The unassailable opinions of Gobear **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 15, 2003, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417 "2003-08-15T17:09:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/61 "2003-08-16T00:13:13Z")
> [@](#): > > So if some one points out that, for example, out of the millions and millions of Muslims, there are some who have joined AlQ and are terrorists, then that would be an unfair stereotype, right? just checking. And if I had said every Muslim was a terrorist, you would be right,. Good thing I never said it. What I did say was that the chances of a young Muslim male being a terrorist is greater than that of the general population. Take for example a 25-year-old engineer from Saudi Arabia. Is he a terrorist? Nope. Is he more likely to be a terrorist than a little old lady from New Jersey? Well, what do you think? ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/62 "2003-08-16T00:17:17Z")
the pertinant question, of course, would be is any one individual 25 year old engineeer from Saudi Arabia more likely to be a terrorist than any **other** 25 year old engineer from Saudi Arabia. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a question of “is this unfair stereotyping or not” , or at least according to the specifications you just outlined. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/63 "2003-08-16T00:23:55Z")
And gobear tends to hold grudges: best him in a single debate and he’ll stalk you for the rest of your days at the Dope. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/64 "2003-08-16T00:29:20Z")
[quote] the pertinant question, of course, would be is any one individual 25 year old engineeer from Saudi Arabia more likely to be a terrorist than any other 25 year old engineer from Saudi Arabia [quote] That’s not the question at all. Should we not check 25-year-old engineers from Saudi Arabia? Should we treat every passenger as equally likely to be a terrorist? If we do thorough searches on every passenger, the costs in time and money would soon make air travel prohibitively expensive. Yes, there are problems with profiling. It’s easy to fixate solely on ethnic origin and ignore other sources of terrorist activity. I certainly don’t want security to be a racist screening process. But common sense says that the risk of a male Arab or Southeast Asian passenger being a terrorist is significantly higher than than that of an American grandmother being a terrorist. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/65 "2003-08-16T00:31:12Z")
> [@](#): > > And gobear tends to hold grudges: best him in a single debate and he’ll stalk you for the rest of your days at the Dope. I have no problem with you, **Lissener**. In fact, I don’t think I’ve interacted with you much at all of late. ---
**Author:** ![Waverly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@Waverly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waverly)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/66 "2003-08-16T00:48:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by gobear \* > But why are they unfair characterizations? You object to my statement that Germans were the architects of the Holocaust? Weren’t they? You clearly don’t believe that the German nation was complicit; why didn’t the Germans defy the racial laws like the Dutch and the Danes did? Why did they post “Juden Verboten” signs in their shop windows? Why did they turn their backs on the Jewish colleagues and neighbors as they were rounded up and shipped off to the death camps? Who staffed the camps, organized the transport, built the crematoria, used slave labor in their factories? Please explain how that generalization is unfair. Because you confuse anti-Semetism with mass murder and accuse an _entire population_ of the latter. I don’t know what sick individuals within the military were able to staff those camps, but I have a hard time believing the average college student wouldn’t have blanched in horror had they known they existed. More on students in a moment. We don’t know how many Germans were true Nazis, but in 1933 when the Nazis seized power, party members numbered some _9% of the population_, with 4/5 of them being unemployed workers. Was nationalism poured into anti-Semitic sentiments? Surely – but this is not equal to the institutionalized murder that was the holocaust. If all Germans were Nazis, and moreover were eager participants in the final solution, there wouldn’t have been anti-Nazi groups such as the White Rose - yep, here is the resistance you don’t acknowlege - and the students mentioned above. To state that “the Germans, as a nation, were collectively responsible” is wrong. In fact you go so far to ridicule the notion of a single person proclaiming the innocence of another single German [Uncle Horst?]. And what do you know of the cite you offered? The roundly ridiculed Goldhagen states that the German people held “beliefs that ordinarily only madmen have of others” and regularly substituted the word ‘Nazi’ where ‘German’ appeared in the source material. The Holocaust is a sickening episode in human history; but making hyperbolic statements doesn’t due it any justice, nor does it help us understand how it could actually have taken place. But we are debating a single quote again…. Hear me now: it is the habit of sweeping generalizations that is the problem. When will you admit you make them? ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/67 "2003-08-16T01:10:48Z")
> [@](#): > > there wouldn’t have been anti-Nazi groups such as the White Rose - yep, here is the resistance you don’t acknowlege - and the students mentioned above Actually, I’ve mentioned Hans and Sophie Scholl, the leaders of the White Rose who were beheaded for their defiance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church, Oskar Schindler, and other Germans who resisted the Nazis. But the fact of the resistance does not knock out the guilt of the Germans overall. > [@](#): > > I don’t know what sick individuals within the military were able to staff those camps, but I have a hard time believing the average college student wouldn’t have blanched in horror had they known they existed. It wasn’t merely guards in the death camps who were responsble. It was the employees of the Gernan national railroad who sent the box cars on their way. It was the policemen and civil administration of each town that rounded up Jews. It was the universities that fired their Jewish professors. It was the companies like IG Farben that built the gas chambers and crematoria. I suggest you read this [article](http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/index.utp?content=publications/occasional/conundrum.htm) from the Holocaust Museum Web site. > [@](#): > > The chief reason for the cooperation of professionals in the exclusion of their Jewish colleagues was the spread of a relatively new kind of anti-Semitism that had begun to infect the German universities in the late 1870s. Though Heinrich von Treitschke’s declaration “the Jews are our misfortune” was rejected by Theodor Mommsen and other liberal defenders of tolerance, the rantings of volkish outsiders such as Julius Langbehn and Paul de Largarde transformed older religious resentment into a quasi-scientific racial prejudice, acceptable to many of the educated. In this process, nationalist students played an important role as multipliers by founding the Vereine Deutscher Studenten in order to propagate Christian, patriotic, and imperialist ideas. Due to the patronage of the aged founder of the Second Reich, Prince Otto von Bismarck, as well as its ingenious agitation tactics, the VDSt managed to compel prestigious corporations such as the Burschenschaft to accept anti-Semitism into their programs, forcing Jewish students to create their own associations in defense. After the First World War, anti-Semitic sentiment became part of the nationalist resentment against Versailles, dominating campus atmosphere and student self-government.17 So much for students. ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/68 "2003-08-16T01:17:04Z")
“Stereotypes reduce a group to one or two false characteristics: gays are effeminate, blacks are dishonest, Mexicans are lazy, Jews are greedy, and so on.” How are these false characteristics? Are there no dishonest blacks? Are any gays effeminate? There must be a few greeedy Jews out there. They are characteristics of some members of the group, but not all. " A generalization, OTOH, is a statement that is roughly descriptive of a group, but is not necessarily true of each member of that group, e.g. Americans are fatter than any other nationality. Is it true about every American? No. Does it describe the preponderance of the population? Yes. Merely pointing to one skinny American does not disprove the statement about the group in general." What if I said “ **All** Americans are fat.” Would you agree that this comes closer to a stereotype than a generalization? How is that different from “all Iraqis hate Israel and Jews.” ??? ---
**Author:** ![Waverly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@Waverly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waverly)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/69 "2003-08-16T01:30:39Z")
Erm, I think we are all aware of the widespread anti-semetism. Consider this particular point a non-issue. You can’t get to B by reproving A multiple times. Hell, I’ll even concede that Farben executives were knowingly complicit. Now how do you set about proving the guy working the 2nd shift at the Agfa medical plant knew people were being killed? You don’t address the fact that you _make_ these generalizations, although I took care to point them out in a civil fashion in recent posts. Do you not believe you have taken the truth and stretched it to fit new and larger claims? ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/70 "2003-08-16T01:43:02Z")
> [@](#): > > Now how do you set about proving the guy working the 2nd shift at the Agfa medical plant knew people were being killed? Because his neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Klein, were evicted from their house and sent to the East. > [@](#): > > How is that different from “all Iraqis hate Israel and Jews.” ??? Do you have any idea about Arab-Jew relations in the Middle East? do you think any Iraqis like Israel? Maybe the few Iraqi Jews qho are still left. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/71 "2003-08-16T01:44:45Z")
> [@](#): > > You don’t address the fact that you make these generalizations, although I took care to point them out in a civil fashion in recent posts. Do you not believe you have taken the truth and stretched it to fit new and larger claims? What do want me to say, no Germans were complicit, the Holocaust was just 6 million unrelated acts of passion? (\*pace[/ i] “Doonesbury”) ---
**Author:** ![Palo\_Verde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Palo\_Verde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Palo_Verde)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/72 "2003-08-16T01:58:18Z")
I think any time you start a statement with the word ‘All’ you are going to be wrong. All gays aren’t effeminate. All Mexicans aren’t lazy. All Americans aren’t fat. All Iraqis don’t hate Jews. You yourself have aknowledged there are some Jews still living in Iraq. Therefore your statement is wrong. Why purposely make wrong statements? Why not try “Many Iraqis hate Jews” I doubt you’d get much argument, and you’d have a reputation for intellectual honesty that is currently lacking. What percent of a group has to have a characteristic before you’d consider it enough to genrealize? 50% 75% 90%??? Please answer: if you heard a foreign person say, “ **All** Americans are fat” would you not think to yourself, “What a stupid stereotype!” ---
**Author:** ![Waverly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@Waverly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waverly)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/73 "2003-08-16T01:58:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by gobear \* > Because his neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Klein, were evicted from their house and sent to the East. In which case he was either saddened to see them go, or sadistically pleased to be rid of them - even this later case wouldn’t get you a murder indictment. I’m not sure what your last comment is intended to say; I certainly hope you aren’t stooping to mischaracterize my statements as holocaust denial. ---
**Author:** ![BrightNShiny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@BrightNShiny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrightNShiny)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/74 "2003-08-16T11:51:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by gobear \* > \*\*Frankly, I think I owe **Bright N’Shiny** an apology for my comments because I did go overboard in that thread, but I’m not going to do it now because that would be giving in to this fucking asshole. (Ah, it feels sooo goood to swear now that I’m away from work.) \*\* I’m not sure what to make of this. Is this a new form of the non-apology apology? ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/75 "2003-08-16T16:24:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by gobear \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > the pertinant question, of course, would be is any one individual 25 year old engineeer from Saudi Arabia more likely to be a terrorist than any other 25 year old engineer from Saudi Arabia > > That’s not the question at all. Should we not check 25-year-old engineers from Saudi Arabia? Should we treat every passenger as equally likely to be a terrorist? If we do thorough searches on every passenger, the costs in time and money would soon make air travel prohibitively expensive. > > Yes, there are problems with profiling. It’s easy to fixate solely on ethnic origin and ignore other sources of terrorist activity. I certainly don’t want security to be a racist screening process. But common sense says that the risk of a male Arab or Southeast Asian passenger being a terrorist is significantly higher than than that of an American grandmother being a terrorist. \*\* and who the fuck was talking about profiling? My comments were directly responsive to **your** assertion about the difference between “generalities” (ok) and “unfair stereotypes” (not ok). once again - your position seemed to be that what made something an “ok generality” was not the negativity, but the relative truth about the population (ie 'most Americans are overweight so therefore a generality about “fat Americans” while negative would be permitted). And, since there are millions and millions of people who hold Islamic beliefs, and millions and millions of people who are of Middle Eastern Descent, but a **much smaller** number of terrorists, is the characterization of Middle Easterns as being likely to be terrorist an unfair stereotype or a permitted generalization? and, if you wish to go further and get into the area of comparison to other populations, then you’ll open the door for ‘well, then if it’s true that the characterization of ‘effeminate’ is _more likely_ to be present in the grouping of ‘gay males’ than in the grouping of ‘straight males’, then the characterization of gay males to be effeminate would not, in the same way, be an unfair stereotyping, but merely an appropriate, if negative, characterization’. (note, that it is **not** my position that labeling gay males as effeminate etc is an appropriate characterization). the problem, as I see it, is that the real difference to you is that when **you** make sweeping all inclusive statements about certain groups, they’re ‘ok characterizations’, but when others make similar sweeping all inclusive statements about any other groups, they’re ‘unfair stereotypes’. So that sweeping characterizations may be ok in your eyes if they’re about Christians, fundementalists, liberals, Islamics, Middle Eastern Males, Hindus, etc, but not ok if they’re about gays, conservatives, etc. ---
**Author:** ![gobear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8dc957/32.png) [@gobear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gobear)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/76 "2003-08-16T16:57:16Z")
**Bright N’Shiny** : I am sorry for my comments in the other thread. I apologize completely and unreservedly. **Autz** : > [@](#): > > Why not try “Many Iraqis hate Jews” I doubt you’d get much argument, and you’d have a reputation for intellectual honesty that is currently lacking. Calling me dishonest? I’m done talking to you. There really isn’t much of a difference between 99.8 percent (just a figure I’m using as an example, so IT’S NOT MEANT TO BE TAKEN LITERALLY) and “all.” Do one or two dissenters mean that only “some” Iraqis hate Israel? **Waverly** : > [@](#): > > I’m not sure what your last comment is intended to say; I certainly hope you aren’t stooping to mischaracterize my statements as holocaust denial. _slaps self in forehead_ No, **Waverly** , I’m not accusing you of being a Hoocaust denier. Did you not see the Doonesbury attribution? It was a satirical reference to an old Doonesbury cartoon about the Gang of Four claiming the Cultural Revolution was 3 million unrelated acts of passion. (No, I’m not going to teach you about the Cultural Revolution. Go to the library.) TThat’s the trouble with you–you’re so dim one has to label every paragraph with a warning label–(WARNING: The preceding paragraph was a sarcastic exaggeration, Do not take literally.) **Wring:** My answer to you is best summarized by a snippet from a Charles Krauthammer editorial published in yesterday’s _Wshington Post_\*. > [@](#): > > The attack on Pipes for stating this obvious truth is just another symptom of the absurd political correctness surrounding Islamic radicalism. It is the same political correctness that prohibits ethnic profiling on airplanes. We are all supposed to pretend that we have equal suspicions of terrorist intent and thus must give equal scrutiny to a 70-year-old Irish nun, a 50-year-old Jewish seminarian, and a 30-year-old man from Saudi Arabia. Your daughter is on that plane: To whom do you want the security guards to give their attention? ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/77 "2003-08-16T17:05:47Z")
I’d prefer an answer to the question - why is it that the characterization of gay males being effeminate is an example of an ‘unfair stereotype’, when the characterization of Middle Eastern Men of Islamic belief are terrorists is an appropriate ‘generalization’? It isn’t the issue of negativity, or relative frequency in the population, or relative frequency in the cited population as compared to another population. So what the hell makes one ok in your eyes and the other not, other than “ **gobear** agrees with one and not the other” (which is all I’m left with presently). ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/78 "2003-08-16T17:28:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by wring \* > I’d prefer an answer to the question - why is it that the characterization of gay males being effeminate is an example of an ‘unfair stereotype’, when the characterization of Middle Eastern Men of Islamic belief are terrorists is an appropriate ‘generalization’? I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that **gobear** has ever claimed “Middle Eastern men of Islamic belief are terrorists.” What he has claimed–and quite accurately, I’d say–is that young M.E./S.E. Asian Muslim men are _far more likely_ to be terrorists, as compared to other national, ethnic, and religious groups. That does _not_ mean, and gobear has not asserted it to mean, that all such persons are terrorists, or even that a significant percentage of them are terrorists. But if your goal is to find the guys who are out to get us, it’s a hell of a lot more efficient to devote special attention to those national/ethnic/religious groups that form the membership of the groups you’re fighting. ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/79 "2003-08-16T17:45:11Z")
**minty** He’s made sweeping characterizations about whole populations, and said it’s ok to do that in certain cases. He spelled out wherein he thought those cases would be appropriate. (ie “Americans are overweight” = ok characterization, and “gays are effeminate” = unfair stereotype), suggesting that his basis for ‘ok characterization’ vs. ‘unfair stereotype’ is **based on** approximately how true is this characteristic **when compared to the group as a whole** (ie the 'overweight Americans). So, I pointed out then, that by his criteria, the characterization of Muslim males as being potential terrorists would be an unfair stereotype since they are not a significant percentage of their entire population. he still wants to be able to do that. what I’m attempting to get at w/him here is that his stated basis of ‘generalization vs. unfair stereotype’ is not internally consistent within his viewpoints, therefore he should re-examine either his stance on generalizations/stereotypes as a whole, or come up with an alternate basis. However, I believe that I’ll be able to come up w/alternative examples of sweeping characterizations that will not fit each time he attempts to re-structure his stance on generalizations/stereotypes, I would hope that at some point in time, he will begin to realize that sweeping generalizations, while being a fond tool in arguments, really are not supportable, and maybe, just _maybe_ he’ll stop doing it himself all the fucking time (sweeping characterization, rhetorical exaggeration for the sake of making a point). presently, he’s at the vanguard of those who will decry sweeping characterizations of gay males and some other cherished groups, but has absolutely no problem doing the same thing WRT other groups (list in OP for example). I like consistency. I’d really like to see him stopping the behavior himself before he yells at others to stop. But that’s just me. ---
**Author:** ![minty\_green](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f6c823/32.png) [@minty\_green](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minty_green)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2003, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417/80 "2003-08-16T17:51:43Z")
It seems to me that if you’re going to pound a guy for posting unsupportable generalizations or stereotypes, it’s probably best to pound him for a real one he posted, not one you created yourself to show the shortcomings of the rhetorical device. YMMV. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-unassailable-opinions-of-gobear/195417.md?page=5)