I think the French got it right. We (the US) should close our embassies, completely withdraw and stop all aid/funding to any country where these mobs are rioting. Obviously they don’t want us there and we could re-direct the money and man hours toward a natural gas infrastructure in the US.
I wouldn’t say the country governments or their people don’t want us there, but if they can’t provide security for the embassies then something must change.
That depends. Is she a fat pimplefaced slut?
As a matter of fact they would.
If I saw you doing it I might tell you to go fuck yourself. But, I completely support your right of free speech to burn the flag.
You might be arrested for shitting in public, but that’s not a speech issue. That’s public nudity and arguably disturbing the peace and probably a health code violation or two.
But, you know what wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t go and storm a building and rape and kill people over it. Neither would anyone else.
True. I don’t give a shit about those assholes.
I’m an atheist. I don’t give a shit about any religious group. I don’t give a shit when this same magazine prints a picture making fun of the Pope any more than I give a shit about when they print a picture making fun of Mohammed.
What I do give a shit about is the predictable and violent reaction of many extremists in the Muslim world.
If Catholics were similarly sensitive to mockery with resulting violence I would cheer someone mocking them just as I do the Muslims.
Fuck all of them.
Does it matter? The point is whether you agree with Larry Borgia’s position that we should “immediately do the opposite” of whatever a bully tells us to do:
If you would willingly call a girl a fat pimplefaced slut if her bully of a brother hadn’t threatened to beat you up for it, then I think it would be cowardly and bully-appeasing to let that threat stop you.
But if you wouldn’t call a girl a fat pimplefaced slut under ordinary circumstances, then I don’t think you’re morally obliged to do so just because a bully doesn’t want you to.
Yes, I had been following and understanding the arguments on both sides of the issue, and my joke was aimed squarely at this concept you just outlined.
Thank you for analyzing and dissecting it to the point that it’s no longer funny.
You must be great at cocktail parties.
Whoops, post-edit-window correction of my slight misquote of Larry Borgia:
I meant to say ‘we should automatically “do the opposite”’.
You’re welcome. Don’t worry, it wasn’t particularly funny to begin with.
No, you’re just an asshole.
Well, they’re not mutually exclusive. I see no reason to doubt the claim that Debaser is also an atheist.
Look, I worked in a movie theatre when The Last Temptation of Christ came out. Trust me, not all Christians took that with Christ-like grace and quiet suffering. We never even played the film and had tons of death threats, and vandalism. That film was not widely released because of the threats of violence from American Christians. The Last Temptation of Christ (the movie) is not a shinning example of Christian tolerance in America.
Fundamentalist Muslim strategy step 1: Get the infidels out of the country.
Fundamentalist Muslim strategy step 2: Get the lovers of liberty out of the country or beat them until they shut up.
Step 3: Celebrate victory.
You have to play the long game with societies suffering from the infestation of fundamentalist religious sects. We can freak out just like they do over the products of idiots, assholes, and shit-stirrers claiming they promote free speech or we can play the long game, stay engaged and promote the elements of their societies that desire freedom and peace.
Well, OK, but when do we get to bomb somebody? That’s kinda what we do best, bomb people. This patience approach is pretty boring. And where do they get off with accusing us of making a war against Islam? They can’t be still pissed about Iraq, that was years ago! Boy, these people can really hold a grudge, over what? Maybe a hundred thousand dead Muslims, tops. Besides, we don’t kill people over deities that don’t exist, we kill people over weapons that don’t exist, or in revenge for shit they had nothing to do with. Totally different. Civilized.
Really, they should be apologizing to us, for calling us nasty names with so little reason!
Exactly. What the hell? Miller is losing me with this thread.
I don’t understand why people (in general, not just on this board, but folks I know) keep pretending that extremist Muslims respond to dumb shit like drawings of their holy men in the same way that ANY other major religion’s extremists responds. They don’t. No other religion, for all their bullshit, and their bullshit is legion, responds to free speech in the same way. We need to accept that before we can discuss the shit honestly.
I am confused too, by people who say, “I believe in free speech, but this is wrong because they are purposefully riling people up and someone may get worked up enough to murder”.
Yes, I will echo others in this thread and say, well, if that does happen, it will be tragic, but it will be the fault of the murderers, not of the freaking cartoonists. But furthermore, I thought that was the romantically frustrating thing about free speech…the fact that there is a cost for it. That cost is what pushes us to true freedom, though. We can be free in the purest sense of the word when we have paid the price for our freedoms. The kind of freedom we aspire to doesn’t come easy…it sometimes costs lives even, but thank goodness that throughout history, there have been those willing to take the fire hose or the barking dogs or the policeman’s baton or the spit of the raving racists or the rubber bullets of the riot soldiers. We pay so that ideas change and people are civilized. I think we should be careful not to get too fat and cozy too fast. It is a good thing that there are those who are sometimes pushing the envelope.
What in the world are we doing getting picky about it. We can’t yell fire in a crowded theater. Got it. That line is nice and black. I can see it clearly. My shoes have good tread and I fear no slippery slope. Let folks say what they want to say without trying to indirectly accuse them of murder, and if they do indeed shout fire in a theater, we will go ahead and arrest them for that. Let us not pretend that making cartoons of Mohammed is the same thing.
And before Der Trish disappoints me further by accusing me of being a Christian apologist, I will submit my disclaimer that Christianity is my all time favorite thing to hate. For lots of reasons. Tons.
It’s pretty straightforward. Extremist Muslims are, generally speaking, evil pieces of shit. They’re also a minority of Muslims worldwide. I don’t have any problem with the idea of insulting the extremists, but I’m pretty disgusted by small-minded, petty little fucks like the OP who use the actions of a small percentage of Muslims as an excuse to gleefully insult a billion people who have never done them any wrong. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with the potentially violent reactions of the violent extremists. I’m not saying that Charlie Hebro or that moron in SoCal who made the video are responsible for the riots, or that they should be prevented from exercising their first amendment rights. I am saying that they’re worthless, loud-mouthed pricks who are behaving in a disgraceful manner, and to the extent that these people are perceived to be representative of their cultures, we absolutely should be apologizing for them, because their behavior is reprehensible, and should result in them being shunned by any half-decent human being.
I’m also sick of the hypocrisy of people like (picking one example from this thread) Enkel, who want to take the actions of a portion of a country’s population, and hold the whole of that nation responsible for it. Which, let us note, is exactly the logical error being committed by the rioters, when they see a film made by a handful of jackasses in the US, and treat it like it’s official United States Foreign Policy. And before the next mouthbreather shows up to whine about how that’s totally different, because he’s not rioting in the streets like those people, he’s just bleating senselessly on the internet about it. Congratulations, you’re not a violent asshole, you’re just a garden variety asshole. Have a fucking cookie.
Public defecation is illegal most places in the U.S. Setting things on fire in public is also strictly controlled.
If you do it on private property, with a burning permit (here in Southern California in late summer, we get kinda obsessed with fire danger) then, yes, I support your right to do it 100%.
I also condemn it as a jackass kind of thing to do, and won’t subscribe to your newsletter.
Nobody should have the power to stop you from making a grossly offensive statement. Nobody should give you much outright support, either.
Most of us support Larry Flynt’s right to publish Hustler magazine. Most of us also don’t buy copies of Hustler magazine.
Could you point out just where I ‘gleefully’ insulted a billion people?
From my original post “This is just what the crazy Muslim protesters need, a vigorous fuck you …”. Does that insult the Muslims who didn’t take part in the protests? Of course it doesn’t.
From my second post in the thread: “Then it’s about time they realized that the world is not bound to revere their prophet nor even respect him.” This referred to Muslims in general. Is it an insult? Are you saying we are bound to revere and respect him?
Perhaps you meant that my support for the magazine’s action was an insult in itself? Well, you have nothing else to fall back on but that 's a rather bizarre interpretation.
The fact is, of course, that nowhere in this thread, or anywhere else, have I insulted a billion Muslims, gleefully or otherwise.
Small point, but it is Charlie Hebdo, as in hebdomadaire, i.e. weekly. No idea who Charlie is.
Miller is a voice of reason in this thread and this post lays out the why.
I’m disappointed in the nunber of cookies needed for posters to the thread.l
My original point was only that Hebdo would not have been the ones taking the fire horse, the barking dogs, or the dogs that when they bark shoot bees out of their mouth. However, due to tagos’s reprehensible awareness of the facts ala his reminder that the Hebdo offices were fire-bombed after their previous cartoon of this nature (:eek:), my point is now akin to so much wet noodle.
Despite that, and while I heartily empathize with your romantic writings on the cost of protecting freedom of speech, in this case as a whole I find myself leaning more towards Miller’s opinion, that crudely insulting a whole swath of people based on the actions of a lunatic fringe, whose opinions won’t be changed one iota by this cartoon anyhow, is irresponsible at best and recklessly assholish at worst.