Okay, I’ll buy that.
Yes, that’s a silly holdover from the Cold War. Like alot of the “war on terror” is.
Why do you hate white people? 
This post is a testament to the pathetic state of debates in GD when a particular topic comes along.
Every little rhetorical device such as diversion, distraction, interruption and imposition is used to delay, and in some cases totally obfuscate the point.
What you call “splitting hairs” is a deliberate and conscious technique.
That there are people who are willing to suffer through this is nothing short of amazing.
I think you have a problem with what I’m saying, but I really can’t tell what that problem is.
Sounds like the Chik-Fil-A controversy.
No problem at all. Just an observation that I can restate.
RNATB’s original comment stood on its own and everyone perfectly understood what he meant without unnecessary “hair splitting” on proper semantics of the English language over the course of half a page of comments. That you – and others – “fell” for that diversionary technique and still got nothing out of it is what’s baffling to me.
Please note - I am aware that I may be the only one who “sees” this so we can leave it at that.
Ah, I see what you’re saying. I thought you were calling my post a pathetic use of diversion, distraction, and obfuscation. Sorry for the misunderstanding!
That said, I disagree :).
RNATB’s comment, on its own, was wrong, and although I wish FinnAgain had corrected him a bit more gently, the substance of his correction was very interesting to me. I was unfamiliar with Qutb, and I learned something new by reading the correction.
The “hairsplitting” I was talking about in the post you described is on whether hating someone’s specific exercise of a freedom is the same as hating the freedom itself. Even that hairsplitting is an interesting question to me, not something diversionary at all–see my post about the Phelps clan as an example, one that raises the issue of how we Westerners feel when someone is blaspheming against things we hold sacred (grieving at funerals and respecting the military).
I think exploring these questions is, if not exactly on-point with the OP, still in the framework of an interesting conversation. And in any case I think it’s generally helpful to phrase things precisely: RNATB’s comment did ignore a very important part of the militant Islam schtick (to use a precise word of my own 
), and that’s definitely something worth bringing up in the conversation.
Sounds like the loons over here who think the HPV vaccine will make kids have sex, and mercury causes autism.
OK, OK. . . There are no Muslim terrorists! You’ve convinced me. :rolleyes:
Yeah, nobody said that.
I dont think anyone made such a claim.
The discussion is about what are their motivations, how organized they are in US and are they any more of a threat on US soil than some mentally ill dude who dyed his hair.
But congrats on following the discussion too closely.
I hear and obey.
Good on you, then.
Yep. But I still don’t think you’re taking context into account, exactly. During the Cartoon Riots, for example, the calls were very specifically to stop people’s ability to publish (unflattering) drawings of Mohammed as it’s against Islamic precepts to do so. “You can have freedom of speech and freedom of religion… as long as you don’t use your freedom of speech to do something prohibited by my religion.” is, I’d argue, an attack on both freedom of speech and religion. As for Van Gogh?
That, to me, certainly smacks of an opposition to religious freedom and freedom of speech. Not just “you said something rude” but, “you violated the edicts of my religion, so you must die.” The difference between that and, say, someone who punches a Phelps in the face is premeditation. Anybody can be annoyed by a jerk and react poorly.Bouyeri apparently acted with premeditated, carried out a ritualistic killing, and certified that he would do that same again to anybody who criticized Islam.
That’s what did it for me. Nuance is important, especially when dealing with a subject as complex as the interplay of various Jihadist strains with various western/middle eastern nations, cultures, ideologies, etc… The addition of the specific bit about how there have been “zero” Muslims who’ve ever hated us because of the freedoms we enjoy was a bridge too far, and debates are never well served by rhetoric that significantly overreaches its bounds.
I’m not sure I’m seeing the relevance of premeditation here. Are you saying that someone who says, “I swear to God, I will beat the shit out of Phelps if he comes to my son’s funeral” and who then does so has demonstrated that they hate our freedoms?
Someone who’s decided that freedom of speech goes too far when it’s offensive is, indeed, against freedom of speech to a degree. “You can say whatever you want as long as you don’t offend anybody” is an anti-free speech position. If you want to slice it really thin, I suppose we could say that some people hate the ability to freely exercise freedom of speech when it touches on religious issues, but I don’t think that adds any real clarity to the debate as the thing that the extremists hate is that you can use freedom of speech to criticize religion int he first place.
Imagine, instead, a situation where it isn’t dealing with the Phelps’ who are assholes and isn’t simply punching someone in the nose. Let’s say someone premeditates the murder of a high school biology teacher for teaching evolution. They state, in their own words, that they did so because teaching that questions the Bible and if released from prison, they’ll hunt down more biology teachers and kill them. In that situation, it’s fairly clear that they oppose secular religious freedoms and the rights of children to get an education that isn’t governed by their religious precepts.
Interesting. It seems to me that the Phelps-puncher is on the same continuum as the religious killers; do you agree? In both cases, the perp thinks freedom of speech has gone too far, and is willing to use violence to punish those who overstep the bounds of acceptable speech.
I wonder whether any of these people, real or theoretical, would describe their motives as a hatred for specific freedoms. It seems to me that someone who truly hated a particular freedom would focus their ire on the parties who ought to be enforcing limits on that freedom.
But at this point, if we’re willing to say that “freedom of speech has limits, and I’ll violently punish anyone who oversteps those limits” is somewhere on the spectrum of hating freedom, then I feel okay conceding the point :).
Yes, there’s definitely a continuum, and even the most totalitarian regimes allow speech which is congratulatory of their regime, for example. And some extremists do focus on the people they think should be enforcing limits on freedoms; there are plenty of Jihadists who target Muslim governments because they think that they’re too soft on religious violation. The Talibs spring to mind, for example.
And yes, violent actions against people exercising freedom of speech falls somewhere on the spectrum of hating freedom. That’s part of the issue, the situation is nuanced and complex and ill served by soundbytes.
In the interest of bringing thread back from abyss of impertinence (I suppose), now that there’s seems to be an acceptance of “they hate us for our freedom” as a reasonable explanation of “their” motivations, how do you explain an apparent lack of easy and simple to perform “terrorist attacks’ – just like Aurora shooting?
I mean, “they hate us for our freedom” is such an omnipresent feature, one would think that even according to the most conservative estimate of 10% of those “afflicted” with it would be sufficient to perform Aurora style terrorist act on a daily basis?
The reason I ask is because my understanding of OP is that apparent lack of those easy to do “terrorist acts” brings to question a major assumption about the world you live in; the idea that “they hate us for our freedom”.
I actually think that “they hate us for our freedom” is a tin-foil hat with one important distinction – it’s Government made so for many, it fits quite well.
It’s so very, very obvious that you’re grasping at straws and you’ve been hoisted on your own petard. Not only have you simply made up your 10% figure out of thin air, not only is there no necessary causal connection between hatred and murderous actions… well whatever you claim motivates extremists who hate us? Whatever you might happen to claim that it is, then *we know that your own claims must be false under your own rationalization, because we don’t see “10%” of people so “afflicted” committing acts of terrorism. *
When you voice an argument that’s so sloppy and ad hoc that it obviously refutes itself, all so you can cast about claims of tinfoil hattery… it may be time to sit down.