I think I asked you if you were looking for ways to disagree with me, or some such. Whatever I said was framed as a question, not an accusation, and certainly not a direct accusation.
It certainly seems that if you state that I hold a position that no one but David Duke holds, and support that by claiming that you could not find a counter example on the internet, you are manufacturing ways to disagree with me. Is that the kind of evidence you normally allow in your quest to rid the world of wrong-headedness?
That said, to the extent that folks choose anything, they choose what to do with their beliefs and with their religion. While I don’t hold anyone’s beliefs against them, I do hold folks’ actions against them, and if those actions are motivated by religious belief, I might use derogatory language to describe them, language that refers to the religious beliefs motivating the behavior.
To exempt religiously-motivated behavior from criticism (including puerile namecalling criticism) while not politically-motivated behavior or intellectual-weakness-motivated behavior or other sorts of behavior motivated by unchosen characteristics of a person would be inconsistent.
Hmm, at this point, my reply seems kinda off-topic, but here goes anyway.
Thank you. I don’t get that often. I generally get more comments about how my questions are PITA, so I appreciate the nice comment.
Hmm. So you’ve disregarded his stated intent which was to make a New Year’s resolution (despite the fact that it was posted right before New Year’s) and decided that his “true” intent was to post something hateful. That makes intent a tougher call because more context is needed and misinterpretation is quite likely when a stated intent is disregarded.
If the poster had posted about his New Year’s resolution to stop something many others would like to stop in themselves, the post would likely be interpreted in another way. For instance, if the poster said that he wanted to lose weight in the New Year and made derogatory terms towards overweight people, and he was a member of that class, the interpretation might have been different. New Year’s resolutions to lose weight are quite common.
As noted above, intent is often difficult to discern over the internet. It’s difficult in real life, but in real life, we at least have some visual and behavioral clues about their intent. If the people behave in opposition to their words, we generally say that it was not their intent to mean those words.
But none of those are identifiable over the internet. We would have to take their word for it that they were a member of that class. A person could say that they’re African-American on one message board and Caucasian on another and as long as they didn’t say anything in contradiction or have any real life meetings, people wouldn’t be able to identify the characteristic.
People are hurt by different things and for different reasons. Some people are hurt by insults and others are not. And some people interpret some things as insults while others do not. That’s a pretty tough standard to apply consistently.
I don’t know. I can’t define it either, which is why I asked. I just wanted to point out that I think there are certainly a lot more questions than answers and perhaps this is why the US law seems so vague. I was reading this article from the firstamendmentcentger.org on hate speech on the internet and was noticing the difficulties they’ve pointed out there also.
I’m been gushing too much lately about how much I LOVE this message board, so I’ll try to keep it to a minimum here. But I LOVE this place!!
It was more than just a stated intent being disregarded - you know how you can tell when someone’s trolling, even though they rarely tell us that they’re trolling? It was like that - there was no doubt in my mind reading his post that he hates Muslims, and had no intention of trying to change his ways. Of course, there is the possibility I was wrong - like you say, this is the internet, and things aren’t always as they seem. However, this poster came back to the boards where he posted his Muslim-hating post, and posted that he hates Muslims, plain and simple. I think I’m pretty much vindicated in my original assumption.
Actually no Idont think that this is a chatroom(if its a little bit difficult for you understanding the difference I’m sure some kind soul will take the trouble to help you out)
“Dr.” Hypocrite having started the exchange with an an unecessary abusive statement but without any logic to back it up ,could’nt wait to respond rapidly when he/she/it thought he/she/it was going to give a verbal kicking to a relative" newbie" .
Gutless ,contemptible coward that he/she/it is showed us all the broad YELLOW stripe down their back by making a vey rapid exit when it became apparent that they were going to get as good as they gave.
As I posted that night ,it was getting late over here and I was knackered ,I work for a living and have to get up very early ,while I would have been prepared to stay up for longer to defend the rights of the NON politically correct to enjoy freedom of speech without nasty ,gutless little internet bullies trying to intimidate them out of offering an opinion ( in much the same way as Hitlers henchmen used to do in the 30s) I was not prepared to hang around on the off chance of them getting up enough courage to carry on an exchange THAT THEY HAD STARTED and the tone of which of which THEY THEMSELVES HAD SET. Any one but a total hypocrite would be able to see this for themselves.
If you start something like this dont start whining and feeling sorry for yourself if your potential "victim"responds in kind ,this applies as much to you and others of your ilk as the loathsome little creep who seem to get some kind of "cheap thrill out of victimising people they (wrongly) think will take it without fighting back.
That said grow up and try facing life a little more like a real adult and a little less like a self pitying hypocrite .
No not for you eh .“Dr” ?
This isn’t the first time you 've got your cheap thrills from attempting to bully "newbies " is it ?
I think the good "Dr " has just a little bit of a problem with its self esteem and tries to maintain the status quo by attempting to belittle posters on this board to make up for the good “Drs” belittlement in the real world .
And then you draw out all the other nasty little creeps in support of you who have the same emotional hangups .
Personally I have never bullied ANYONE ,either physically ,verbally or on the net… or wanted to !
But then again my experience of observing bullies of any sort is that they are normally sad little cowards who aren’t happy with themselves .Pretty good description of you eh “Dr.” ,you and your nasty little stooges .
Based on his latest contributions, I’ll refute Lust4Life’s original posting with the following trenchant insight:
He’s a dork and everything he says is wrong.
I intend to adopt this as a rule of thumb for all future exchanges with him.
Oh the sacrifice! It’s thankless job being the champion of freedom!
No. Hitler’s henchmen in the 1930’s would punch you in the guts and kick your teeth out. Or they’d throw a brick through your front window. Or they’d put a bullet in your head. THAT’S intimidation. Ridiculing someone on a message board is not. Stop being such a drama queen.
By the way, do you care to repond to the cites I gave? Or do you just want to keep flinging poo at Dr. Rieux?
You know, going back and re-reading the thread, amidst all the noise and fury of Lust4Life’s raving, he does make a good point - the only people we’re still allowed to be prejudiced against are white, middle-class males. Now, feeling sorry for white, middle-class males might be pushing it a little too far, since as was mentioned earlier, there’s a difference between being prejudiced against a powerless minority and a powerful majority. Still, if the post that had prompted me to start this thread had been, “I hate white middle-class males. I will do everything in my power to make their lives miserable,” I wouldn’t like that much, but I wouldn’t feel the same need to come to the defense of the attacked people.
