Amy - I have become convinced that the multi-culti left is so unable to pass judgement upon anything (for fear of being judged themselves) that they will keep their heads in the sand about jihad until they are cut off.

Meanwhile, the title of that last paper you reference is interesting. I made a point that a genocide in the middle east is a near inevitability if we don't curb the more fanatical of Mo's followers. I was called a racist, a bigot, and all kinds of other wonderful names.

But it pays to remember that nobody does genocide like the Europeans. If France starts to feel that there's no other way to preserve the French culture, then Algeria might find itself a smouldering hunk of glass - if you get my drift.

"nobody does genocide like the Europeans" - that's a line worth remembering.

Brian posted my thoughts.

The multi-cult gives us a double whammy: we are less able to respond to cultural threats, and the radicals see that, and so move in even faster.

Multi-cult is predicated on the belief that if you are nice to someone, they will be nice to you. This works about 80% of the time.

Agreed brian, the alternative to the multi-culti mindset is the painful introspection required to define who "we" and "they" are. Though,call me cynical or paranoid, I don't think it comes from a fear of being judged but from a desire to control thinking through control of language; people can't discuss what they can't define.

I've been seeing more of a certain bumper sticker lately that says: "I love my country but I think we should see other people." The snotty, self-importance of that just boggles my mind. It asserts that we are post-nation as well as post-Christian; that me and my MasterCard can get along just fine alone, thank you very much.

The challenge posed by islam to western civilization will force us to attend to that introspection or we will die. Happy Monday.

Um, well, snark and hyperbole aside, Islam is just words on a page. It's the people who choose to breathe life into its words and consequently twist those words to serve their ends we should be blaming.

Just like any other philosophy or religion. Islam as a doctrine is no more responsible for deaths than guns are. It's the people who use them.

It asserts that we are post-nation as well as post-Christian

I hope you're not citing a move towards post-Christianity as a bad thing...unless you think the violent doctrine of Christianity is somehow better than that of the Koran.

A_R nice way to absolve Marx of the hundreds of millions who died in the name of his theories.

Guns don't raise people to kill. Ideas do.

This bullshit moral relativism of "there are no bad ideas, only bad people" has fucking got to stop.

There are bad ideas. These bad ideas should be relegated to the ash-heap of history. Among these bad ideas are Communism, Anthropogenic Global Warming, and Islam. I'm sure there are others, this is not an exhaustive list.

And I challenge you to show me the "violent doctrine of Christianity". And no bullshit invoking of the Old Testament to do it, either.

"somehow better"

Somehow better.

Somehow.

Wow.

I didn't absolve anybody; I'm just arguing that ideas alone do not kill people. It's the implementation of the idea that kills people. Marx didn't kill anyone; Lenin and Stalin did by implementing his ideas. By your standard, no one can breathe a word of an idea if somebody, somewhere down the line might use it to kill someone.

And I challenge you to show me the "violent doctrine of Christianity". And no bullshit invoking of the Old Testament to do it, either.

Why on earth can you just disallow half the Bible? But that's OK; there's enough violence the New Testament too:

"Brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death." - Matthew 10:21

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" Hebrews 10:31

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;" Romans 1:18

I don't know why to get to ignore the Old Testament when your Lord and Savior(tm) endorsed it:

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. (Mat.5:17)"

"And no bullshit invoking of the Old Testament to do it, either."

Sorry, without the OT, Christianity is a pamphlet. The OT and the NT stand together or fall together.

"There are bad ideas." http://www.makestickers.com/home.asp

Again, I want to clarify, it's not that there are no such things as bad ideas. There are (invading Iraq being one). However, the idea itself was harmless without someone breathing life into it.

However, the idea itself was harmless without someone breathing life into it

And yet you stand here and tell us we dare not judge an idea or its practitioners, unless we are willing to condemn all ideas.

MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MIND!

If a bad idea is implemented, do we not have a DUTY to cease the implementation of said idea? Haven't we the responsibility to kill those who would use such ideas as an excuse to kill us?

Or should we just ignore them and hope they go away?

You're arguing in circles. I tire of it.

I tire of it.

Obviously not, because you keep arguing.

If a bad idea is implemented, do we not have a DUTY to cease the implementation of said idea?

Don't throw your "we" and "duties" on me, buster. Let me ask you this: is it a good idea or a bad idea to teach your child Christianity?

I say it's a bad idea, but I'm not going to stop you from doing it.

And finally we get to the end of it.

Ayn_Randian is a post-nationalist. There is no duty, because there is no citizenship. There is no citizenship, because there is no nation. There is no nation, because it might interfere with an individual's "right" to do as one pleases. "And the whole of the law shall be 'do as thou wilt'."

And so not only is there no duty to maintain civilization, there is no obligation to one's neighbor.

Hence the violent reaction to the idea that one might have a duty to defend his fellow man from the encroachment of a hideous ideology of death.

"It's the people who choose to breathe life into its words and consequently twist those words to serve their ends we should be blaming." (emphasis added)

Who is the "we" you mention here? What methods do you use to determine who is on your side?

How about the "should"? Is that "should" as in duty?

Multi-cult is predicated on the belief that if you are nice to someone, they will be nice to you. This works about 80% of the time.

I'd say that number is high. Coincidentally, lately I seem to be telling a lot of my friends that, while some people see you being nice to them as a sign that they should be nice to you, others see it as a sign of weakness. I think guys tend to "get" this more than women when it comes to professional and personal relationships, but it's a hard concept for many people to grasp. My rule for personal and foreign affairs is that I will be nice to you to begin with, and if you're nice or neutral to me back, I'll continue the niceness...but if you respond to my niceness with meanness or nastiness, I'll treat you as hostile until you prove otherwise.

Oh, and you can can the selective quoting of the Bible. Matthew 10 is Jesus' commands to his disciples. Your dishonest excerpt is not a command to kill. It is a description of what people will do in order to resist the teachings of Christ. He was describing a witch-hunt, if you will.

Of course, that would detract from your hatred of all things, and therefore cannot be tolerated.

Therefore, I submit to you a larger excerpt: Matthew 10: 15-23:

[15] Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.
[16] Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
[17] But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues;
[18] And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.
[19] But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.
[20] For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.
[21] And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.
[22] And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.
[23] But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

C'mon, brian, why bother? You're not going to change A_R's mind, he's made it clear to everyone that his way is the only way. He'll do the selective quote thing for as long as it serves his purpose. He's obviously so set in his way of thinking that he can't even begin to open his mind. Kinda like the fanatical Islamists whose only goal is world domination, A_R seeks to dominate this blog with his school of thought. He's the only one who's RIGHT, dammit! /sarc o_O

I'll continue the niceness...but if you respond to my niceness with meanness or nastiness, I'll treat you as hostile until you prove otherwise.

Sounds like the winning game theory strategy known as "Tit for tat" useful when we're in a Prisoner's Dilemna. The wiki doesn't mention it, but I think it's considered a dismal strategy because unless both sides are cooperating, neither side really "wins" in the sense of making lots of progress. The winning side just barely keeps their head above the other side. And basically, if we're in a Prisoner's Dilemna, we've already lost.

The article I linked to also describes the strategies
Tit for tat with forgiveness", "Tit for two tats", but sadly lacks pictures of "tat for two tits". I am continuing to do research.

Also, I wish to encourage Brian to switch to decaf.

Well said, marion. I give people the benefit of the doubt going in but I lose respect for anyone who doesn't respect me back.

Under AR's reasoning, Manson and Hitler are innocent babes.

I like Brian. If caffeine makes him tick, I want some more.

>And I challenge you to show me the "violent
>doctrine of Christianity". And no bullshit
>invoking of the Old Testament to do it, either.

Now that is just too easy. Which would you like? My favorite is the Catholic doctrine of "conversion by the sword".

This was invoked when the Spanish were colonizing the Americas. Indians in your way? Walk up to their village and preach to them. Those who convert immediately to Christianity were spared, all others killed. Of course, the conversion rate was awfully low, not least because the preaching was in Spanish or Latin, which the natives didn't understand.

There are plenty of other examples. However, it's semi-irrelevant to this argument. Christianity is a religion that has grown with the West into civilization. But if you took away the civilized veneer, you would quickly find brutality reasserting itself, and religionw would certainly be used as one of the excuses.

Islam has the fundamental problem that most of its believers are still stuck in the dark ages. you can attack their religion all you want (and you may even be right) - but that isn't going to solve the problem. The only way the problem is going to be solved is either through the equivalent of a gigantic fence, while we wait for them to discover the benefits of civilization. Don't be in a hurry...

Now that is just too easy. Which would you like? My favorite is the Catholic doctrine of "conversion by the sword".

Yes, but these days, Christians come to your door with bibles, not swords. As you point out above, Islam is still stuck in the dark ages, but with the benefit of the tools of modernity.

Bradley13, brian challenged us to find exhortations to violence in the New Testament, the teachings of Jesus. There aren't any there. Plenty in the OT, but not the gospels. All that conversion by the sword, inquisition and pogrom nonsense was made up by the church based on whatever BS benefited them at the time. The Koran, on the other hand, does specifically instruct believers to make war on unbelievers until they submit, convert or die. Significant difference, I think.

Tell me AR how does your logic fit in the case of a stalker? Let's say all he ever does is look at the girl from afar and for years he writes violent love letters to her. He never shows these letters to anybody but one day the girl accidentally discovers them. What is the girl to do? After all they are only ideas, he is not "breathing life" into them.

I've had guys email me nasty shit after seeing my pic online. I consider that form of harassment hilarious since I can differentiate between degrees of danger. Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Atheists and even Muslims are all having big problems with Islam’s violent tendencies. Think of Christianity as a guy online who tells you he wants you to suck his dick. Think of Islam as your neighbor who watches you come and go, writes violent love letters, and obsesses about what you do and who you’re with. Remember he hasnt done any violent action to you---yet. He only has "ideas" that he happens to put down on paper.

Brian: It was you complaining about convenient partial quotes, correct?

You Posted: "There is no nation, because it might interfere with an individual's "right" to do as one pleases. "And the whole of the law shall be 'do as thou wilt'." (Isn't that called Freedom?)

The entire line is: "And it HARM NONE, do what Thou wilt" or "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the Law, Love under will."

"What's good for the goose" and all of that shit.

I agree with a lot of what A_R has said. Christianity has grown up far beyond where Islam is at, personally, I wouldn't give you ten cents for either of them. The whole "Christianity is BETTER than Islam" is crap. Doctrinated or not, Christianity has has proven it's capability to inspire atrocity.

All of which is beside the point: Christianity was not the topic anyway. Here's the difficulty I have with the whole "ISLAM IS EVIL AND MUST BE STOPPED!!!" line of thinking: I've had Moslem friends. Good friends, the type of people who would give you the shirt off their backs, and the first to show up when you need a hand. When I think of Moslems, I think of the ones I've known. These are the people who must be stopped?!? They knew darn well that their religion didn't mean anything to me, and didn't judge me for it. Does this mean I think very highly of Islam? No, it still doesn't mean shit to me, but I'd defend these individuals against anyone who felt "THEY MUST BE STOPPED!!" just for being Moslems.

A Religion, just like a Political system, is a power structure. Power in the hands of psychos ends in violence. It's just plain lazy to want to pigeon-hole an entire group of people as evil simply by looking at what banner they fly.

Assuming a person has ill intent simply for being Moslem, is just as retarded as assuming a person is kind and decent just because they are Christian.

Assuming a person has ill intent simply for being Moslem, is just as retarded as assuming a person is kind and decent just because they are Christian.

Exacty. I don't think anyone commenting here has a problem with that. The problem is with the fanatical jihad-bent Islamists that want to destroy, nay, eradicate, Western civilization as we know it. And we need to know who those people are. Obviously, it's not your friends, but yet, not many of them are taking a stand and being very vocal about how the jihadists are wrong. I think Uncle Aleister would, too, have issues with that aspect of Islam, no? 93

Morbideus - I quoted partially on purpose. Is irony lost upon you?

And again, the conflation. I'm not concerned with the muslims that don't want me dead. It's the ones that want me dead that bother me.

A_R doesn't think they have the means to affect anyone's life, and can be ignored. 9/11 puts the lie to that. When 19 committed idiots can kill 3,000 people and hobble an economy on a whim, then I think we've got a problem we can no longer afford to ignore.

The middle east is where the primary impetus toward violent jihad is located. We can either forcibly knock Islam down a notch, or we can sit back and let them continue to attack wherever and whenever they like. They aren't going to stop just because we pull our troops out of Saudi Arabia. Hell, even if we let them kill all the Jews in the world, they won't be happy. The jihadi have a permanent grievance mentality.

A_R, and others like him, seem to think that if we just pulled all our influence inside our borders, nobody would have any reason to ever hate us. kt thinks that it is foolish to look at the history of the Barbary Pirates, because it makes the entire "mind your own business" thing moot.

Finally, the problem that people like me have with the muslims you know is this: they are not doing anything to convince their co-religionists to cut the shit. They rarely speak out, and only then when they are humiliated or threatened. If these so-called "moderate" muslims want me to believe that they are the majority in their faith, then maybe they could do something to shut down the hate mills in the middle east that are producing the monsters we see on MEMRI translations of Saudi television.

> Christianity has has proven
> it's capability to inspire
> atrocity.

But it almost never does, Morby, at least not here in the States. While there are still things about Christianity that are loathsome --its resistance to taxation, for example-- it's been fragmented and tamed to where it's practitioners don't make much trouble. Christianity has been beaten into submission.

Who's next?

Well He-llo, Mohammad!

Eric Robert Rudolph (born September 19, 1966), also known as the Olympic Park Bomber, is an American domestic terrorist who committed a series of bombings across the southern United States, which killed three people and injured at least 150 others. He declared that his bombings were part of a guerrilla campaign against abortion and what he describes as "the homosexual agenda." He spent years as the FBI's most wanted criminal fugitive, but was eventually caught. In 2005 Rudolph pleaded guilty to numerous federal and state homicide charges and accepted five consecutive life sentences in exchange for avoiding a trial and the death penalty. Rudolph was connected with the Christian Identity movement; today, he self-identifies as a Catholic.

Waagner then became most infamous for a hoax in November of 2001, in which he sent envelopes containing a white powder to more than 500 abortion providers. The envelopes also contained a note, which said, "You have been exposed to anthrax. We are going to kill all of you. From the Army of God, Virginia Dare Chapter." The threat was considered serious, as it arrived shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on America, as well as the then-recent delivery of genuine anthrax letters to various governmental officials by a different perpetrator.

A U. S. Marshals Service Top 15 Fugitive since March 6, 2001, Waagner also became a FBI Ten Most Wanted fugitive because of the more than 280 letters that threatened to contain anthrax, which he mailed to Planned Parenthood, with return addresses of the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Secret Service beginning in October 2001. In the wave of mailed letters, Waagner was accused of stalkings and threats to kill 42 low-level abortion clinic employees up through November 23, 2001

On July 26, 2007, 17 Christians were convicted of religion-inspired terrorism under Indonesian law. A Christian mob attacked, murdered, and beheaded two Muslim fishermen in September 2006, reportedly as retaliation for a previous court ordered and legally sanctioned execution in 2006 of three Christians convicted of leading a militant group which killed hundreds of Muslims in Poso in 2000. In addition to the seventeen Christian defendants found guilty of "acts of terrorism by the use of violence", two defendants received fourteen year sentences for their main roles in the killings, while ten were sentenced to twelve year terms. Five other defendants in separate hearings received eight year sentences for their part in the disposal of the bodies.

That's the best you can come up with? Two mentally ill Americans and a fucking internecine war that's been raging for the better part of a decade?

This by you indicates the "violence inherent in the system"?

Help! Help! I'm bein' repressed!

I can't believe the transparency of that argument. As if in a nation of hundreds of millions, a few whack jobs could make your point.

AR please pick a different name if you even come back. She in no way deserves the disservice you do by attaching her name to your views.

Now, you wanna talk about something, let's talk about the so-called "restive muslim provinces of Southern Thailand" where buddhist monks, Christian teachers, Policemen of indeterminate religion, and schoolgirls are being slaughtered in the streets by muslims whose stated intent is to overthrow the government of Thailand and impose sharia.

That's just one organization with hundreds to thousands of members that the government of Thailand is just caving in to rather than squashing.

Or we could talk about Mindanao - where the Phillipine government is planning on ceding large swathes of territory to the terrorist group that's been kidnapping tourists for the past 40 years in the hopes that the kidnappings and the attacks will stop.

But by all means, let's pick out a mentally-ill murderer and say that he represents any measurable portion of the Christian world. Hell, let's just say he's a fundamentalist. Except that he's certifiably fucking insane. May as well say that Charles Manson is a representative sample of all Americans.

Helter Skelter!

We've just seen a classic comparison fallacy. The Christian population slice that polls similar support for violence as the average Muslim is six standard deviations from the mean. So we just had someone compare the mean to a six sigma event.

Dude - they don't understand logic. You expect them to understand advanced statistics?

Just to a prick - doombuggy was quoting basic statistics. But no, we shouldn't expect people who lack basic logic to be able to make meaningful judgments about how massive a 6 SD difference is in probability terms.

eh, what do I know. I got a minor in math, and I didn't take a single statistics course.

I probably should have.

AR please pick a different name if you even come back. She in no way deserves the disservice you do by attaching her name to your views.

Feel free to tell me how I am doing a disservice to Ayn Rand, who, not to be crass, is dead, so it would be kind of impossible to "disservice" her.

But anyway, what you meant was that my opinion is somehow incompatible with her views. Please feel free to prove it.

Indeed she is dead, but you soil her name.
You write
"Just like any other philosophy or religion. Islam as a doctrine is no more responsible for deaths than guns are. It's the people who use them."

Patently false, which was pointed out to you previously. Do you think ideas do not drive cultures and history? Then you seem to backtrack and dissemble about the people implementing those ideas which is a bit silly.

Then you go quoting the bible. Again a bit silly if you take ideas seriously. Faith basically refutes itself. You may want to spend a bit more time advocating the right ideas instead of attacking pasta-farianism.
Perhaps read a bit more of her non-fiction before you come back to educate us.

Brian: Morbideus - "I quoted partially on purpose. Is irony lost upon you?"

Granted, considering the blatant absurdity with everything else you said, I probably should have caught that. Instead I just assumed you were being a hypocrital ass. My bad...

Crid: "But it almost never does, Morby, at least not here in the States. While there are still things about Christianity that are loathsome --its resistance to taxation, for example-- it's been fragmented and tamed to where it's practitioners don't make much trouble. Christianity has been beaten into submission.

Who's next?

Well He-llo, Mohammad!"

We can only hope. I do believe, eventually, this is what will happen.

I agree, the moderate Muslims should be more outspoken, I assume they aren't saying much because they don't wish to be the next targets of the lunatics.

Islam has more followers than than any other world religion. Clearly if they were ALL psychotic killing machines bent on slaughtering heretics, the heretics would all be slaughtered. The vast majority of them are just regular people.

I asked one of my Moslem friends about the terrorists and all of that, he said "Those people are crazy." I asked about the Koran's preaching of violence, he said it was a matter of interpretation, and that in english it loses a lot in the translation, and the whole reason the Middle East is fighting each other, is this very type of thing. Fighting over whose interpretation becomes Law. There are many sub-sects of Islam, most of them are rational, thinking human beings. The lunatics indeed exist, not just rogue individuals but some whole groups, but painting them all with the same brush defies some of that logic I've been hearing about.

The looneys should be hunted down and prosecuted like the criminals they are.

I'll assume you were responding to a different brian, as I don't recall saying anything absurd.

However, to answer your last point - A good number of those looneys that you want to hunt down and prosecute?

They're in charge of several nations, and in charge of the centers of Islamic thought. Gonna take a little more than an arrest warrant to fix, I think.

"I'll assume you were responding to a different brian, as I don't recall saying anything absurd."

Is irony lost on you?

"They're in charge of several nations, and in charge of the centers of Islamic thought. Gonna take a little more than an arrest warrant to fix, I think."

True, but I thought we were talking about Islamic violence spreading into THIS country, no? What the crazy people do in their crazy little land, doesn't matter. If they try to get violent over here, hunt them down and nail their asses. Warrents work over here.