11–20 of 284 posts
What I find chilling is in the age of the internet the comment sections on news sites are heavily censored (e.g. CBC). Which seems to allow a strange mix of viewpoints but what you don't see is what worries me. As for insulting religions it's funny that most times it's religion against religion more than non-religious again religious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An analogy doesn't automatically become bad just because it was once used to support a bad policy. :)
It does become suspect if the underlying logic is the same, though. I might call "clear and present danger" ethically problematic, but it was hardly unjustified.
Why can't the article just come out and say what it means? Militant Islam scares the crap out of the West, and we're willing to pass laws and endure a certain level of self-censorship to avoid provoking violence out of these people. The simple lesson here is that if you want to stop non-believers from doing blasphemy, violent reprisals work . And really, self-censorship is a practical stance, if not a principled one.…
And it's the wrong lesson learned. Violent reprisals didn't happen as a result of blasphemy, but of murder and occupation and dominance.
Why can't the article just come out and say what it means? Militant Islam scares the crap out of the West, and we're willing to pass laws and endure a certain level of self-censorship to avoid provoking violence out of these people. The simple lesson here is that if you want to stop non-believers from doing blasphemy, violent reprisals work . And really, self-censorship is a practical stance, if not a principled one.…
This is such a stupid strategy. The right thing to do is to look at the root cause of all this. After all, there are lots of angry people all across the world that hate the Western world and want to hurt it, but most can't. What sets the Arabs apart is their vast oil riches. Without that, they wouldn't have the money or power to do anything to the West.
If you want to fight militant Islam, the first thing to do is to limit immigration from those countries and spread the immigrants out to force assimilation. The second thing to do is to invest as much money as possible into developing domestic energy sources, as well as alternatives to crude oil. The minute that crude oil loses its relevance to the Western world, the Arabs will just go back to what they were before - a bunch of desert nomads with no real power.
Why can't the article just come out and say what it means? Militant Islam scares the crap out of the West, and we're willing to pass laws and endure a certain level of self-censorship to avoid provoking violence out of these people. The simple lesson here is that if you want to stop non-believers from doing blasphemy, violent reprisals work . And really, self-censorship is a practical stance, if not a principled one.…
Why can't the article just come out and say what it means? Militant Islam scares the crap out of the West, and we're willing to pass laws and endure a certain level of self-censorship to avoid provoking violence out of these people. The simple lesson here is that if you want to stop non-believers from doing blasphemy, violent reprisals work . And really, self-censorship is a practical stance, if not a principled one.…
> Militant Islam scares the crap out of the West, and we're willing to pass laws and endure a certain level of self-censorship to avoid provoking violence out of these people. This is such a stupid strategy. The right thing to do is to look at the root cause of all this. After all, there are lots of angry people all across the world that hate the Western world and want to hurt it, but most can't. What sets the Arabs…
Why can't the article just come out and say what it means? Militant Islam scares the crap out of the West, and we're willing to pass laws and endure a certain level of self-censorship to avoid provoking violence out of these people. The simple lesson here is that if you want to stop non-believers from doing blasphemy, violent reprisals work . And really, self-censorship is a practical stance, if not a principled one.…
"The simple lesson here is that if you want to stop non-believers from doing blasphemy, violent reprisals work." And it's the wrong lesson learned. Violent reprisals didn't happen as a result of blasphemy, but of murder and occupation and dominance.
However, I think the parent's point is still valid in the more general sense, that our weakening of free speech due to threats of violence sends the signal that terrorism is an effective means of politics. Having said that, reading a history books also sends that signal, although it likely frames it in terms of guerilla warfare, and cutting losses, and such.