Moderator: Global Moderator
So what was your previous name?
Jackely, hmm.
Good detective work but like I said in a modified post above, I'm flattered that anybody really cares. If any of you are ever in the Tampa area let me know and we can have a beer.dualstow wrote: EDIT: never mind, MangoMan posted it already. Apparently there is a whole second page here that I overlooked.
So what was your previous name?Jackely, hmm.
I think that would fit with Amazon reviewer Jack H. (I happened to be browsing the pp book reviews this morning).
Although, I mixed up Reub's and Notsheigetz' details early on, and I've never been able to fix it in my mind.
But, I think there's a Florida connection here between this pair of Jacks.
1. If I opened a rib stand (pork) in front of a mosque, the uproar from the usual suspects e.g.moda0306 wrote: His lamenting about a mosque in Manhattan near the World Trade Center site,
That's hardly a fair comparison. The closest of the three planned mosques was a couple of blocks away from WTC site, not in front of it. At what point does the American liberal traditional for radical tolerance cross over into bigotry? Now, maybe if any of those mosques were part of the Wahhabi sect, I would be rightfully concerned, otherwise conflating Islam with Wahhabism is like conflating Christianity with Jehovah's Day Witnesses.Benko wrote: 1. If I opened a rib stand (pork) in front of a mosque, the uproar from the usual suspects e.g.
ny times, would be amusing.
3. And you think it is wrong to be upset/think it is wrong to put a mosque near where thousands of people were killed.
Certain branches of Islam and some liberals have plenty of their own problems that are worth debating separately from engaging in a public outcry against a mosque. This should not give politicians free passes to be bigots. If the particular branch of Islam trying to open this mosque had certain extreme background, I could understand the backlash. But the reaction to simply building a mosque near ground zero wreaked of immaturity IMO.Benko wrote:1. If I opened a rib stand (pork) in front of a mosque, the uproar from the usual suspects e.g.moda0306 wrote: His lamenting about a mosque in Manhattan near the World Trade Center site,
ny times, would be amusing.
2. Published cartoons about Al...h results in murder
3. And you think it is wrong to be upset/think it is wrong to put a mosque near where thousands of people were killed.
SimonSimonjester wrote: the mosques were inside the circle of the area damaged (the outer edge of, but still within) and Islam has a long tradition of building "victory" mosques in the places they have conquered, perhaps building a mosque in that area of NY was innocent of ulterior motive, but given those two things it was in poor taste..
There a lot of things that a lot of groups could protest to create "goodwill" with opposing groups. Things like taking confederate flags off of state flags comes to mind. Let's focus on things that should be expected or hoped for, not appeasing our prejudices by protesting a perfectly legitimate will to build a community/prayer center. If it's truly as "interfaith" as dualstow's instinct indicates, then I think this is a great thing to have exist within blocks of a tragedy that unfortunately alienated many Americans to muslims. If Muslims want to create goodwill with me, there are plenty of things I can easily think of that their leaders could do (and in some cases have done) before protesting a Muslim community center near ground zero.Simonjester wrote: i assume i don't know the motives of the mosque builders but i am also certain they knew the reaction it would get, and the media fallout it would generate. i don't view it as a war between them and Christianity or between us and Islam the religion. the problem in discussing Islam isn't a religion vs religion thing it is that Islam is also a political philosophy and one that is in conflict with ours, and one that is also either tactically approved of by mainstream Muslims or at least seldom openly apposed..
people who view and practice Islam as a religion of peace could have protested the mosque and created a lot of good will for Islam (the religion), but the (political) ideology scores points when they don't and unsurprisingly ...they didn't....
And expecting the rest of the world to curtail their free speech i.e. not create certain kinds of cartoons lest it offends muslims is perfectly fair? What do you think Salamon Rushdie would think of Muslim fairness?moda0306 wrote:
First, let's decide whether it's fair or mature to protest or even ask them to not build this entity (it's not),
I'm vehimently against illegalizing "hate speech" or religious cartoons (though if it bridges into overt incitement of violence I think a line has been crossed). If you're trying to argue against someone that things Islam is flawless then I'm not him. And let's not forget that as respecters of at least the principal of individuality and individual sovereignty, any attempt to create a collective conscious out of many individuals is probably starting with the false premise that we have a collective conscious. Every muslim is their own human being, just as we are.Benko wrote:And expecting the rest of the world to curtail their free speech i.e. not create certain kinds of cartoons lest it offends muslims is perfectly fair? What do you think Salamon Rushdie would think of Muslim fairness?moda0306 wrote:
First, let's decide whether it's fair or mature to protest or even ask them to not build this entity (it's not),
And you've got me doing the fairness thing. Fairness is not an appropriate test for anything (aside from you might be a lefty if...). If you were a caring person, and you knew someone who had had relatives killed on 9/11 you would not wish a muslim anything near where that person's relatives were killed. Putting anything muslim near there is callous.
It would really be nice if people treated everyone with caring and humanity no matter what their sex, sexual orientation, religion, age race, etc etc. But that sure aint where we are now (nor does it appear to be the desire of progressives).
I don't really disagree that much with this. I think in the end, though, it's easy in the U.S. for us to each see ourselves as a Thomas Jefferson, with guns in our basement, ready to take up arms against tyranny, but in the end we just complain a lot about what we may see as government tyranny and then we go back to eating dinner and hanging out with our kids.Simonjester wrote: the problem is separating legitimate complaints from prejudice, ask a liberal and anything said against Islam is prejudiced and wrong, ask a conservative and anything said for Islam is supporting or appeasing an enemy.
Islam isn't just a bunch of "love in their hearts" do good religious folks, it is also an evil ideology that is at war with us. i don't know which part of Islam built the center or what their motives were, but building it and the "in the media fight" that ensued furthered the interests of the ideology in addition to building a community center (which given the impossible to sort out mix and match of religion and ideology is likely to continue serving both).
the way i see it is there are three groups of Muslims.
one. a small group of religious and political radicals who are fighting us (at War with us using every tactic at their disposal including accusations of prejudice),
two. the vast majority of Muslims who are some mixture of..
-agreeing in-part with the radical political ideology
-afraid of the radicals and wont speak against them
-to busy living their lives in peace and don't want to get involved
-those that will speak out against bad ideology sometimes
and the third group are another small minority who do stand up for the religion of peace and speak out against the first group.
all of this makes both blindly opposing Islam and blindly supporting it indefensible positions. not all resistance is prejudiced and not all support is appeasing an enemy.
if i cant speak out against building a mosque that quite likely serves both religion and ideology, in the damage zone of a terrorist attack by Muslims because i would be prejudiced if i did... then it needs to be the Muslims that speak out against it, who else can?...
I understand why you feel that way, but to actually codify and put your thoughts into law strikes me as extremely un-American and it goes against the basic principles that this country was founded on. Most namely the separation of church and state.Benko wrote: "Are there a lot of Muslims with beliefs incompatible with liberty? Yes. There are a lot of Christians that way as well. "
As rational as I remember you being on certain topics, this reply including the above comment is not your finest hour. Their are no Christians inciting lethal violence over cartoons. This is reality in 2013. But theory, avoiding imagined prejudice, are all more important than being callus to real people. If a person's relative was killed by a red headed person, it would not be humane to let someone build a giant shrine to red headed people nearby. Of course if that happened to one person we would probably never know it had haopened. But it happened to thousands, and their natural reasonable reaction has to be prejudice to you, and you cannot allow the appearence of prejudice. A mosque has to be built nearby to prove we are not prejudice.
Meanwhile somewhere an Imam is laughing their ass off on how stupid we are (see my signature).
Many/most moslems (best I can tell) are peaceful people.
Are christians calling for death over Cartoons? Probably not. However, I have heard more than one Christian suggest we should nuke the entire Middle East, or close to it. So the children there didn't even have to make offensive cartoons to earn that treatment.Benko wrote: "Are there a lot of Muslims with beliefs incompatible with liberty? Yes. There are a lot of Christians that way as well. "
As rational as I remember you being on certain topics, this reply including the above comment is not your finest hour. Their are no Christians inciting lethal violence over cartoons. This is reality in 2013. But theory, avoiding imagined prejudice, are all more important than being callus to real people. If a person's relative was killed by a red headed person, it would not be humane to let someone build a giant shrine to red headed people nearby. Of course if that happened to one person we would probably never know it had haopened. But it happened to thousands, and their natural reasonable reaction has to be prejudice to you, and you cannot allow the appearence of prejudice. A mosque has to be built nearby to prove we are not prejudice.
Meanwhile somewhere an Imam is laughing their ass off on how stupid we are (see my signature).
Many/most moslems (best I can tell) are peaceful people.
I know there were some that probably wanted the NYC government to find a way to strike down the permit or something, but I think the question is more one of whether we "should" be upset about it. Whether it's a "slap in the face" to build a mosque in terms of decency. And further, whether it's decent to protest the building of t. This is the much more interesting question, to me. Just like I have the right to call anyone I want an "ugly prick," but the debate is whether that makes me a jackass or not. For guys like us who like to keep our debates grounded in objective realities, it can be tough to talk about what is "rude," or "decent" of us to do, but talking about politicians and Rand Paul unfortunately brings up some subjective issues of "classiness."Pointedstick wrote: Why are we even discussing Muslims' cartoon preferences? It's completely surreal to me. When they try to kill us, okay, let's try to kill them right back--harder, and better. Let's kill the crap out of them with the biggest, meanest, baddest weapons we have. Let's blast them into tiny pieces and dump the remains in a shark tank.
But until then, who cares where they want to build a mosque? If they're not training terrorists in it, what's the big deal? And if they are then we're back to "kill the crap out of them." Nice and simple. What am I missing here?
I just don't see why this is something the government ought to be interested in. Don't they have better things to do than peer into people's private lives and hyper-regulate private plans for building private buildings on private property? Especially buildings that house an activity explicitly protected by the first amendment of our constitution!
Two blasts. Biden style.Pointedstick wrote: Why are we even discussing Muslims' cartoon preferences? It's completely surreal to me. When they try to kill us, okay, let's try to kill them right back--harder, and better. Let's kill the crap out of them with the biggest, meanest, baddest weapons we have. Let's blast them into tiny pieces and dump the remains in a shark tank.
Who needs omniscience when I've heard it from their own mouths.Benko wrote: PS,
Mr. archtypical liberal was equating moral equivalence of blowing people up over cartoons so yes it is damn relevant.
"Let's be honest about what a lot of Christians believe."
Omniscience must be nice.
I'll take those odds. I'll bet $100 against Clinton, as long as you're willing to pony up $10K if she does not become our next president. (I accept PayPal and Amazon Payments).notsheigetz wrote: I'm putting the odds at about 100:1 in favor of Ms. Clinton.
Let's see how we stack up...doodle wrote:Utter destruction....thats a little hyperbolic dont you think? Is there another country in the world that is better off presently?China Bull wrote: Hopeless and Clueless ver 2 ? She could possibly win (never underestimate the stupidity of the sheeple in the US) but after the utter destruction this country will be left behind by Buck Ofama and congress, not sure any sane person would want the job of the next POTUS.
There are people pissed about mosques being built anywhere in the country. Should we ask Muslims to be sensitive to that as well? What about being sensitive to the families of muslims who died on 9/11 by not staging this as being a religious battle. It's not insensitive to call it out as prejudice and encourage them to build a place of worship as long as it's peaceful. The real question is whether the victims who are angry about it have a reasonable right to be. I certainly understand their anger from a human nature standpoint, but that doesn't mean I think we should reinforce it... because it's based in prejudice. I think they're being rude and irrational unnecessarily, and while we should understand and be polite about it, backing their position and calling it "insensitive" of Muslims to want to open a Muslim community center near ground zero is far, far more rude IMO.Pointedstick wrote: Moda, I understand what you mean, but playing the "who's-the-bigger-jackass" game seems futile to me because in politics, everybody's a jackass at some time or other, and rights were invented to project jackass behavior in the first place.
Do I think that conservatives who want to use government power to prevent mosques from being built in certain locations are being jackasses? Yes, absolutely. But on the other hand, it's damned insensitive to want to build that mosque near ground zero in the first place. It doesn't bother me, but there are a heck of a lot of people who it does bother, and ignoring their feelings is jackass behavior too in my mind.
Now, do the Muslims have the right to build mosques where they want? Yes. Do conservatives have the right to bitch about it? Yes. They're both expressing their first-amendment rights to be jackasses. That's the point of rights. If they protected popular behavior, there would be no need to codify them as rights in the first place.
