Gyroscopic Investing

Just in the past few days the religion of peace has attacked a policeman with a machete, bombed a US marine benefit run, bombed a crowded NY street, and stabbed innocents in a mall in Minnesota while shouting Allah Akbar. The outrage is not with this but rather that Donald Trump said that NYC was bombed before waiting for forensic results. ISIS has praised the attacks and promises more. This is getting worse by the minute.

Reub wrote:Just in the past few days the religion of peace has attacked a policeman with a machete, bombed a US marine benefit run, bombed a crowded NY street, and stabbed innocents in a mall in Minnesota while shouting Allah Akbar. The outrage is not with this but rather that Donald Trump said that NYC was bombed before waiting for forensic results. ISIS has praised the attacks and promises more. This is getting worse by the minute.

I'm ready to go one further than Donald Trump on immigration policy to the point of declaring Islam a dangerous religion and placing a total ban on anyone espousing it. We did the same with communism so why not Islam? I agree with Sam Harris in his book "The End of Faith". Why does religion get a pass in these things? The constitution guarantees religious freedom for "We the People" but I don't see where it says that same guarantee applies to immigrants who want to come over here not even agreeing to the principles in that founding document.

I'm not as well pleased with statements he has been making on waging war against ISIS. How do you even go over there in that Hornet's nest and figure out which one is ISIS? Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

EDIT: I'm sure those of you who are old enough remember why we banned communists from entering the country (and still do I believe). Remember all the terrorist attacks, the bombings and the mass shootings? No, me neither. If they had been smart they would have declared communism a religion, thus placing it beyond any criticism.

These Islamist terrorist attacks on the homeland will become an almost everyday occurrence going forward as Obama lets in more terrorists every day and the ones who are here use our liberties against us

curlew wrote: We did the same with communism so why not Islam?

I'm against the importation of young Syrian males, for sure, but the statement above seems bizarre to me. Not even the Islam part, the communism part. Joe McCarthy was a goddamn mess, and he ruined a lot of innocent people's lives. You might as well say, we made some deformed babies with thalidomide, so why not try it with another drug?

All I can think is that maybe you're talking about (bomber) anarchists?

I'm sure those of you who are old enough remember why we banned communists from entering the country (and still do I believe).

I haven't looked it up, but I'm pretty sure we don't ban communists from entering the country. I think we have our own tiny communist party here.

Reub wrote:Just in the past few days the religion of peace has attacked a policeman with a machete, bombed a US marine benefit run, bombed a crowded NY street, and stabbed innocents in a mall in Minnesota while shouting Allah Akbar. The outrage is not with this but rather that Donald Trump said that NYC was bombed before waiting for forensic results. ISIS has praised the attacks and promises more. This is getting worse by the minute.

Except that ISIS is on the decline, losing territory and young men are no longer flocking to it. It'll be curtains sooner or later.

Seems like OBAMA! may want to clean up his poor Presidential performance by doing something actually useful before he leaves office.

Did you catch on the news reports that the local Somali Muslim community in St. Cloud, Minnesota, spoke out against the knife attack?

I guess they finally caught on that if they didn't do that, they'd get even more unpopular with the locals...but still, I'm glad someone with a position of authority in the Muslim community did publicly acknowledge and condemn a terrorist attack by one of its members. It's about time. Muslim clerics and community leaders could do a lot of good if they took some responsibility for events like this.

dualstow wrote: I haven't looked it up, but I'm pretty sure we don't ban communists from entering the country. I think we have our own tiny communist party here.

Immigration forms still ask if you are a member of the communist party (I filled one out for my wife). And it looks like you can be denied if you are according to this article ... http://lawandborder.com/communist-party ... reen-card/

The history behind this is because communism was considered a dangerous ideology that was incompatible with democracy.

And my point is, the same is true of Islam but it gets a pass because it's a religion.

WiseOne wrote:Did you catch on the news reports that the local Somali Muslim community in St. Cloud, Minnesota, spoke out against the knife attack?

I guess they finally caught on that if they didn't do that, they'd get even more unpopular with the locals...

I just saw a headline about them fearing "an anti-Muslim backlash."

It had me thinking, where Arab/Muslim lands are relatively closer to homogeneity, not perfectly homogenous but closer, how would the reverse play out? Let's say blond Swedes, Norwegians, Danes and Finns had been living in these places, and a small percentage of them start stabbing and bombing the local Arab Muslim population.

Will a large part of the population come to the defense of these blondes, or will mobs systematically eradicate every last one of them?

curlew wrote:

dualstow wrote: Immigration forms still ask if you are a member of the communist party (I filled one out for my wife). And it looks like you can be denied if you are according to this article ... http://lawandborder.com/communist-party ... reen-card/

Interesting. I did eventually look it up, and it is easy enough to join a communist party, or THE communist party, from here in the States.

dualstow wrote:

curlew wrote:Immigration forms still ask if you are a member of the communist party (I filled one out for my wife). And it looks like you can be denied if you are according to this article ... http://lawandborder.com/communist-party ... reen-card/

Interesting. I did eventually look it up, and it is easy enough to join a communist party, or THE communist party, from here in the States.

Much easier to keep 'em out than it is to ban somebody from adopting an ideology once they're in. Best to keep these ideologies out as much as possible...

Xan wrote:

dualstow wrote:

curlew wrote:Immigration forms still ask if you are a member of the communist party (I filled one out for my wife). And it looks like you can be denied if you are according to this article ... http://lawandborder.com/communist-party ... reen-card/

Interesting. I did eventually look it up, and it is easy enough to join a communist party, or THE communist party, from here in the States.

Much easier to keep 'em out than it is to ban somebody from adopting an ideology once they're in. Best to keep these ideologies out as much as possible...

Luckily, they'll never be crafty enough to deny being communist on the entry form. //wink

dualstow wrote:Will a large part of the population come to the defense of these blondes, or will mobs systematically eradicate every last one of them?

That's pretty easy to answer since Islam is intrinsically based on a religion of violence. And it would be magnified by the out-group effect due to overt hair and skin color. Non-white Christians are still persecuted, tortured and executed in the Middle East, AFAIK.

Islam doesn't have a cultural tradition of radical tolerance and empathy as the West does. Expecting them to is gambling with your life and limbs. Islam is just fundamentally incompatible with the West. If immigrants or refugees or asylym seekers are going to "sell out" their religion and become Western-Humanized and assimilated -- that is one thing, but how do you predict that ahead of time?

Ban them all until we figure it out. And security theatre in the form of a bloody stupid question on an immigration form is NOT the answer. Criminals are congenital liars.

MachineGhost wrote:Islam doesn't have a cultural tradition of radical tolerance and empathy as the West does.

It used to have. Long time ago, though, when they were mapping the stars and had cosmopolitan cities.

dualstow wrote: Interesting. I did eventually look it up, and it is easy enough to join a communist party, or THE communist party, from here in the States.

You can also convert to Islam here in the States. Nobody is arguing that point.

The question is whether "We the People of the United States" still have any say in how to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", or do we have to let people in who believe that Sharia Law and Marxist philosophy are the ways to achieve those goals?

Of course, curlew.
We probably have the same viewpoint. I just think the whole commie analogy is ridiculous.

Best thing we can do is heavily vet people coming in from war-torn nations such as Syria, cross-checking with criminal records and shared intelligence. Asking "Are you a communist" or "Are you a Muslim"...hmm, maybe not.

MachineGhost wrote:Islam doesn't have a cultural tradition of radical tolerance and empathy as the West does.

You mean as in "we" of the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, and countless non-believers burned at the stake? There was quite a turn-around that started with the Renaissance, but there have been a few relapses.

MachineGhost wrote:Ban them all until we figure it out. And security theatre in the form of a bloody stupid question on an immigration form is NOT the answer. Criminals are congenital liars.

Unfortunately, I agree with you - not due to "racism" or "xenophobia" or whatever the label du jour is, but out of simple self-preservation. Plus, I can't imagine that the people coming here actually want to be here, given their reaction to Western society. The safe zone close to home is really a much better approach, than literally emptying out multiple Arab countries and trying to force-Westernize whole societies.

dualstow wrote:Of course, curlew.
We probably have the same viewpoint. I just think the whole commie analogy is ridiculous.

Best thing we can do is heavily vet people coming in from war-torn nations such as Syria, cross-checking with criminal records and shared intelligence. Asking "Are you a communist" or "Are you a Muslim"...hmm, maybe not.

Why is it ridiculous? If Trump gets elected and does actually manage to implement some kind of ban on Muslim immigration and it comes before the supreme court then I would think that the previous (and current) ban on immigration from known communists would enter into the equation. Why wouldn't it? Do the constitutional protections on freedom of religion give a free pass to those wanting to immigrate to our country, whereas political beliefs do not? An interesting question.

I do agree that it is ridiculous to ask the question on an immigration form because anybody intent on doing harm to our country is obviously going to lie. I think both ideologies, communism and Islam, say it is all right to lie to the infidels to achieve the grander purpose.

dualstow wrote:

MachineGhost wrote:Islam doesn't have a cultural tradition of radical tolerance and empathy as the West does.

It used to have. Long time ago, though, when they were mapping the stars and had cosmopolitan cities.

That was then, this is now. So what happened? Whatever did, didn't happen to the other Abrahamic religions.

dualstow wrote:Best thing we can do is heavily vet people coming in from war-torn nations such as Syria, cross-checking with criminal records and shared intelligence. Asking "Are you a communist" or "Are you a Muslim"...hmm, maybe not.

And what happens when terrorists slip through the vetting because there's none or a lack of shared intelligence? That's kind of the problem. We're assuming we're going to be able to get worthwhile intelligence from the Middle East which is laughable. And the CIA/MI/DIA is a joke to begin with as all government agencies always are. The false flag of security theatre is not going to prevent more terrorist attacks.

WiseOne wrote:You mean as in "we" of the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, and countless non-believers burned at the stake? There was quite a turn-around that started with the Renaissance, but there have been a few relapses.

Again, that was then, this is now. Why did we make it, but they did not?

WiseOne wrote:Unfortunately, I agree with you - not due to "racism" or "xenophobia" or whatever the label du jour is, but out of simple self-preservation. Plus, I can't imagine that the people coming here actually want to be here, given their reaction to Western society. The safe zone close to home is really a much better approach, than literally emptying out multiple Arab countries and trying to force-Westernize whole societies.

Well, it's all Merkel's fault because she felt guilty over fucking over the Greeks. And her political party just got bitch-slapped down to third place in Germany. Suits me just fine. Now if only Trump could get elected we might actually stop having a porous border and Swiss cheese of an immigration system/enforcement. If it takes some rightwingnuttism in the form of a strongman and xenophobia/racism to get some common sense implemented, then that is what it'll take.

We shouldn't have to apologize for this when our way of life is at stake. One can be an asshole without also being a racist, sexist, misogynist, xenophobic, etc..