Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

No, I think you are saying that the reason for the murders is rooted in what people are taught about what it means to own a black car (for example, all those laws in countries that allow killing people for blaspheming black-car-ownership), and not in what people are taught about what it means to be a good muslim.

If I thought that you really meant what you are saying, I'd think you're not very smart. Instead, I thing you're not very honest.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

There is much debate over such things in the Muslim world, but, tell me, who would you have speak out against such things in Saudi Arabia when our government does so very hesitatingly and apologetically? Should an ulema in Riyadh, where he is subject to punishment by the regime, be more vocal on it than our State Department, safely in Washington selling them weapons to use against the wayward ulema?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Our mass murders are an homage to the 2nd amendment and the Religious Cult of Smith & Wesson.

Yet leaders don't speak, and avoid the issue like the plague.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I'm reluctant to respond to this, mostly because now I owe wonk a nickel. I take and agree with the implicit point that some people are inclined to find this duty to denounce only on the part of people they don't sympathize with. And the political angle of violence can be played up or down depending on your politics, e.g., the way that FOX News doesn't work to cover stories where disaffected white men in red states try to blow up courthouses or the NAACP.

That said, I find the notion abhorrent that you have a responsibility to denounce someone with whom other people might think you sympathize. It sounds like something from a tinpot Communist or totalitarian regime. If you have said things in the past that would reasonably lead people to believe that you actually support something you don't, I can see why you would want to correct the record, but the idea that you are someone presumptively suspect until you make a public denunciation of someone else -- ick.

I would say that it's not consistent with the sort of freedom of speech and belief that our country is founded on, except that there was an awful lot of this sort of thing in Massachusetts in the 1600s.

So thank you for clarifying where we disagree, and I mean that sincerely. I do think that Helen Chenoweth and others were responsible for creating an environment in which militias found more support than they would have otherwise. I do not believe she ever advocated mass murder or blowing up federal buildings, and I don't think she had any responsibility to denounce McVeigh. I assume that she found his actions just as wrong as the rest of us did.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I'm not sure I agree with the general analysis, but more deadly? Really? The Communists had some pretty deadly runs in a lot of place, from the Khmer Rouge to the Cultural Revolution to Uncle Joe's Siberian get-away plans.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I hear that there are Muslims in a lot of countries. RT posted a map. So, how about those people?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Actually, in that isolated neighborhood in the South Bronx you interact every day with the people who have gentrified parts of your neighborhood who believe the police are there to help and serve them. You have access to television and movies in which police are shown as the good guys and who use information to catch criminals. You live within a short train ride to numerous world-class libraries that contain vast numbers of books that can open your mind to the world out there, including politics. You've probably read the many papers available to you beyond the sports sections in order to learn about the awesome things cops do and how they help people.

You're also in NYC, so you have access to all sorts of cultural resources and are surrounded by people of different experiences and income levels who are available to you as potential friends.

Dude, sometimes you are fairly full of shit. If you want to fight the hypo, next time, just save us all some time and lead with "Let's talk about something different."

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Yeah. And they're fucking wrong for doing so.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I think you don't understand where we disagree.

I don't think Helen Chenoweth had a responsibility to denounce McVeigh.

I think she had a responsibility to stop creating an environment in which militias found support, including support from her.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

And are you okay with this?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Sorry to respond twice to a post, but seriously? You think my saying that people to whom young Muslims listen should talk more, and more loudly, about how wrong so much of what other Muslims are teaching them -- you would compare that to burning witches in Salem? You suggest that it is un-American for me to say that?

And you are calling me stupid? Seriously?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Then you're not very smart. I wasn't talking about what prompted those people to start shooting at all. I was talking about which "community" gets singled out as having to step up and denounce them. Since it was too subtle for you, let me spin it out some. The brothers were Islamists of Algerian descent who had been foster children and drove a black car. If you're going to decide that their "community" has some special responsibility to stand up and denounce what they did, implicit in that is a judgment about what community they belonged to. My point was that it was just as rational -- which is to say, not at all -- to assume that the west African Muslim dad who watches youth soccer with the FT correspondent I quoted earlier supported the killers because they're both Muslim as it does to assume that another former foster child did because they're both foster children. Or etc. with a black car. Or, in short, I don't think any Muslim should need to rebut a presumption that he or she supported the attacks just because he or she shares some set of religious beliefs or traditions with the attackers. (That doesn't mean I think it doesn't help to have Muslims -- or anyone else -- speak out against the violence, as RT said. That's a different question.)

Get bent. I mean that honestly. Lots of people here have been having a worthwhile discussion while disagreeing at least a bit with each other, but you're the only one who has called someone else dishonest. We've been talking about intolerance all day, but you're the only one who has truly found a way to embody it.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I hypothesize that a disaffected Algerian immigrant in a Paris suburb who turned to Communism likely was less dangerous than a disaffected Algerian immigrant who turns to Islamism. Communism offered a better way to get the nuts off the streets and keep them occupied.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Well then, I'm not sure who you do think might have a responsibility to denounce anyone, but I still don't think that moderate Muslims in the West have a responsibility to denounce the Paris murders.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

No.*

No.**

Yes, but that was in another post.


* I was thinking about the way that the Puritans reacted to dissidents like Anne Hutchinson, which IIRC involved forcing them publicly to recant things they had said or disavow religious doctrines.

** The point I just made was there is an old tradition in American of forcing people to make public disavowals.