calitennis127 said:
No one cares what you think should or should not provoke a violent response. That is immaterial to this conversation. Not all cultures have the same values and same heroes and same standards. The simple fact is that Islamic culture has little tolerance for insulting the prophet. If you don't like this reality, then you either keep Muslims out of your society in terms of allowing them to build significant numbers or you avoid insulting their prophet if you don't want violence to be incited.
Funny, the guy calling others conservative offers an alternative of keeping Muslims out of the West, the central plank of the far-right National Front and Golden Dawn's platforms. Your other alternative - essentially letting one segment of society dictate religious-based laws to the vast majority of the rest - is not how representative governments work but is exactly how far-right totalitarian ones do.
Any way, murdering people over a cartoon is not a "value" and it is not inherent to any religion, as evidenced by the fact hundreds of millions of Muslims are not murdering cartoonists across the world.
By saying that you shouldn't insult Muhammad in cartoons, I am not telling you that you need to embrace Islam or accept Shariah. I am saying that you should respect Muslims you live with on the most basic human level and not insult something that they clearly cherish above everything else.
If Islam is completely off limits from criticism, why don't you think everything else is? You keep trying to insult me in print by calling me a neocon. if people can't criticize a man who's been dead for almost 1300 years, why should you be allowed to criticize me?
You know, it is funny to see Fox News neocons like yourself repeating these lines like you invented them, when just 10 years ago you were all applauding George Bush for declaring over and over that Islam is a "religion of peace" and insisting that Islam was perfectly compatible with Western democracy as those Iraqi Shia women in burkas held up their ink-drenched fingertips for the cameras. Now, you are at the forefront declaring that there are all these problems with Islam as a religion and calling for a second Iraq war to clean up the disaster that your first war created.
Did you just realize that Islam has a unique propensity for inciting violent responses in its followers? Glad you got the memo on that 12 years too late. I wish you would have been as harsh with President Bush about that as you are now with Obama.
Islam doesn't have a unique propensity, as Obama himself pointed out in a prayer breakfast speech last week. What Islam does have is radicalized followers who use it to justify not only terror but attempts at creating societies that completely oppress women and minorities. People who consider themselves the leftist of liberals have made it a pet cause of championing the creation of a Palestinian state that is half governed by a U.S. and EU designated terrorist group and one where women are already oppressed and gays are stoned to death.
Also, I still don't get why you keep coming back to Bush and Obama when we're talking about terrorist attacks in Europe, but for what it's worth, I voted for Gore and Kerry and was a college student when the Iraq invasion started. Pretty odd track record for a brainless "Fox News neocon" who only gets pumped full of others' propaganda and can't think for himself.
Again - you are stating what "should be" within the confines of YOUR value system. To a pious Muslim, you are entirely wrong. They don't care what you think should or should not be allowed in cartoons. They have a different set of beliefs and a different set of values. To them, insulting the prophet Muhammad is as heinous a moral or intellectual offense as someone can commit. To you, it is clearly a righteous and noble assertion of "Western values". So do you see where the problem lies?
I am not entirely wrong. Under no circumstances should it be acceptable to murder someone for hurting your feelings or offending your religion. Anyone who suggests otherwise is entirely wrong. Nobody should think insulting a religious character is a more heinous moral or intellectual offense than murder. Simple as that. That's not a Western value. That's just basic human decency and something that most people inherently understand without having to be taught it.
And I'm only going to say this one more time. anti-religious satire and offensive materials are not a noble assertion of Western values. The value is in the fact that Western societies tolerate the publishing of offensive forms of blasphemy in order to ensure their societies are more free. That free speech was attacked in France is especially poignant because the driving force of the Enlightenment there was the way in which people were disillusioned living in a society controlled too tightly by the church and state. The fact that people like you would suggest curbing the right to criticize religion in the 21st century would make Voltaire turn in his grave.
The problem lies in the reality that fundamentally they have a profoundly different religious and cultural background. "Multiculturalism" can work in a limited way, but when it comes to mixing religions, it clearly fails.
Religions of all stripes have coexisted with each other peacefully in places for thousands of years. Christianity was influenced not only by Buddhism and Judaism but also ancient pagan rituals and beliefs. This is simply a cop out that excuses violence perpetrated by terrorists who cite religion as a justification.
The success of assimilating minorities and people of various religions in the U.S., especially compared to Europe, is proof that multiculturalism can work.
Are you kidding me????? Did you really just say "without getting in trouble"?
They did not get in any legal trouble. I worded that too ambiguously.
How much more trouble could Sterling have gotten in than what he did get in? He was talked about for hours and hours on end for about two weeks straight. He was forced to sell his business. Clearly there was no tolerance of his views. Making the excuse that "at least he wasn't shot" is utterly negligible. If your only argument for a moral ideal is that it doesn't lead to people getting murdered, then you are setting the bar so low that it is virtually meaningless.
I agree with you that his private conversation shouldn't have been taped and distributed, but Sterling ultimately wasn't forced to sell the Clippers. he was certainly pressured to do so, and it's unclear how legal proceedings would've played out since he signed a "morals clause," but in the end he sold the team of his own volition (and made a billion dollars at that).
You are touting an ideal that apparently allows a man to be forced to sell his business for privately saying things that he was illegally taped saying, or to be forced to resign his position as a commentator on government-funded radio (NPR) because he says something the authorities didn't like
You seem to not be able to make a distinction between having free speech rights in your private life and not having the same rights in the workplace. For example, you have the right to continue calling me a neocon in your private time, but if you were spending your time at work engaging in these debates, you'd probably get fired. You have the right to jerk off at home and definitely do not have the right to do so at your office desk. If you're having a hard time understanding why this distinction exists, consider that two boxers can legally punch each other in the face in a boxing match but would be arrested for felonies if they did the same thing on the street.
Employers have these things called policies and rules. When you are their employee, you are essentially a representative of your employer, and your actions reflect upon them. If Juan Williams says something racist and hurts his employer's business, it's no surprise that the employer shitcans him. Juan Williams can legally say the same stuff on his own private website or in public if he'd like. That's what free speech means.
Oh so there are restrictions? So I guess then that there is not free speech then. I was right at the start of the thread when I said it was a myth.
what do restrictions that prohibit discriminating against people on the basis of ethnicity/gender/sexuality/disability/religion in the workplace have to do with free speech? That's got nothing to do with speech in the slightest; the employer still has the right to be a racist and say racist things at home, and he can even say racist things at work so long as he's not creating an atmosphere of harassment in the office.
Oh wow, that is really convincing evidence. So they "quite likely would've picked some other target"? Well, they didn't. They chose the people who drew cartoons of Muhammad.
They didn't target the people who drew cartoons of Muhammad when they were arrested on terror charges several years beforehand, did they. also, it turns out the guys who attacked Charlie Hebdo coordinated with the guy who attacked the kosher deli the night before the attack on the cartoonists. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/World/2...ign=buffer
so much for simply targeting those who draw cartoons of Muhammad. I think the fact they also targeted random Jews is "really convincing evidence" that these terrorists would've picked another target regardless of the cartoons. they did exactly that.
Contrary to what your neoconservative sources are pumping into your mind, these people act for motives that they clearly define and clearly lay out, whether it is responding to U.S. foreign policy or attempting to impose Shariah law on non-Muslims. You need to read Michael Scheuer instead of the Weekly Standard or National Review - two magazines whose ideas are primarily responsible for creating the disaster we see now in the Middle East.
I'm still not sure why you keep calling me a neocon when I'm the one advocating the more progressive cause by not restricting the right to free speech. your position would disgust the ACLU, and it sounds more like a talking point coming from Saudi Arabia than from someone who thinks neocon is an epithet.
With regard to U.S. foreign policy, many of their objections are entirely logical. And as a human being, I can't see how their disgust with the cartoons insulting Muhammad is not legitimate either. No one likes to have their sacred cultural symbols defiled. Why can't you respect the dignity of Muslims and not insult the one person in history they ask you not to insult? Don't you have anything better to do with your life than think of pornography involving Muhammad?
ISIS wasn't beheading journalists and raping Christian women half a year ago because of cartoons insulting Muhammad, and you seem knowledgeable enough to know that they consider Shiites to be their biggest enemy, not the US. Hell, I don't even know if ISIS has even bothered specifying what part of American foreign policy they dislike; they are literally aiming to murder whoever they consider infidels wherever they can.
