Republicans & Conservatives: Archives

Sometimes what one person sees as “political correctness” is simply common sense…e.g., when you’ve invaded a sovereign nation, you don’t say “Bring it on!”…

al-Qaeda reads this and smiles. Here’s a person with the proper fear of us!

When you compare the influx of Muslims, of arabs and turks, into Europe with the population, you will find that it would take far longer for Europe to be overtaken than you would believe. Their real problem is that they don’t let these people assimilate into their society. They’ve listened to Right Wingers like you in their lands who talk about defending the religion, defending the homeland, and doing all that by locking out the dirty Arabs and turks, or at least impeding their process of becoming citizens.

That has had the opposite effect, locking them in enclaves, impoverishing them, preventing their assimilation, and radicalizing the people there. That’s why America can have a large Muslim population, and not worry. We didn’t make enemies out of them first, so they didn’t become enemies to us after the fact.

If Europe is hardly going to fall to them, I hardly think we’ll see a Muslim army on our doorstep.

I also hardly think it’s right to lambast people for not needlessly offending Muslims.

You would probably find it insulting for people to compare the Average Christian to a Waco Branch Davidian. Just so, it would be an insult to the average Muslim to be thought to be like an al-Qaeda member. To the average Muslim, al-Qaeda is full of self-righteous lunatics who needless attack their own.

To be intentionally insensitive, to indulge in such prejudice is to make enemies where you didn’t necessarily have them before. Businesses don’t like to do that, and most news organizations don’t want to appear racist or prejudiced.

As for how we treat our enemies? I have no objection to killing one in battle, or to locking one up in jail, but how we treat enemies at our mercy reflects on our character, on our honor as a country. When folks see us torturing folks after years of decrying human rights violations, they treat our demands as hollow, our moral high ground as non-existent. What limits we want others to observe, we must observe ourselves.

On the subject of prayer, let me add one last thought. President Bill Clinton made it the policy that while officially led prayer was off limits, Students could pray as they pleased, as long as it did not disrupt class.

The time has come to stop looking for enemies, and to start making friends. Even if some refuse that friendship, we should let the peace that comes of being committed to peace come back to us, and we should make war and use violence only if other options have proved fruitless.

My enemy, and this nation’s true enemy is the Christian right.

There is not a snowball’s chance that a Muslim will win an election in the near future, but look at the President that the Christian nut jobs brought us.

Politically incorrect enough for you?

Islam has basically taken over Europe which is on the edge of becoming a huge Islamic State.

Spoken like someone who has actually never been to Europe, I would guess.

Then again, none of the rest of the article shows much insight or understanding either.

Oh well.

I am very worried about the influence the Religion of Peace is having on our children. The other day I caught my adopted granddaughter singing “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”

Stephen,

Where are all the enclaves of unassimilated Irish? Talk about a hated minority! We Irish weren’t even ‘good enough’ to be white! Why didn’t we wait till the arrival of political correctness to break our social chains? Or how about all those Italians, or Jews, Or Germans (I’m actually more German than Irish). Anyone remember T.R. castigating Germans for claiming to be German-Americans? Why are these people NOT living in segregated communities in America as Muslims are in Europe? Why are Muslims far more assimilated here than there?

I don’t think it’s because of P.C. They are a hell of a lot better at that shallow symbolic silliness in Europe. So what is it?

I thought the reason they banned the word “War on terror” was that they found describing our conflict as a war was appealing to terrorists. They would know, having dealt with the IRA and other terrorists for so long.

The “cartoon” riot, I believe, in part happened because there was a disinformation campaign, where many muslims were shown truly disgusting images and told they appeared in the paper. The smart thing to do to gain the hearts and minds of muslims would be to explain that.

Finally, the use of torture simply isn’t an effective means of getting information, and “sensitivity” training teaches agents the fastest way of getting good information.

Anyway, sometimes things are more complex than they appear.

Why are these people NOT living in segregated communities in America as Muslims are in Europe?

At the time, they were. Chinatown, Germantown, Little Italy… these neighborhoods didn’t just spring up because people enjoyed hanging out together.

And Black Americans in New Orleans or Detroit? Latinos in E. LA? America still has its ghettos. We just don’t advertise them, until they burn their ghettos to the ground or a storm wipes them out before our government has a week to learn there is a problem.

Lee Jamison-
Two words: Guest Worker. Or, as the Germans call them, Gastarbeiters. To fill in the labor shortage caused by the war, the Europeans imported tons of Turkish and Arab workers.

The impression that the Europeans are somehow more politically correct is erroneous. Ethnically, Europe is far less diverse than we are, basically different kinds of white for the most part. What variations there are often come from the nation’s colonial past, with that kind of baggage attached.

The anger focused against us now was for the longest time focused on the French, the Brits, the Germans, and other powers. The French and British carved up much of the Middle East into the shape it has today, and they were involved in many of the problems going on, including Iran and Iraq. We inherited the mess in Vietnam from them, and one of the first encounters of Western powers with today’s more vicious kind of terrorism came out of Algeria, where an insurgency ended up kicking out the French from their colony.

Scratch the surface of the last few decades, and you’ll see that the Europeans have imposed many restrictions on immigration, on language, on culture, on jobs. They have the kind of open racists in their culture, open bigotry towards religion that are strange to our country.

So what is the author of this entry telling us to do? Make Europe’s mistakes. Take on their defensive attitudes.

My policy is, you can’t always avoid a person trying to make an enemy of you, but you can sure try and push things in the other direction. The more you can make friends out of those who have the potential to become enemies, or even those who alreayd are such, the stronger your defenses are against harm. The point is not to ignore those who would do us harm, or appease them, or anything like that. The point would be to let our enemies alienate themselves, if they wish to do that, rather than inflict that negative consequence on ourselves pre-emptively. If our enemies isolate themselves more than we isolate ourselves, if our friendly connections grow while theirs shrink, that’s not bad for us.

So, you’re telling me that, until P.C. popped up a quarter century ago, those people I knew growing up in middle-class communities with Polish, Italian, or German names, let alone asian ones, were faking it?

My Mississippi Baptist first landlady, who married a Jew in Shreveport in the 1920s, and settled next door to the Stephensons, might be a little surprised at that.

Stephen:

“The time has come to stop looking for enemies, and to start making friends. Even if some refuse that friendship, we should let the peace that comes of being committed to peace come back to us, and we should make war and use violence only if other options have proved fruitless.”

Are you putting us on or do you actually believe this tripe? This is exactly the type of PC that Joseph (and myself) believe is going to get us killed. These people do not want to be your friends. THEY WANT TO KILL YOU! Can you finally, please get that through your dissembling? They are not committed to peace as you are, they do not want to use violence as a last resort, they want to use it as their main tool.

“Their real problem is that they don’t let these people assimilate into their society. They’ve listened to Right Wingers like you in their lands who talk about defending the religion, defending the homeland, and doing all that by locking out the dirty Arabs and turks, or at least impeding their process of becoming citizens.”

They very idea that they are not allowed to assimilate is laughable. European countries have bent over backwards to accomodate and appease this group of immigrants. And this group alone is the one isolating itself from its host society. Do not blame this on the host country, they are doing way more than they should to appease and it just backfires on them.

“That’s why America can have a large Muslim population, and not worry. We didn’t make enemies out of them first, so they didn’t become enemies to us after the fact.”

Not worry? Have you picked up a newspaper lately? Jose Padilla, Fort Dix, Miami, LAX, Germany, UK airplanes. You are right about one thing, we did not make enemies of them in the first place. But they have made enemies of us anyway. This makes all other conversations on this topic academic. Just because you do not think of them as the enemy doesn’t mean thay are not.

“You would probably find it insulting for people to compare the Average Christian to a Waco Branch Davidian”

David Koresh was an egomaniacal, delusional psychopath who believed he was Jesus. Is this the best you have?

“To be intentionally insensitive, to indulge in such prejudice is to make enemies where you didn’t necessarily have them before.”

Again your PC side is showing. Is it insensitive to portray islam as it truly is, a religion of hatred and intollerence? This is what the cartoons were doing, only with humor involved. I think the reason it sparked so much hatred was because the cartoons were to close to the mark. Think about it. Here were millions of muslims saying “how dare you portray us as violent. For that we will behead the infidel as allah wills.”

And again, your efforts to not make enemies was thwarted by them declaring you their enemy. Your motives show your heart is in the right place but like all liberal efforts, you fail to show any tangible results.

“If Europe is hardly going to fall to them, I hardly think we’ll see a Muslim army on our doorstep.”

Our defeat will not come as a result of a muslim army, it will come as result of your appeasement to an enemy that does not want to negotiate with you. Europe is already succumbing to islam and no army has yet been sent. They do not need an army, why send an army, they have YOU to open the door for them.

Alien:

I have mistakenly received orders that were meant for you. They Grand Exalted Leader himself has demanded that you return to the planet Zorg immediately before you hurt yourself.

Lawnboy:

“Then again, none of the rest of the article shows much insight or understanding either.”

I hardly think that visiting Europe for a few weeks at a time, such as yourself, will not make much of a difference in the truth of what is occuring there. I for one have spent years abroad but do not need to be there now to see what is happening. This is the electronic age, you know. And I have seen your posts before, since when has insight and understanding ever been a factor for your ramblings?

Lee:

“I don’t think it’s because of P.C. They are a hell of a lot better at that shallow symbolic silliness in Europe. So what is it?”

You ask a good question. The answer is that they do not want to be. It does not suit their purpose.

Max:

“The smart thing to do to gain the hearts and minds of muslims would be to explain that”

How is it a smart thing to be explaining something right up until the day your head is seperated from your body?

Stephen:

“The point is not to ignore those who would do us harm, or appease them, or anything like that. The point would be to let our enemies alienate themselves, if they wish to do that, rather than inflict that negative consequence on ourselves pre-emptively. If our enemies isolate themselves more than we isolate ourselves, if our friendly connections grow while theirs shrink, that’s not bad for us.”

You are right here. But we must ensure that PC does not hinder the process of that alienation. We must call a spade a spade. We must not be cautious about offending muslims if we are speaking the truth. We cannot sugar coat it. To put it out there the way it is would be to give those who will use them, the tools needed to alienate those that deserve it.

I hardly think that visiting Europe for a few weeks at a time, such as yourself,

Uhh… really? That’s my history? Thanks for incorrectly telling me about my life.

Try again, but this time with reality, please.

Lawnboy,

You didn’t really address the question posed in my post, which is that these events are more complex than they appear.

The idea that you will win this war simply by pointing a finger and calling a huge part of the world your enemy without distinction is moronic, especially when a good portion of those people would call themselves your ally if you were to phrase your objections in terms of ideology rather than race or religion.

Is that PC? I guess, if you mean that PC is having a nuanced response that recognizes the complexities of a situation.

Here are some of the “nuances” that have been ignored and are leading to our losing the war against terror. 1. Not all muslims are against us. 2. Iraq did not attack us. These aren’t fine distinctions or splitting hairs, this is like another country having a problem with something happening in Canada and calling a war against all Christians and attacking the United States in response. PC-ism really hasn’t been our problem over the last 6 years, it’s been total, absolute, idiocy.

When Bush became president he ushered in what looked to be a new era, where neo-conservative philosophy ran roughshod over common-sense. Suddenly, all our problems were due to a cabal of left leaning journalists and all the PC-liberals. When 9/11 came and people pointed that Iraq had nothing to do with that - those people were ridiculed as being PC or worse.

Finally, the real threat to America is that our economy is unravelling. We are deep in debt. Too deep to pay it back, and everyone knows it. Our resources are wasted. The dollar’s value is disappearing. The housing market bubble is bursting. We have several domestic emergencies and no money to solve them.

All of this is because we went into Iraq and are staying there. So, when you say that Democrats are responsible for losing this war because of their PC-ism, my jaw drops. Neo-cons put us in the hole we’re in. If you didnt’ see it before you never will.

You didn’t really address the question posed in my post

Lee Jamison-
I would probably say that “political correctness” is a boogieman, more than anything, and the problems in Europe have more to do with what you might call politically incorrect ideas, instead.

That is, unless you consider discriminating against Muslims, Turks and Arabs politically correct. Or denying people full citizenship on account of fears of foreign infiltration. Or requiring people to use the official language to talk with officials.

The real problem in Europe is that they’re not properly welcoming the populations they brought in to do their work for them. Having not done that, they remain foreign objects lodged in the body politic, rather than integrated members of the community, whose interests would be more aligned with the whole otherwise.

Beirut Vet-
Who are these people? Last I heard, we have not see hordes of Muslims making war to take over the west. Here’s the question, and it has little to do with PC: do you want people working for us or against us? Would you rather do what it takes to persuade the uncertain to our side, or would you like our real enemies, the ones who are committed to violence against us, to become their friends instead?

The idea that these people have had more difficulty assimilating in Europe is not laughable, it’s documented fact, however much you disbelieve things You’d like to believe that their problem is that they’re being too kind, because that would suit the prejudice that

a) European governments are all far-left,

b) The left there and here are the same,

and

c) left-wing governments are all appeasers and wimps.

Of course, just because you want the politically incorrect notions you love to be true, doesn’t make them so.

The incidents you list tell us much about this. Jose Padilla is one of the few people we’ve caught here in connection to al-Qaeda. Next: Fort Dix. How many other groups have we caught like them? LAX was 2000. Germany and the UK were outside our borders.

At best you have twenty people in your examples, compared to the millions of Arabs and Muslims in this country. Do the math. You would think it’d have been easier to recruit from among us to get the operatives, but as it turns out, they had to import terrorists to pull off 9/11.

On the subject of David Koresh, you would agree that it would be insulting to compare the average Christian to his brainwashed followers, right?

If I started doing that, I could find a lot of people turning against me, people I could have had productive and rewarding relationships with. The point of being sensitive to the culture is not to compose poems with these people and wear flowers in your hair. It’s to get them working with you, rather than against you.

The Right is entertaining these morbid fantasies of invasion and infiltration, and I just find them silly and ill-informed. We’re giving our enemies far too much credit, and inflating their reputations for the folks back home. al-Qaeda is dangerous, and so are our enemies in the region, but this apocalyptic talk just strikes me as paranoid. Paranoia, to me, is a weakness of mental discipline. It means you’re not knowledgeable enough or calm enough to distinguish friend from foe, threat from non-threat. We can and should do better than that.

beirut vet:
No mistake…it’s a subterfuge. We’ll be taking over on…… oops, not supposed to leak that.

Nevermind.

I’m no fan of Islam, but good grief…

Joseph
Surely you can agree that not all muslims want to kill every non-muslim on the face of the planet. Given that, your post will only serve to alienate those who fall in to that category. Declaring people to be your enemy is a great way to make them your enemy if they weren’t already. Like invading Iraq. Probably the greatest recruiting tool al-Qaeda ever had. Way to go, our heroic War President.

And if people want to start teaching kids about religion, fine. If they teach kids Christianity and other religions along with Islam, go for it. I went to a Christian school and was still taught all about Greek religion and Buddhism and other religions. But I don’t worship Zeus.

You might keep in mind that the far left you so hate is doing this in defense of “freedom.” If Islam ever starts pushing the door down you might find the far left pushing back harder than the far right. I’m a Christian and I can say that there are some wacko nut jobs within my religion not so far from islamic wacko nut jobs. Unfortunately, the wacko nut jobs within my religion have a lot more followers within the US and have figured out that the best way to destroy a system is to work within it, not blow it up. Thus they are far more powerful.

Islamic terrorists can blow up as much stuff as they like here but they cannot defeat the US in armed conflict. Nor do they have the political power to defeat the system from within. 9/11, as much as it hurt, was a bee sting compared with what the US can do to the muslim world. If you want to advocate for WW3 against Islam you can do so. Just please don’t call yourself a Christian while you do it. You make the rest of us look bad. And I believe the Bible says “blessed are the peacemakers.” Not warmongers.

America has a sad history of trying to separate the ‘real americans’ from the dirty immigrants. The pledge of allegiance being a primary example. It was implemented to ensure that anyone coming into the country didn’t keep any ties to their homeland, that they pledge their fealty to the US. Then when we were afraid of the nasty godless commies we added the ‘Under God’ part.

When people realize that we are all individuals with different motivations and reasons for doing anything we do, not just groups marching in lockstep with each other, we might, MIGHT, get past the idiotic labels and fears of the differences we share and embrace the thankful truth that we are all unique and each have our own thoughts and views to share with each other, bettering ourselves in experiences and knowledge that we may have not been previously exposed to.

That we have the ability to pick and choose what we want to assimilate into our own INDIVIDUAL lives, further becoming more unique and special, is the true power that this country has in abundance over any other, and the main reason we live in the greatest country in the world at this time in history over any other before us. What we can achieve and become in the future, if we embrace these ideals, and throw off the yoke of fear, envy and irrational hatred of those different than us, is beyond anything that our limited experience can imagine.

I, for one, look forward to that future and abhor the type of future that grouping and classifications that both ‘major’ parties want to subject us all to.

Joseph,

Political Correctness, European style! For God’s sake, a cartoon sparked radicalization in the Muslim community peppered throughout Europe.

Yeah, sure, and your best example of how much European are locked in political correctness is that they actually published the cartoon ANYWAY!?

Make so much sense. Not.

A drawing of a cartoon character and the Religion of Peace goes berserk and torches half or Europe.

Please provides link to back such claim.
Unless, that’s just your opinion and, I fear, a sign you’re confusing with Paris suburbs “riots” in 2005, after 2 kids died after a police hunt.

Islam has basically taken over Europe which is on the edge of becoming a huge Islamic State.

Oh no! I’m wasting my precious free time trying to argue with a clueless poster. Again.
Stupid me.

Your trully european,

Philippe.

Beirut Vet,

Is it insensitive to portray islam as it truly is, a religion of hatred and intollerence? This is what the cartoons were doing, only with humor involved. I think the reason it sparked so much hatred was because the cartoons were to close to the mark. Think about it. Here were millions of muslims saying “how dare you portray us as violent. For that we will behead the infidel as allah wills.”

And? How many “infidel” beheading actually happened due to this cartoon outrage in muslim world? They’re free to express their anger against us, as you’re free to express your against them.

Free speech is free speech.

What is not tolerable is when either side stop rattle their sabre and start using it instead. Unfortunatly, both sides does this too often.

9/11, as much as it hurt, was a bee sting compared with what the US can do to the muslim world.

Or had *actually* done to iraqis, who were NOT involved in 9/11.

What? I can’t say that!?! Why???
Sorry, Political [un]Correctness work both ways.

Beirut Vet,

I hardly think that visiting Europe for a few weeks at a time, such as yourself, will not make much of a difference in the truth of what is occuring there. I for one have spent years abroad but do not need to be there now to see what is happening. This is the electronic age, you know.

Oh sure. In fact, I’m a stinky man who eat chess everyday and had no soad in his bathroom, a piece I use no more than once a year.

Or at least that what most of the electronic age american media are saying on french, which I am since… well, 39 years now.

After all, who am I to know better than a non-european what it is to live in europe.

Talk about being arrogant!

SOAP, not “soad”, sorry.

Joseph,

Yikes!
I too have children the islamist terrorists want.
I too live in the United States and live amongst people of Middle Eastern descent. What do I do?
Oh that’s right I should shout, “I do not fear Muslim’s and if need be, I will defend myself from them and my family at any cost. I for one will stand up and say Islamic Terrorists are my enemy and I will take measures to ensure that my country will not, cannot, be hijacked by this so called Religion of Peace.”

I was really afraid for a minute. Thank you for all you have done. I needed that dose of irrational fear based on prejudice to jump start my fear that almost subsided from the 9/11 attacks. I’m calm now…..leary of everyone but calm. I gotta vote Republican. They know exactly what to do with my fear.
Go to a happy place, go to a happy place…better.