Discussion for article #236112
Spare me your bullshit. What you mean is that you think we need more extremist violence, so the systematic extermination of all Muslims that you seek can be justified.
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Good, and while we’re into free expression, let’s hold a jesus cartoon contest too! I wonder how many good christian gun-toting Texans that would bring out. Could be a real rolicking Texas shoot out over that one too. Buy hey, free expression. We already know good Christian extremists are into shooting doctors who perform abortions IN CHURCH, so I’m guessing we can expect as much with a contest like this.
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“There is no party which will be able to say, without blinking, that it is against this,”
That's a tricky assertion. Most people blink when they're speaking, it's actually difficult not to. Duh.Maybe the good old USA should stop him next time he tries to enter this country. Also wevets I agree with you 100%
Is that a 16th or 17th c. hairdo?
He’s channeling his inner Queen Beatrix
http://www.observantonline.nl/Portals/0/Artikelen/Images/queen%20beatrix.jpg
People have been attacked and killed over cartoons. Somehow, this astonishing fact gets obscured by discussions about the far-right credentials of Dutch politicians and purveyors of “hate speech” (no such thing). No one should die or be in danger because of a cartoon!
I do not agree with Wilders’ positions as a whole and I wouldn’t support his party or election. But he’s right that there’s no better way to undermine Islam than to make fun of it; don’t shoot the messenger (alas, in this case, literally). How much insecurity much ISIS and other fundamentalist groups really have inside, if they feel such need to control what other people draw?
Cartoons are totally not the problem here. “Extremist violence” (not really; ISIS is fundamentalist, which is the opposite of extremist) comes from a worldview built on ideas like Paradise, sharia, jihad, blasphemy, and martyrdom, waiting for any perceived slight to seize upon.
The Christian world mercifully retired many of these same concepts centuries ago. If you wouldn’t defend the Salem Witch trial orchestrators, why would you defend the sensibilities of people who would kill over a cartoon or value a woman’s opinion at a fraction of man’s in a court of law?
The world isn’t going to move toward a serious re-assessment of Islam without pushing the buttons of its most literal interpreters (i.e., ISIS et al). Moreover, the right to free expression is so much more important than someone getting offended at a cartoon. Offense is a terrible reason for changing any behavior or law. People get offended all the time but are able to go on without attacking cartoonists.
No it isn’t. People just aren’t giving Geller and Wilder a pass for being assholes simply because it nearly got them and others killed.
The world doesn’t need a serious re-assessment of Islam. It needs people like you to stop treating terrorist as its arbiters.
Offense is a critical basis for change in a democracy; its why black people in America are no longer chattel. The latter part is true, and these Muslims also say that pictorial depictions of the prophet are insulting. But lets ignore our neighbors and friends and be assholes for bigger assholes to even bigger assholes because freedumb.
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There’s a marked difference between conducting the normal course of life without fear and making a career out of provoking extremists to violence in order to justify indiscriminate violent retribution to all members of a particular religion they deem antithetical.
By way of analogy, Christians have killed abortion providers in the name of their religious beliefs. However, those doctors weren’t providing abortions merely to provoke Christian zealots, they were doing their job providing Constitutionally-protected health services to women. Extremist Christians murder for their god too, just like extremist Muslims, and no, those inclinations most assuredly weren’t retired centuries ago. The bar for murder may have been raised from blasphemy to providing women health care or visiting a gay bar, but in the final analysis that’s hardly a distinction.
To my thinking, a premeditated act of provocation is not to be confused with the exercise of free speech or the simple conduct of daily life as a Westerner. I agree that no cartoonist motivated to critique Islam should cower at the threat of retribution, in the same manner I believe no abortion provider should be in fear of coming to harm for doing their job. On the other hand, I don’t consider this particular “contest” or subsequent calls for deliberate taunting to be an affirmation of values I respect, and they put a poor face on the culture we’re advocating as one that’s worthy of their respect. No, this belligerent attitude demonstrates the worst in us, and should the provocation yield its bloody fruit, one can only wonder what point it makes. We are not going to “show them” anything by it, and innocent bystanders will be the ones who suffer.
I think we need to ratchet this nonsense down and appeal to the clear thinking moderates on all sides to join to oppose the extremists. We can’t do that if we’re insulting each other just to make a point – all that’s doing is breeding more extremists on both sides.
In my view, we have to set these childish games aside, and make it known we reject the Pam Gellers of the world categorically. And then I think we need to go about our lives in the way we normally do, and should that normal conduct of life in some way offend an extremist on whatever side, we need to make sure the wackos are kept at bay.
PS - is it just me, or does he really look like Jimmy Page?
Oh, just one more thing…it occurs to me that this is a symptom afflicting America on the whole: the belief that if we’re tolerant and patient with each other, somehow we’ll be perceived as weak, or that we’re tolerating being disrespected.
It’s what motivates cops to escalate conflict with unarmed eighteen year old black males they ordered to “get the f— out of the street.” It undergirds our foreign policy. And it permeates the advocacy of doing more of this taunting just for spite, just to show 'em we won’t be intimidated.
What sophomoric beer muscle buffoonery! History teaches us it never leads to anything good, and in fact frequently ends in people being killed needlessly.
I see a lot of really stunning and beautiful Dutch people living here in W. MI. This guy is definitely not one of them. He’s your scary fascist type…and boy, does he have a strikingly strange look about him.
There is a bit of a Jimmy Page look to him. I see it too now that you mention it.