dsayers Posted November 18, 2015 Posted November 18, 2015 If you choose to watch it, please watch it all the way through. As I began to watch it, I had some criticisms. Namely that all the things she was attributing to "radical Islam" applies to Christians and the US gov't (among others) as well. Then she totally flipped the script and made that point for me. Some of you may know from my post history that I can be quite critical. I continue to find Miss Wedler's work to be surprisingly reliable in this regard. Enjoy. 3
luxfelix Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 The blogger shown at 2:35 looks so much like a friend of mine. I wonder if such polarization would still exist if the kind of person that would send such vitriol to Miss Wedler would instead take the time and effort to get to know these individuals.
Donnadogsoth Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 Islam is undesireable on two counts. One, it has historically, and contemporarily, exhorted its followers to subjugate the unbelievers. Two, it is unassimilable. Muslims coming to the West will never be us, and the moreso, the more of them there are. They will form ghettos, they will form gangs, they will riot, they will produce individuals to activate for Sharia and for Jihad. Do I support American foreign policy? No, I do not. American foreign policy is a policy of chaos creation and population reduction, and the governments of the West do not speak for me. But whether America is saint or sinner, Islam's fundamental character of Sharia and Jihad and anger and ghetto and invasion remain. We do not have the right to admit them into our countries. We do not have the right to surrender our gene pool, our culture, our religion, our languages, and our children's future--in short, we do not have the right to surrender Western decency and security to the Islamic invader, whether hard or soft, whether ballistic or reproductive.
jpahmad Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 All religious scriptures are violent. If you follow religious scriptures, you are violent. If you don't follow religious scriptures, well, you're not religious. Can you really be religious without following religious scripture? I say no. Most people, "Muslims" and "Christians" included, don't follow religious scripture. What does that mean? Yes, They are not religious. So I don't know why they claim they are. 2
David Ottinger Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 So, her point is that I ought to feel guilty about my anti-islamic sentiment because there are other evils out there just as bad? 1 1
shirgall Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 All religious scriptures are violent. If you follow religious scriptures, you are violent. If you don't follow religious scriptures, well, you're not religious. Can you really be religious without following religious scripture? I say no. Most people, "Muslims" and "Christians" included, don't follow religious scripture. What does that mean? Yes, They are not religious. So I don't know why they claim they are. Indeed, Bronze Age religions wrote dictates reflecting Bronze Age violent times. If nature wasn't trying to kill you, other tribes were.
jpahmad Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 Indeed, Bronze Age religions wrote dictates reflecting Bronze Age violent times. If nature wasn't trying to kill you, other tribes were. This true. Religion is for the Bronze Age.
Wuzzums Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 The state does what the state does regardless of the beliefs and wants of its citizen. When was the last time muslims protested the actions done by radicals in their name? When was the last time citizen protested the actions done by politicians in their name? The beast that rules over us is the same. Less advanced cultures call it religion, more advanced cultures call it the state. I am responsible for neither and I condemn them both. 1
ProfessionalTeabagger Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 Shes fails to compare the principles of the west to the principles of Islam. There is no moral equivalence.
dsayers Posted November 19, 2015 Author Posted November 19, 2015 Shes fails to compare the principles of the west to the principles of Islam. There is no moral equivalence. Willing to violate property rights compared to willing to violate property rights. That's morally identical (immoral). So, her point is that I ought to feel guilty about my anti-islamic sentiment because there are other evils out there just as bad? That wasn't what I saw. For me, the takeaway was the lack of cognitive dissonance in saying, "Our team's good. Their team's bad," when both teams are doing the exact same thing. Larken Rose has pointed out that the problem with this mindset is you miss the good in the other team and the bad of your team. Stef's most recent video asks why there's teams at all. It's a good point/question. 1
J. D. Stembal Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 All religious scriptures are violent. If you follow religious scriptures, you are violent. If you don't follow religious scriptures, well, you're not religious. Can you really be religious without following religious scripture? I say no. Most people, "Muslims" and "Christians" included, don't follow religious scripture. What does that mean? Yes, They are not religious. So I don't know why they claim they are. Very well said, J.P. I would go so far as to say that believing in an authoritarian deity while having children is also violence against the children because you have to teach fear and anti-rationality for them to accept the god (the authority) as real. An atheist family is a prerequisite for the peaceful and voluntary family. It does not prime your children to be obedient slaves to state propaganda. We need to be giving birth to free people, not more traumatized tax cattle. We will have more rational people asking the critical questions of our time, and following more rational behaviors. So, her point is that I ought to feel guilty about my anti-islamic sentiment because there are other evils out there just as bad? Saying your against Islam is like saying you are against Libertarians. The implication is that the other alternatives are acceptable to you. All options promote violence. Why would someone bother characterizing one world religion as violent unless they had some sort of hidden agenda? The United States is the most violent entity of state-sponsored terror in the world. Let's oppose the religion of nationalism as well as the religion of coercion, manipulation, and violence. 1 1
ProfessionalTeabagger Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 Willing to violate property rights compared to willing to violate property rights. That's morally identical (immoral). Even if America and the west and Christians had done none of what she mentioned in the video you could still draw a moral equivalence by that standard. Drawing some moral equivalence between two groups because they both are not anarchy's (not willing to violate property rights) is not valid. In that view a person stealing a loaf of bread and a brutal mass murderer would be "morally identical". This is what can happen when anarchists lose perspective. Just because violations of property rights are all wrong does not make them all morally identical. The NAP is not a commandment from god, violations of which however slight or strong still send you to hell.
J. D. Stembal Posted November 19, 2015 Posted November 19, 2015 In that view a person stealing a loaf of bread and a brutal mass murderer would be "morally identical". The West is not a hungry person stealing a loaf of bread to feed itself. The violence of the West is on par with the violence of Islamic extremism, if not worse. How much does the U.S. spend on the military? Isn't it more than the next ten world powers combined? 1
dsayers Posted November 19, 2015 Author Posted November 19, 2015 This is what can happen when anarchists lose perspective. Actually, it's the other way around. This is what happens when people put too much weight into what morality is. Think of it like court; the verdict and the sentencing are two different processes. Similarly, morality is just a way of determining if a behavior is moral, immoral, or amoral. To say that stealing a pencil, raping a person, and nuking a city are morally identical is not saying that the damage done is identical. Morality cannot tell us how much damage was done, only that the behavior was damaging. In fact, this is why questions like the man on the flagpole end up being so problematic. Not long ago, on this very forum, there was a member who had the darnedest time accepting that for somebody to break into another person's home was immoral because "his life depended on it." Which is fine. Nobody in society would damn a person for saving their own life or look fondly upon somebody that said, "No, you cannot enter my abode, so you will have to perish." The purpose of morality in that instance only serves to help us understand who's responsible for the broken window. In that case, people try to add to what morality is by implying that the ability to identify the behavior as immoral is the same as saying don't do it. Morality is only useful for answering this one question: Can property rights be valid and invalid at the same time? That's it. To assess damages, you'll need a different tool.
BaconForAllah Posted November 20, 2015 Posted November 20, 2015 All religious scriptures are violent. If you follow religious scriptures, you are violent. If you don't follow religious scriptures, well, you're not religious. Wow, a reddit atheism-tier zinger. Go get em Professor False Equivalence! I really do fear the Jains detonating their... sandals? Donnadogsoth is correct about Islamism. The problem with libertarians/ancaps is they fall into the masochistic trap of leftists where walking and chewing gum become a challenge: They're against Western foreign policy, and against the insanity of jihadism... buuuut the latter are mostly brown people who are just mindless automatons responding to the former, so can't blame em, it's our fault! (See David Stockman's recent blog post, a work cognitive scientists could use for Dunning Kruger testing, nevermind masochism on a level I didn't think libertarians could reach, as well as proving Sowell's Intellectuals' thesis perfectly). It's very difficult to believe that people really believe they'll explode themselves on a bus and be welcomed by Allah, especially when many of those people are highly educated and well-to-do individuals and nothing close to this hilarious leftist narrative of poverty and emasculation (if only they'd listen to Scott Atran and play more soccer, no more bombs!). Yet that is precisely the case, and no level of self-loathing will change it, sorry sympathizers.
David Ottinger Posted November 22, 2015 Posted November 22, 2015 That wasn't what I saw. For me, the takeaway was the lack of cognitive dissonance in saying, "Our team's good. Their team's bad," when both teams are doing the exact same thing. Larken Rose has pointed out that the problem with this mindset is you miss the good in the other team and the bad of your team. Stef's most recent video asks why there's teams at all. It's a good point/question. What was the title of Stefan's video? She was pointing out the hypocrisy -- which I agree with. Also, Islam is just another form of statism. It's a theocracy. And, the two statist systems are at war with one another. And given that Islam has yet to have its renaissance or its enlightenment, I'd prefer to deal with the system that doesn't stone you for dissent. Does that put me on a team? Saying your against Islam is like saying you are against Libertarians. The implication is that the other alternatives are acceptable to you. All options promote violence. Why would someone bother characterizing one world religion as violent unless they had some sort of hidden agenda? The United States is the most violent entity of state-sponsored terror in the world. Let's oppose the religion of nationalism as well as the religion of coercion, manipulation, and violence. I disagree with your point that the inclusion of one is the exclusion of others. If my overall stance is against statism, and I decide to specify Islam, that doesn't mean I'm now in favor of the others. These statist systems may be under one umbrella from a theory of governance perspective, but pragmatically, they're at war with one another. And Islam's war campaign is relentless in that you either convert; be killed; or, get bred out. If you can tell me how to reason with that, I'm all ears. Because, I don't have a clue.
Daniel1911 Posted November 28, 2015 Posted November 28, 2015 With regard to Dsayers video: the cognitive dissonance I experienced was with the video narrator's likening the u.s. government's imperial behavior (largely in the absence of the approval of it's propagandized, manipulated and uninformed citizenry) with the purposeful and direct brutality of islamic fascists. In order to show that u.s. actions were worse, I think you'd have to argue that the islamic fascists' actions were also conducted by a government that equally manipulated and misinformed its citizens, but that argument wasn't made. Alternatively, one could argue that u.s. citizens acting of their own accord and without government assistance committed these bombing raids and other nasty things; perhaps those arguments could have been compellingly made, but they weren't. The video looks like a classic straw-man case to me. One of the things I think we have to come to a better realization of is that "we" in the u.s. are not the u.s. government/military, so saying that "we" bombed this or that country entails a very complex argument about how "we," the citizens, could have possibly stopped it. "We" can merely vote and of course engage in the political process; this does not allow us to have a say in military actions in any direct way. "We" were involved in these actions only by indirect and increasingly questionable means as our government wanders farther into fascism. There seems to be an increasing distance between what US citizens want and what the US gov't does. The video does bring this fact to the surface and hopefully helps to cause us to question our government, and that is a good thing for sure.
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