And by 1776, I mean you stopped there, not that you were only there.
If you choose to ignore the last 200 years, because the problems, but not necessarily the answers, are perennial, well, I suppose that says all anyone needs to know about you. "I found an answer I like; anything that comes up later that might contradict it be damned!"
Why would I write it, Tom? And here, to boot? If you want a list of references, send me an email and I'll be happy to send one to you. If you want a treatise, then I'm afraid I'm not going to give you one. In addition to the fact that my own work on these issues has been empirical, not philosophical, my own ideas are too muddled for me to put something coherent together. If you want a lit review, well, I can tell you my going consulting rate. I doubt you'll find it's worth it.
That comment was too condescending, I apologize. I'll say this, Tom. I think you're a smart guy, but you're incredibly limited. These are weighty issues, which have of course been dealt with by greater minds than both of ours combined, and perhaps on some level you are correct: morality comes from some sort of reason-giving creator (though what that creator would look like, I have no idea; I kind of like Spinoza, though). But regardless of whether you're right on that point, the way you get there is clearly wrong, not only because there are plenty of ways to get to morality, through reasoning, without starting with God, but also because even if there weren't, simply saying so doesn't make it so. If Kant's second critique teaches you nothing, it should at least teach you that. These are problems, in the classic sense of the word, and no amount of hand waving and "law of the jungle" dismissals will make the problematic nature of these issues go away.
What's more, the more you fall back on a few thinkers within a particular line of thought, ignoring all of the problems with that line of thought, the less serious your position will be. Or put a different way, while it is undoubtedly true, as I've seen you argue elsewhere (and agreed with you readily), that those thinkers have had a huge influence on the way we see the world, including ethics, that doesn't mean that we can't look at those thinkers who have worked very hard to challenge some of that influence (even if, as some French folk might argue, even those challenges are overwhelmingly determined by that influence).
As I said in an earlier comment, what inevitably happens, in the hands of human beings, when you ground values in a single point of origin (usually God, or to be all French, a transcendental signifier), those values inevitably devalue themselves -- they become values in and of themselves, instead of serving a purpose (like, say, the values they were originally supposed to serve -- good, justice, Reason, Truth, whatever -- which values also devalue themselves when they're grounded in a single point, immovable, unquestionable, etc.). History is rife with proof of this proposition, and even if you don't think it challenges the nature of values themselves, or their objective origin, it's something you have to grapple with, and simply saying "man is fallen" is no serious form of grappling (I'm looking at you, Bob). If nothing else, it makes your assertion that values must be grounded in God problematic not simply as a metaphysical proposition, but as an ethical one, and since we're having an ethical discussion, you'd do well to address the problem.
But it's a problem that you won't find in Aquinas, or in Descartes, or hell, even in Kant (though you'll find the seeds of the problem in Kant; again, the second critique is your starting point, with maybe a little Hume). You'll find it in Hegel, and you'll find it in Marx, and Nietzsche, and Freud, and Heidegger, and Sartre, and Foucault, and Levinas, and Moore, and Mill, and even much of the 20th century Anglophone philosophy that dominates our universities today (places that, I know, you dislike for their bias against Aquinas -- but rest assured, these philosophers don't read Hegel or Marx any more than they read Aquinas). Hell, some of these people ultimately agree with you, but they address the problems, and that makes them real players in the game, players that, for the same reason that you should be dealing with the ones who disagree with you, atheist heathens like me should be dealing with the ones who agree with you (you should be dealing with the ones who agree with you as well; Totality and Infinity would be a good place to start).
Yeah, you are taking a very limited view of nature if you think it means "law of the jungle." But whatever.
And what does self-evident mean here? Self-evident in light of God is certainly not self-evident in any meaningful sense, because it's only "self-evident" when some other premise else makes it evident, which is, of course, a contradiction. (Christians weren't the first to derive natural laws, by the way, or even equality of all men.)
My point is that if morality is rational, nature is rational, and reason is natural, then morality falls out of that as readily as it falls out of a reason-giving creator, because the only difference is, in fact, the creator. Like I said, it raises the question of how reason got mixed up in all this anyway, but your position just begs that question. And since we're not really having a metaphysical discussion (lest you think we are, there is a God, no there isn't, is not a metaphysical discussion), I'm not really inclined to take your position all that seriously since it begins with silliness like, "Without God all things are possible," which, if anything is self-evident, the falsity of that statement is (it's the logical equivalent of saying, "Without gravity all things are possible," or "Without Twinkies all things are possible," and I say this as someone who takes metaphysics, and even theology, quite seriously; it's just that you're not offering a sophisticated version of either).
Now if you had said, simply, "Without God, another ground for an objective morality is necessary or we're faced with a really bad sort of relativism," I'd say that's probably true (though there are more sophisticated versions of relativism), but then I'd also say, you might want to read some of the vast literature on ethics of the last 50 years, much of which tackles just this issue (I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you're not particularly interested in the last century of "Continental" thought, from Husserl on).
Anyway, what you're doing, in essence, is starting with a metaphysical position (a fairly richly conceived notion of God, causality, reason, morality, etc., even if one that you haven't reflected on all that much), thinking out its consequences, and then, without considering any other starting point, removing your basic metaphysical position and assuming that all of the consequences must go with it. And you're doing so a.) because the limited reading you've done on these topics comes through a tradition that generally builds on that metaphysical position (or some variant of it), and b.) you lack imagination.
And don't pretend that I'm dismissing that tradition. Far from it. I'm simply pointing out that there is a great deal of thought from the last 230 years that has challenged much of it, and since you're clearly stuck sometime around 1776, I don't find your "law of the jungle" oversimplifications all that interesting, and I can't imagine why anyone else would.
I'd say that "Without God, all things are possible" has to be one of the most metaphysically dubious statements ever, and morally as well, but the statement is just ironic enough to say it for me.
Of course, the idea that you need God for metaphysics, or ethics/morals, is one that can only come through a lack of imagination. There are certainly other ways to ground them. What's more, when one grounds ethics in an immovable God, those ethics inevitably devalue themselves, or in more recent parlance, become fetishized. I think even Voegelin said something similar to that, though I'll leave it to our resident expert to correct me if I'm wrong.
One route: if reason is natural, and nature rational, isn't nature enough? I ask that sincerely. There are metaphysical questions that raises, of course, but the ethical points Tom and Bob are making beg those same questions.
Have you seen the "Re: Your Brains" WoW video? It's my favorite of the Coulton-WoW genre. And it's also about work, but with zombies instead of monkeys, and zombies are definitely cooler than monkeys.
Many of the original "libertarians" were socialists. ;) Maybe not Marxists, but then didn't Marx once quip that, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist"?
I don't recall a time when no one thought that North Korea had a nuclear program. The U.S. has known about that program, and publicly stated so, since the mid-90s (and before that, even, if you consider some of their other actions to be part of a nulear program), and actively tried to put an end to it through negotiation and the promise of aid. What's more, no one doubted, and it was well publicized at the time, that when that aid didn't come, the nuclear program was resumed.
Maher is essentially a "New Atheist," and while not all New Atheists are the same, one of the more common features found among them is a complete inability to think rationally about religions (I don't just mean religious ideas, but religions themselves). Witness Jerry Coyne's recent blaming of the Holocaust on religion -- the Jewish religion. When it comes to religion, they become standard bigots (yeah, I said it!). If they weren't equally irrational when it comes to Christianity as when it comes to all other religions, one might almost say they look like the American Religious Right.
What I wonder is, from what does one ask that question? In Islam's history, there are periods of extreme religious tolerance. Granted, there are periods of religious intolerance, as well, but these are present in pretty much every religion and culture: when the culture/religion is unthreatened, everyone's welcome; when it feels threatened, put 'em up against the wall.
What’s more, at the turn of the last century, many Middle Eastern intellectuals were actively calling for a more liberal, European-style Muslim culture. That Islam, and in particular, Islam from a particular region of the world, is less liberal now, in many ways, than it was a century ago has less to do with something inherent in Islam than it has to do with the fact that the people of that part of the world have been, at different points, the dupes of Europe (particularly the British; see 1917), exploited for their resources, the center of war over their resources, used as pawns in the Cold War by both sides, occupied, had their oppressive dictators propped up by foreign powers, and that doesn’t even get to the Israeli-Palestinean conflict (the Brits again, too!). It’s a mess over there, and while they’re not blameless, it’s also not surprising that militant strains have become more prominent in that region (Pakistan has similar reasons for a strong militant wing of Islam).
So, the question one has to ask of someone who questions whether Islam and “American ideals” are compatible is, what Islam are you talking about? The one that’s arisen in a political and economic context that promotes militancy? Or the strain, which has existed for centuries, that is as peaceful as any other religion (which might not be saying much, I admit), which admits tolerance and has, at points, even worked towards liberal Western ideals itself? Perhaps these people, instead of believing that Muslims need a better PR campaign, should actually do a little reading. Because they are clearly coming from a position of ignorance, and I can’t imagine it’s the job of Muslims to cure them of that. And besides, when one ignorantly wonders whether, from the perspective of one’s own values, another culture is inherently inferior, based entirely on perceptions garnered, again in ignorance, from the actions and words of a few members of that culture, that sure looks like prejudice, if not the dreaded “bigotry.” And I’ll be damned if that’s not what Tim’s rational people are doing. I guess we can call a spade a club for the sake of discussion, but the more I think about it, the more I see that they really are spades.
When you say you denouce x as you denounce y, it doesn't say anything about x being justified because of y. In fact, it seems to me to do quite the opposite. If you don't think, for example, that violence against your self or your own people is justified, and you denounce violence against another "just as" you denounce it against yourself, isn't that saying that if you think the violence against yourself is unjustified, you think the violence against others is unjustified for the same reasons?
The only thing that excuses the latter is that Heidegger is operating somewhere between radical parody and schizophrenia. That doesn't make him any more appealing to read (in fact, it's best not to read him), but it does at least make him seem like less of a monster.
I’m with the others. This sounds about right, given the current political climate. I second the call for closing tax loopholes for both individuals and corporations. I might also throw in a law taxing corporations where they make their money, not where they put their headquarters so that they don’t just put an office in Switzerland or somewhere in the Caribbean while they make a few billion here near tax free, if not completely tax free. Oh, and I’d throw in single payer health care, too, since it will ultimately save money as well. OK, now I’m getting more and more politically infeasible.
Tim, I’ve got to say, this post actually makes you look worse, to me, instead of better. Sure, you say all the right things about how you appreciate Muslims and their culture. You do throw in the “No really, I’ve had a Muslim friend” thing, which seriously, dude, is the worst way to respond to accusations of racism or bigotry. But the real problem with the post is that you not only stick to your primary position, which is that if Muslims would just do better PR, at least the reasonable bigots would feel differently, but you actually respond to the criticisms of this position in the most predictable way: “Yeah, sure, they go on TV, or release official statements condemning violence, but it just seems like it’s not sincere enough, or they feel the need to condemn the other side’s violence at the same time, so it’s just not working for me.” I’d ask why they shouldn’t criticize both sides of a self-reinforcing cycle of violence, but that, I see, would be pointless. Instead, I’ll just point out to you that it sounds like nothing they could do would be enough for you. And that makes you look like you’re certainly not one of the reasonable people whose mind could be changed. I’m not saying that’s true, but that’s how you come off.
Perhaps a better way of approaching this is to suggest that both sides, the “reasonable” people who feel like Islam may be incompatible with western ideals and culture, and the “moderate Muslims” (the fact that you feel the need to modify “Muslims” with “moderate” doesn’t make you look good, either – do you feel the need to modify “Catholics” with “moderate” to distinguish them from the IRA and Phalangists, “Jews” with “moderate” to distinguish them from Gush Emunim or TNT, or do you often say “moderate Hindus” to distinguish them from the LTTE? Something tells me you don’t), should engage in more dialogue. It’s clear that many of these “reasonable” non-Muslims have misperceptions, or gaps in their knowledge of Islam, and I can’t imagine Muslims wouldn’t benefit from understanding the differences between these “reasonable” people and actual bigots, if such differences exist. This way, you’re not blaming the victim, as you seem to be set on doing, but instead suggesting that we start a dialogue to move towards mutual understanding, which, you know, is what we really need.
No, DD, that's not what happened. I've agreed with Rufus that it's not necessarily bigotry that produced Tim's post, but Tim's post suggests blames the victims for the bigotry against them, which is a classic tactic of bigots. It looks even more like bigotry when he talks about the Park 51 Islamic center. Again, I'm willing now to give him the benefit of the doubt, but if you use classic bigoted tactics, and take the position of bigots (on the Park 51 center), you can't be surprised, or even offended, when you get accused of being a bigot. If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, people's fist reaction is going to be, it's a duck! Even if when you look close it's actually a goose.
Rufus, eh, I'm willing to believe he's not bigoted. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, mostly because I do in fact have doubts (though seriously, if someone calls you a bigot in the future, Tim, don't come back with, "But I have a Muslim friend!"). I still think the post is wrongheaded in the extreme, but perhaps not bigoted.
It's hard for me to tell, honestly. The nonsense about the Mosque suggests that the prejudice is at least somewhat justified, in that the Muslims should have been more sensitive about it. Unless Tim is in the habit of suggesting that we play nicely with the feelings of bigots qua bigots.
Rufus, or more directly, "We fear and hate them for the actions of a few because all they've done is sit around being peaceful, go on TV and condemning extremism, and just living their lives, instead of trying to comfort our prejudiced asses" is, if not bigoted, profoundly naive.
Sure, they tried to open a cultural center in a building kinda near to a place where people in an entirely separate religious sect, espousing ideas that we they don't agree with, but sharing the same label, did something really bad, but calling that insensitive is to suggest that those who are the object of prejudice should work hard not to hurt the prejudice-based feelings of the bigots who despise them.
Rufus, I might have said it's a strange case of blaming the victim, given that moderate Muslims have tried pretty hard to distance themselves from their more militant brethren, but that it's not necessarily bigoted, if he hadn't included the nonsense about the Islamic Center that's not in the shadow, or even in view, of Ground Zero, thrown in (in the comments) the bit about having a Muslim friend, etc.
But really, "they're just not doing enough to counter the prejudice with PR" is basically the same rationalization people have been using for prejudice since, well, forever.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Weekend Jukebox and Open Thread”
If it is self-evident, then it is of course a priori.
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Whitman said he contained multitudes. I'm not so certain he thought everyone did. ;)
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Tom, I type fast. :)
And by 1776, I mean you stopped there, not that you were only there.
If you choose to ignore the last 200 years, because the problems, but not necessarily the answers, are perennial, well, I suppose that says all anyone needs to know about you. "I found an answer I like; anything that comes up later that might contradict it be damned!"
"
Why would I write it, Tom? And here, to boot? If you want a list of references, send me an email and I'll be happy to send one to you. If you want a treatise, then I'm afraid I'm not going to give you one. In addition to the fact that my own work on these issues has been empirical, not philosophical, my own ideas are too muddled for me to put something coherent together. If you want a lit review, well, I can tell you my going consulting rate. I doubt you'll find it's worth it.
"
That comment was too condescending, I apologize. I'll say this, Tom. I think you're a smart guy, but you're incredibly limited. These are weighty issues, which have of course been dealt with by greater minds than both of ours combined, and perhaps on some level you are correct: morality comes from some sort of reason-giving creator (though what that creator would look like, I have no idea; I kind of like Spinoza, though). But regardless of whether you're right on that point, the way you get there is clearly wrong, not only because there are plenty of ways to get to morality, through reasoning, without starting with God, but also because even if there weren't, simply saying so doesn't make it so. If Kant's second critique teaches you nothing, it should at least teach you that. These are problems, in the classic sense of the word, and no amount of hand waving and "law of the jungle" dismissals will make the problematic nature of these issues go away.
What's more, the more you fall back on a few thinkers within a particular line of thought, ignoring all of the problems with that line of thought, the less serious your position will be. Or put a different way, while it is undoubtedly true, as I've seen you argue elsewhere (and agreed with you readily), that those thinkers have had a huge influence on the way we see the world, including ethics, that doesn't mean that we can't look at those thinkers who have worked very hard to challenge some of that influence (even if, as some French folk might argue, even those challenges are overwhelmingly determined by that influence).
As I said in an earlier comment, what inevitably happens, in the hands of human beings, when you ground values in a single point of origin (usually God, or to be all French, a transcendental signifier), those values inevitably devalue themselves -- they become values in and of themselves, instead of serving a purpose (like, say, the values they were originally supposed to serve -- good, justice, Reason, Truth, whatever -- which values also devalue themselves when they're grounded in a single point, immovable, unquestionable, etc.). History is rife with proof of this proposition, and even if you don't think it challenges the nature of values themselves, or their objective origin, it's something you have to grapple with, and simply saying "man is fallen" is no serious form of grappling (I'm looking at you, Bob). If nothing else, it makes your assertion that values must be grounded in God problematic not simply as a metaphysical proposition, but as an ethical one, and since we're having an ethical discussion, you'd do well to address the problem.
But it's a problem that you won't find in Aquinas, or in Descartes, or hell, even in Kant (though you'll find the seeds of the problem in Kant; again, the second critique is your starting point, with maybe a little Hume). You'll find it in Hegel, and you'll find it in Marx, and Nietzsche, and Freud, and Heidegger, and Sartre, and Foucault, and Levinas, and Moore, and Mill, and even much of the 20th century Anglophone philosophy that dominates our universities today (places that, I know, you dislike for their bias against Aquinas -- but rest assured, these philosophers don't read Hegel or Marx any more than they read Aquinas). Hell, some of these people ultimately agree with you, but they address the problems, and that makes them real players in the game, players that, for the same reason that you should be dealing with the ones who disagree with you, atheist heathens like me should be dealing with the ones who agree with you (you should be dealing with the ones who agree with you as well; Totality and Infinity would be a good place to start).
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Reminds me of my favorite neuroscience joke. The functions of the hypothalamus are the four F's: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and sex.
OK, so there aren't a whole lot of neuroscience jokes to choose from.
"
Yeah, you are taking a very limited view of nature if you think it means "law of the jungle." But whatever.
And what does self-evident mean here? Self-evident in light of God is certainly not self-evident in any meaningful sense, because it's only "self-evident" when some other premise else makes it evident, which is, of course, a contradiction. (Christians weren't the first to derive natural laws, by the way, or even equality of all men.)
My point is that if morality is rational, nature is rational, and reason is natural, then morality falls out of that as readily as it falls out of a reason-giving creator, because the only difference is, in fact, the creator. Like I said, it raises the question of how reason got mixed up in all this anyway, but your position just begs that question. And since we're not really having a metaphysical discussion (lest you think we are, there is a God, no there isn't, is not a metaphysical discussion), I'm not really inclined to take your position all that seriously since it begins with silliness like, "Without God all things are possible," which, if anything is self-evident, the falsity of that statement is (it's the logical equivalent of saying, "Without gravity all things are possible," or "Without Twinkies all things are possible," and I say this as someone who takes metaphysics, and even theology, quite seriously; it's just that you're not offering a sophisticated version of either).
Now if you had said, simply, "Without God, another ground for an objective morality is necessary or we're faced with a really bad sort of relativism," I'd say that's probably true (though there are more sophisticated versions of relativism), but then I'd also say, you might want to read some of the vast literature on ethics of the last 50 years, much of which tackles just this issue (I'm assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that you're not particularly interested in the last century of "Continental" thought, from Husserl on).
Anyway, what you're doing, in essence, is starting with a metaphysical position (a fairly richly conceived notion of God, causality, reason, morality, etc., even if one that you haven't reflected on all that much), thinking out its consequences, and then, without considering any other starting point, removing your basic metaphysical position and assuming that all of the consequences must go with it. And you're doing so a.) because the limited reading you've done on these topics comes through a tradition that generally builds on that metaphysical position (or some variant of it), and b.) you lack imagination.
And don't pretend that I'm dismissing that tradition. Far from it. I'm simply pointing out that there is a great deal of thought from the last 230 years that has challenged much of it, and since you're clearly stuck sometime around 1776, I don't find your "law of the jungle" oversimplifications all that interesting, and I can't imagine why anyone else would.
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I'd say that "Without God, all things are possible" has to be one of the most metaphysically dubious statements ever, and morally as well, but the statement is just ironic enough to say it for me.
Of course, the idea that you need God for metaphysics, or ethics/morals, is one that can only come through a lack of imagination. There are certainly other ways to ground them. What's more, when one grounds ethics in an immovable God, those ethics inevitably devalue themselves, or in more recent parlance, become fetishized. I think even Voegelin said something similar to that, though I'll leave it to our resident expert to correct me if I'm wrong.
One route: if reason is natural, and nature rational, isn't nature enough? I ask that sincerely. There are metaphysical questions that raises, of course, but the ethical points Tom and Bob are making beg those same questions.
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Have you seen the "Re: Your Brains" WoW video? It's my favorite of the Coulton-WoW genre. And it's also about work, but with zombies instead of monkeys, and zombies are definitely cooler than monkeys.
On “Pop Quiz”
Many of the original "libertarians" were socialists. ;) Maybe not Marxists, but then didn't Marx once quip that, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist"?
On “Muslims and PR: A response to comments”
Dude, do you know what the word history means?
On “American Decline!”
Hmm... what's a few years ago? 1956? 1994?
I don't recall a time when no one thought that North Korea had a nuclear program. The U.S. has known about that program, and publicly stated so, since the mid-90s (and before that, even, if you consider some of their other actions to be part of a nulear program), and actively tried to put an end to it through negotiation and the promise of aid. What's more, no one doubted, and it was well publicized at the time, that when that aid didn't come, the nuclear program was resumed.
On “Muslims and PR: A response to comments”
Maher is essentially a "New Atheist," and while not all New Atheists are the same, one of the more common features found among them is a complete inability to think rationally about religions (I don't just mean religious ideas, but religions themselves). Witness Jerry Coyne's recent blaming of the Holocaust on religion -- the Jewish religion. When it comes to religion, they become standard bigots (yeah, I said it!). If they weren't equally irrational when it comes to Christianity as when it comes to all other religions, one might almost say they look like the American Religious Right.
"
What I wonder is, from what does one ask that question? In Islam's history, there are periods of extreme religious tolerance. Granted, there are periods of religious intolerance, as well, but these are present in pretty much every religion and culture: when the culture/religion is unthreatened, everyone's welcome; when it feels threatened, put 'em up against the wall.
What’s more, at the turn of the last century, many Middle Eastern intellectuals were actively calling for a more liberal, European-style Muslim culture. That Islam, and in particular, Islam from a particular region of the world, is less liberal now, in many ways, than it was a century ago has less to do with something inherent in Islam than it has to do with the fact that the people of that part of the world have been, at different points, the dupes of Europe (particularly the British; see 1917), exploited for their resources, the center of war over their resources, used as pawns in the Cold War by both sides, occupied, had their oppressive dictators propped up by foreign powers, and that doesn’t even get to the Israeli-Palestinean conflict (the Brits again, too!). It’s a mess over there, and while they’re not blameless, it’s also not surprising that militant strains have become more prominent in that region (Pakistan has similar reasons for a strong militant wing of Islam).
So, the question one has to ask of someone who questions whether Islam and “American ideals” are compatible is, what Islam are you talking about? The one that’s arisen in a political and economic context that promotes militancy? Or the strain, which has existed for centuries, that is as peaceful as any other religion (which might not be saying much, I admit), which admits tolerance and has, at points, even worked towards liberal Western ideals itself? Perhaps these people, instead of believing that Muslims need a better PR campaign, should actually do a little reading. Because they are clearly coming from a position of ignorance, and I can’t imagine it’s the job of Muslims to cure them of that. And besides, when one ignorantly wonders whether, from the perspective of one’s own values, another culture is inherently inferior, based entirely on perceptions garnered, again in ignorance, from the actions and words of a few members of that culture, that sure looks like prejudice, if not the dreaded “bigotry.” And I’ll be damned if that’s not what Tim’s rational people are doing. I guess we can call a spade a club for the sake of discussion, but the more I think about it, the more I see that they really are spades.
"
When you say you denouce x as you denounce y, it doesn't say anything about x being justified because of y. In fact, it seems to me to do quite the opposite. If you don't think, for example, that violence against your self or your own people is justified, and you denounce violence against another "just as" you denounce it against yourself, isn't that saying that if you think the violence against yourself is unjustified, you think the violence against others is unjustified for the same reasons?
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The only thing that excuses the latter is that Heidegger is operating somewhere between radical parody and schizophrenia. That doesn't make him any more appealing to read (in fact, it's best not to read him), but it does at least make him seem like less of a monster.
Also, it cracks me up when Bob agrees with him.
On “The Return to Normalcy Budget”
Death panels!
"
I’m with the others. This sounds about right, given the current political climate. I second the call for closing tax loopholes for both individuals and corporations. I might also throw in a law taxing corporations where they make their money, not where they put their headquarters so that they don’t just put an office in Switzerland or somewhere in the Caribbean while they make a few billion here near tax free, if not completely tax free. Oh, and I’d throw in single payer health care, too, since it will ultimately save money as well. OK, now I’m getting more and more politically infeasible.
On “Muslims and PR: A response to comments”
Tim, I’ve got to say, this post actually makes you look worse, to me, instead of better. Sure, you say all the right things about how you appreciate Muslims and their culture. You do throw in the “No really, I’ve had a Muslim friend” thing, which seriously, dude, is the worst way to respond to accusations of racism or bigotry. But the real problem with the post is that you not only stick to your primary position, which is that if Muslims would just do better PR, at least the reasonable bigots would feel differently, but you actually respond to the criticisms of this position in the most predictable way: “Yeah, sure, they go on TV, or release official statements condemning violence, but it just seems like it’s not sincere enough, or they feel the need to condemn the other side’s violence at the same time, so it’s just not working for me.” I’d ask why they shouldn’t criticize both sides of a self-reinforcing cycle of violence, but that, I see, would be pointless. Instead, I’ll just point out to you that it sounds like nothing they could do would be enough for you. And that makes you look like you’re certainly not one of the reasonable people whose mind could be changed. I’m not saying that’s true, but that’s how you come off.
Perhaps a better way of approaching this is to suggest that both sides, the “reasonable” people who feel like Islam may be incompatible with western ideals and culture, and the “moderate Muslims” (the fact that you feel the need to modify “Muslims” with “moderate” doesn’t make you look good, either – do you feel the need to modify “Catholics” with “moderate” to distinguish them from the IRA and Phalangists, “Jews” with “moderate” to distinguish them from Gush Emunim or TNT, or do you often say “moderate Hindus” to distinguish them from the LTTE? Something tells me you don’t), should engage in more dialogue. It’s clear that many of these “reasonable” non-Muslims have misperceptions, or gaps in their knowledge of Islam, and I can’t imagine Muslims wouldn’t benefit from understanding the differences between these “reasonable” people and actual bigots, if such differences exist. This way, you’re not blaming the victim, as you seem to be set on doing, but instead suggesting that we start a dialogue to move towards mutual understanding, which, you know, is what we really need.
On “Muslims and the need for reform or, at least, better PR”
No, DD, that's not what happened. I've agreed with Rufus that it's not necessarily bigotry that produced Tim's post, but Tim's post suggests blames the victims for the bigotry against them, which is a classic tactic of bigots. It looks even more like bigotry when he talks about the Park 51 Islamic center. Again, I'm willing now to give him the benefit of the doubt, but if you use classic bigoted tactics, and take the position of bigots (on the Park 51 center), you can't be surprised, or even offended, when you get accused of being a bigot. If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, people's fist reaction is going to be, it's a duck! Even if when you look close it's actually a goose.
On “Muslims Don’t Need Better PR, Americans Need More Tolerance”
I suppose this never happened. And that's a pretty small-time case.
On “Muslims and the need for reform or, at least, better PR”
Rufus, eh, I'm willing to believe he's not bigoted. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt, mostly because I do in fact have doubts (though seriously, if someone calls you a bigot in the future, Tim, don't come back with, "But I have a Muslim friend!"). I still think the post is wrongheaded in the extreme, but perhaps not bigoted.
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It's hard for me to tell, honestly. The nonsense about the Mosque suggests that the prejudice is at least somewhat justified, in that the Muslims should have been more sensitive about it. Unless Tim is in the habit of suggesting that we play nicely with the feelings of bigots qua bigots.
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Rufus, or more directly, "We fear and hate them for the actions of a few because all they've done is sit around being peaceful, go on TV and condemning extremism, and just living their lives, instead of trying to comfort our prejudiced asses" is, if not bigoted, profoundly naive.
Sure, they tried to open a cultural center in a building kinda near to a place where people in an entirely separate religious sect, espousing ideas that we they don't agree with, but sharing the same label, did something really bad, but calling that insensitive is to suggest that those who are the object of prejudice should work hard not to hurt the prejudice-based feelings of the bigots who despise them.
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Rufus, I might have said it's a strange case of blaming the victim, given that moderate Muslims have tried pretty hard to distance themselves from their more militant brethren, but that it's not necessarily bigoted, if he hadn't included the nonsense about the Islamic Center that's not in the shadow, or even in view, of Ground Zero, thrown in (in the comments) the bit about having a Muslim friend, etc.
But really, "they're just not doing enough to counter the prejudice with PR" is basically the same rationalization people have been using for prejudice since, well, forever.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.