Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Seperating Church and Hate: But don't forget to Moderate

There was an interesting article published on Huffpo today: Separating Church and Hate: Irrationality and Anti-Muslim Stereotyping The following is an exchange I had with user Jan Allen McDaniel:

HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Jan Allen McDaniel 4 hours ago (6:05 PM)
"And you talk of Islamic terrorism as if it is something built into Islam or one sided on the part of them. In fact the number of people killed in the US and elsewhere due to Islamic terrorism is dwarfed by the number of Islamic people caused to die through US intervention in the mideast since 1950."

We could go on for some time about who did what to whom and not settle anything. I hope we can start from the agreement that a lot of Muslims want to kill us and we want to kill them. Given that, we can speculate on why this is true.

I believe that the struggle is over which system of law will survive the war, Islamic law or Western law like America's. Mybe you disagree.

HUFFPOST SUPER USER
RedDogBear 2 hours ago (7:29 PM)
"We could go on for some time about who did what to whom and not settle anything. I hope we can start from the agreement that a lot of Muslims want to kill us and we want to kill them. Given that, we can speculate on why this is true."

There isn't much speculation. Osama bin Laden has said why he wants to attack the west and most of his charges are true. Which doesn't mean I think he is any way justified. He is a criminal and a thug and the worst kind of theocratic would-be tyrant.

I can give you countless examples. The US has overthrown governments (Iran, Iraq), installed dictators who routinely practice torture (Iran), destroyed basic infrastructure resulting in wide spread civilian deaths (Iraq), shot down civilian airliners (Iran), and supported corrupt dictators (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan) through out the middle east. These aren't matters of speculation. They are facts.

HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Jan Allen McDaniel 1 hour ago (8:21 PM)
Maybe your intent is to blame America for the situation we are in, and I will not join in that. If you want to talk about where we go from here, I'm game.

My reply was censored. Luckily I had a feeling it might be. Here it is:

I don't blame America any more than I blame Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq. I blame Ronald Reagan, George Bush (both of them), Osama bin Laden, .... I blame specific people who have committed crimes. I don't excuse either side for killing innocent people. Its never justified. As for going forward you can't go forward unless you admit the crimes that both sides have committed.

I think this is a very illustrative example. Even if you are a conservative libertarian I think you would agree that there was nothing obscene, personal, off topic or anything else that would contradict the supposed Huffington Post standards. The only reason to suppress this comment is that if expresses ideas that criticize our government and the right to criticize our government is an essential part of free speech and democracy.

4 comments:

  1. There is no system to the things censored that I can discover. There is absolutely no rational reason to censor your response.
    Whole thing boggles the mind.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is the last part of the Censorship Test I created for Huffpo. I posted this poem by an unknown Black poet in a thread (Dr. Laura) about race and language. The poem is taught in Black Studies classes in college. What exactly is too offensive about it?

    Black Man Poem

    When I born, I black,
    When I grow up, I black,
    When I go in sun, I black,
    When I cold, I black,
    When I scared, I black,
    When I sick, I black,
    And when I die, I still black.
    You white folks....
    When you born, you pink,
    When you grow up, you white,
    When you go in sun, you red,
    When you cold, you blue,
    When you scared, you yellow,
    When you sick, you green,
    When you bruised, you purple,
    And when you die, you gray.
    So who you calling colored folks???

    I think there can only be one conclusion. HuffPo is not the place to go for information, intelligent meaningful conversation, or a good political fight.
    So anybody got a suggestion where else we can go that has a good message system and traffic. I do not think I want to support Huffpo anymore and Ms. Arianna, in spite of having a lousy product, is making money off my azz.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is amazing that they banned this poem. I just read it to my kids and taught it was hilarious.
    But HP has a doublle standard anyway. they banned a comment of mine that had the word "biget", but low and behold someone else used it just yesterday.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Red Dog are you still ban from HP. They just ban a friend of mine "Monti Pie"

    ReplyDelete

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