When American conservatives point out how Muslims view women and homosexuals . . .

[Birdjaguar]

No, there are and have been priests since long before Jesus, it's just in the states priests are normally though of as Catholic. (I think )

Prior to Jesus, all priests were pagan ones. After Jesus, they were mostly Catholic or Orthodox. IIRC Catholics and Orthodox are the only Christian sects with priests.

 

[cardgame]

Unless an Islamic horde is at the gate, the united front against Muslims seems nonsensical as there're bigger fishes to fry.

Yes, the "horde" is the Syrian immigrants we've cleared to come here I suppose.

 

[classical_hero]

Prior to Jesus, all priests were pagan ones. After Jesus, they were mostly Catholic or Orthodox. IIRC Catholics and Orthodox are the only Christian sects with priests.

Didn't Jews have priests?

 

[Daw]

Prior to Jesus, all priests were pagan ones. After Jesus, they were mostly Catholic or Orthodox. IIRC Catholics and Orthodox are the only Christian sects with priests.

Didn't Jews have priests?

Webster gives it to me that a priest can also be Anglican. But anyway, I admit it was not the best word to use. A preacher seems to have been a much better one for its much broader meaning, right?

Would it be safe to say that any priest is a preacher but not every preacher is a priest?

 

[Takhisis]

(&#8230From their viewpoint, liberals should be against Muslims because their society/culture/religion is extremely illiberal and thus at odds with liberalism in general.(&#8230

Have you ever listened to our young user Nedim's tales of life in Sunni-Muslimland?

Webster gives it to me that a priest can also be Anglican. But anyway, I admit it was not the best word to use. A preacher seems to have been a much better one for its much broader meaning, right?

Would it be safe to say that any priest is a preacher but not every preacher is a priest?

To a degree, yes.

 

[Antilogic]

As usual nobody knows the conservative ideology, sorry can't express it with a Bumper sticker slogan:

I've yet to find a conservative who can explain a liberal/progressive/socialist/etc.'s take on public policy. This list is no exception.

An easy example of the liberal philosophy is the conditions in big city minority communities, you know, areas like Obama was a a community organizer in, the Liberals have controlled these areas since the 60's, are conditions any better or worse then the 60's?

No, they haven't, and American urban history is way more complicated than that.

 

[luiz]

I don't know if it was mentioned in the thread before (after reading the first page I suspect it is a lefty circle-jerk so I won't read through it all), but a majority of American Muslims actually voted for George W. Bush the first time he ran. Muslims were naturally drawn to the Republicans' social conservatism, and in the US they also tend to be more affluent than average (unlike in Europe), which also makes their voting pattern lean right.

Of course, after all the tension with Muslims following 9/11, this voting pattern imploded.

 

[luiz]

Only American conservatives? You're reading this forum, right?

The ephemeral nature of conservatism is really interesting though. It's always an ideology of "just right". The status quo is just right. Or sometimes, the status quo from a couple of years ago is just right, before the liberals have taken things a little too far recently.

Social change that was opposed by conservatives in the past is now used as a standard to attack others from some imagined position of modernity. Yet the agents of the same social change are derided as extremists if they want to continue pursuing their progressive ideas.

And it's not as if the ideological outlook of conservatism has changed in the meantime to include past progressive ideas. It's more that there has never been an ideological foundation in the first place. Conservatism is mostly built on the status quo being way too comfortable and convenient to ever consider there might be something wrong with it.

This is incredibly ignorant of the history and countless strands of conservative thought, even by CFC standards...

But yeah, to suggest that all conservatives simply want to "maintain the status quo" has got to be one of the most ignorant statements I've read. Bravo, sir.

 

[REDY]

This is incredibly ignorant of the history and countless strands of conservative thought, even by CFC standards...

But yeah, to suggest that all conservatives simply want to "maintain the status quo" has got to be one of the most ignorant statements I've read. Bravo, sir.

I have somewhat thought same And I somewhat like conservatives, well at least more than socialists.

 

[luiz]

I have somewhat thought same And I somewhat like conservatives, well at least more than socialists.

It's a very silly concept.

As is the notion that "conservatives keep embracing progressive ideas and change their platform to just reflect the current status-quo". It is the sort of infantile idea we could excuse in a 12 year old who just started reading about politics, and thinks it all boils down to "progressives" who want to improve society and "conservatives" who want to keep it exactly where it is.

For starters, we should note that what is embraced by generally all camps are the ideas that work, not all "progressive ideas". At one point, a pretty big "progressive idea" was that the means of production should be expropriated by the state. Did conservatives ever embrace that idea? Of course not, it was an idiotic idea and today it is universally rejected. So our modern "progressives" think that in this regard the conservatives of say the 1930's were right, and the progressives of that era were wrong.

This is one example, but there are countless others. Not all "new" political ideas are adopted, because not all of them have any merit.

Here I'm just touching one point of why his post was dumb. The other of course is that there are a lot of conservatives who actually advocate radical change in society and hate the status quo.

 

[El_Machinae]

When it comes to Islam and liberals, I think the phrase hate the sin, love the sinner springs to mind as analogous.

Liberals want to be maximally tolerant. And they want to be maximally tolerant to a few variants of Islam. And there are hosts of variants that they're mostly hoping will go away of their own accord. Conservatives note those odious variants and rightly think the Liberals should be on their 'side' in stomping them out. But the confusion lies in the methodology in actualizing such progress.

 

[Takhisis]

I don't know if it was mentioned in the thread before (after reading the first page I suspect it is a lefty circle-jerk so I won't read through it all), but a majority of American Muslims actually voted for George W. Bush the first time he ran. Muslims were naturally drawn to the Republicans' social conservatism, and in the US they also tend to be more affluent than average (unlike in Europe), which also makes their voting pattern lean right.

Of course, after all the tension with Muslims following 9/11, this voting pattern imploded.

And that's Dubya's doing.

 

[luiz]

When it comes to Islam and liberals, I think the phrase hate the sin, love the sinner springs to mind as analogous.

Liberals want to be maximally tolerant. And they want to be maximally tolerant to a few variants of Islam. And there are hosts of variants that they're mostly hoping will go away of their own accord. Conservatives note those odious variants and rightly think the Liberals should be on their 'side' in stomping them out. But the confusion lies in the methodology in actualizing such progress.

Yeah. And the double-standard of large sections of the left regarding Islam has pushed a lot of otherwise solid leftists into the conservative camp (much more in Europe than in the US, because in the US Islam is pretty much a non-issue given the tiny percentage of practitioners).

 

[luiz]

And that's Dubya's doing.

I'm not sure. I think the Republican Party became hostile to Muslims against Bush's wishes. As a Texan oil family, The Bushes always had a very cordial relationship with Muslims. Throughout his term, I think Bush tried repeatedly to dissociate the "war on terror" from a "war on Islam". But because a lot of people in his party became so hostile to Muslims, and because Bush was turned by the international media into a re-incarnation of a Satan (a crusading Satan, no less), he certainly became a hated figure in the Muslim world.

 

[Takhisis]

Bush decided to invade Iraq, a Muslim country, and start a sectarian war that still has no end in sight, with the advice of a very small handful of insiders. He didn't invade other terrorist-sponsoring countries (not that Iraq was much of one anyway in 2002/03) or engage with other religions. So, well… at best the ‘war on terror is not a war on Islam’ thing was lip service.

 

[luiz]

Bush decided to invade Iraq, a Muslim country, and start a sectarian war that still has no end in sight, with the advice of a very small handful of insiders. He didn't invade other terrorist-sponsoring countries (not that Iraq was much of one anyway in 2002/03) or engage with other religions. So, well… at best the ‘war on terror is not a war on Islam’ thing was lip service.

But he didn't do all of that to "fight Islam". Quite the opposite, Saddam was a secular dictator and a lot of Muslims were happy to see him go.

Remember that Bush Sr. also fought Iraq, for which he received enthusiastic support of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Countries (some would even say that he fought that war on behalf of Saudi Arabia). Bush Jr. remained a close ally of the al-Sauds and the Gulf monarchies.

I can understand why Bush is hated in the Muslim world, given the disastrous results of his policies. But I don't believe at all he intended to "fight Islam" or was particularly hostile to that religion. A lot of Republicans - yes. Bush, no. Even before he was elected, Bush was actually way more used to dealing with Muslims than your average American politician, and there is no hint at all of hostility.