Women in Christian politics

[squadbroken]

Hello there Mr. Santorum.

Bottom line: I'm not "in it" to just help one side win and punish the other. Not anymore. If it's not about mutual respect and has to be about "winners and losers" then I'm getting off the bus.

Hard to have "mutual respect" with people who think you (or others) are sub-human.

 

[Traitorfish]

Hello there Mr. Santorum.

Content is not fully contained with form. I could say "I love cycling", but that isn't equivalent to saying "I love genocide", despite the identical construction of "I love [abstract noun]". When Crezth says "hate", he means one thing, is one thing, and when Capitan Bumslurry says "sin", he means another thing. Any identification of the two has to be demonstrated, not simply assumed from shared syntactical form.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Hard to have "mutual respect" with people who think you (or others) are sub-human.

It is, but I think it's important. Respect doesn't have to be warm, fuzzy, or particularly enthusiastically given. I just think we have to respect the fact that other citizens are our equals and shouldn't be corrected by force. Even if they are backwards, hateful rednecks.

EDIT: I am not saying they should be allowed to attack or harm others, or even necessarily arguing about the law itself. I'm speaking more about the less concrete ideas driving a lot of this.

Content is not fully contained with form. I could say "I love cycling", but that isn't equivalent to saying "I love genocide", despite the identical construction of "I love [abstract noun]". When Crezth says "hate", he means one thing, is one thing, and when Capitan Bumslurry says "sin", he means another thing. Any identification of the two has to be demonstrated, not simply assumed from shared syntactical form.

Saying "We'd be better off if we exterminated <X> group" is almost uniformly wrong, disgusting, and terrible. It's wrong enough that there's no need to suppress it, either. By suppressing it you're saying "This idea worries me because I could see it becoming popular. We have to prevent people from being exposed to this idea so they'll behave correctly." It has the same fearful scent as a creationist preventing their child from being exposed to evolution in school. It is unbecoming of ideas that can win without help.

I'm not sure how I feel about it in the end, really. There was a time when it may have been a brute necessity, particularly with blacks in the south. This is why I am not able to be as absolutist as GhostWriter. But I think that time has passed and doubling-down on suppressing ideas that are already losing seems abusive to me.

EDIT: I'm sorry I called you Santorum Crezth. No hard feelings or anything

 

[ace99]

We'd be better off if we exterminated child rapists and bankers.

 

[squadbroken]

It is, but I think it's important. Respect doesn't have to be warm, fuzzy, or particularly enthusiastically given. I just think we have to respect the fact that other citizens are our equals and shouldn't be corrected by force.

No, screw that. They have their rights but they will not get my respect.

I don't believe in the use of force, but I have no problem with hatemongers and bigots being shunned or shouted down. Or their highways renamed.

But that's exactly what bothers me. Saying "We'd be better off if we exterminated <X> group" is almost uniformly wrong, disgusting, and terrible. It's wrong enough that there's no need to suppress it, either. By suppressing it you're saying "This idea worries me because I could see it becoming popular. We have to prevent people from being exposed to this idea so they'll behave correctly."

It has the same punk, self-righteous sweet stink as a Christian preventing their child from being exposed to evolution in school. It is unbecoming of ideas that can win without help.

What bull. Racism and bigotry, especially when it involves or endorses violence, does not "worry me", it angers me.

I'm not sure how I feel about it in the end, really. There was a time when it may have been a brute necessity, particularly with blacks in the south. This is why I am not as absolutist as GhostWriter, for instance. But I think that time has passed and doubling-down on suppressing ideas that are already losing seems abusive to me.

EDIT: I'm sorry I called you Santorum Crezth. No hard feelings or anything

Yeah, we have more important things to worry about today, like video games being oppressed

 

[AlpsStranger]

They have their rights but they will not get my respect.

Yes, but what are those rights? If you start getting into territory like hate speech laws I think you're not really meaning "they have their rights."

Yeah, we have more important things to worry about today, like video games being oppressed

I wasn't aware that we were limited to one political opinion each, or that less important issues had to be completely ignored. Why can't I have opinions about more than one issue at once, anyhow?

Are we forbidden from having opinions about TV shows and movies until we've solved world hunger now or something?

We'd be better off if we exterminated child rapists and bankers.

And if someone's both we'll kill 'em twice

EDIT: I guess what bothers me, to state it again, is the fact that there's nothing but public sentiment at the bottom of it. I don't trust public sentiment and I could imagine it taking unpleasant directions in the future.

 

[Crezth]

Saying "We'd be better off if we exterminated <X> group" is almost uniformly wrong, disgusting, and terrible. It's wrong enough that there's no need to suppress it, either. By suppressing it you're saying "This idea worries me because I could see it becoming popular. We have to prevent people from being exposed to this idea so they'll behave correctly." It has the same fearful scent as a creationist preventing their child from being exposed to evolution in school. It is unbecoming of ideas that can win without help.

You have the wrong notion that there's an inherent "correctness" to our ideology that the racists do not have. While we might agree that it's moral, the racists certainly wouldn't: and all it takes is being raised in an environment where racism is the norm to internalize that attitude as appropriate. So it's a matter of a battle of ideologies, and there's no middle-ground between "the Jews are sub-human" and "no they are not."

 

[ace99]

Yes, but what are those rights? If you start getting into territory like hate speech laws I think you're not really meaning "they have their rights."

The US has no hate speech laws. That's why the Westboro Baptists are allowed to spread their filth rather than being in jail.

They're free to protest and people are free to block them from view.

 

[AlpsStranger]

You have the wrong notion that there's an inherent "correctness" to our ideology that the racists do not have.

This "wrong notion" is the only faint glimmer of hope we have. If you're correct then the sandcastle of justice you've built will be gone with the next tide.

The US has no hate speech laws.

I'm quite well aware of that, but I don't think that state of affairs is guaranteed to persist. If I were a betting man I'd wager against it, actually.

 

[ace99]

I'm quite well aware of that, but I don't think that state of affairs is guaranteed to persist. If I were a betting man I'd wager against it, actually.

It's good that you're not a betting man.

 

[Old Hippy]

Hello there Mr. Santorum.

Bottom line: I'm not "in it" to just help one side win and punish the other. Not anymore. If it's not about mutual respect and has to be about "winners and losers" then I'm getting off the bus. If a better "bus" doesn't come along then I guess I'm walking.

you should change the bus

http://www.biography.com/people/ros...s/rosa-parks-civil-rights-pioneer-17181763791http://www.biography.com/people/rosa-parks-9433715/videos/rosa-parks-civil-rights-pioneer-17181763791

then change the destination...

Link to video.

mutual respect, comes later

Link to video.

 

[Crezth]

This "wrong notion" is the only faint glimmer of hope we have. If you're correct then the sandcastle of justice you've built will be gone with the next tide.

Based on what? If we want to make progress, we must promote good ideals and shame bad ones. I'm sorry if you think telling children that Nazism is wrong is bad policy.

 

[Borachio]

But what are you basing your notion of good ideals and shame on? If, as you seemed to imply earlier, that it's a case of moral relativism, we have no "reason" to think Nazism is "wrong."

You have the wrong notion that there's an inherent "correctness" to our ideology that the racists do not have. While we might agree that it's moral, the racists certainly wouldn't: and all it takes is being raised in an environment where racism is the norm to internalize that attitude as appropriate. So it's a matter of a battle of ideologies, and there's no middle-ground between "the Jews are sub-human" and "no they are not."

 

[El_Machinae]

Even with moral relativism, we can still judge 'better' and 'worse', but moral relativism is as wrong as diet relativism. But even with diet relativism, we know how to make a specific diet better or worse.

 

[Borachio]

Hmm. I fancy you've invented the term diet relativism just to confuse me.

Descriptive moral relativism holds only that some people do in fact disagree about what is moral; meta-ethical moral relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong; and normative moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when we disagree about the morality of it.

 

[Cutlass]

Is the racism just as bad that a black person didn't vote for a white guy?

The question is "why"? If you're referring to Obama, 90-95% of black voters vote for the Democrat to start with because the Republicans are openly hostile to them.

 

[classical_hero]

The question is "why"? If you're referring to Obama, 90-95% of black voters vote for the Democrat to start with because the Republicans are openly hostile to them.

Could the opposite be true for white people then? So many people scream racism when a white person doesn't vote for a pblack person, but the opposite is never done.

 

[JollyRoger]

Sure it's done. Just look up the threads any time Colin Powell supports the President.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=478757

 

[Traitorfish]

Could the opposite be true for white people then? So many people scream racism when a white person doesn't vote for a pblack person, but the opposite is never done.

Who does?

 

[Crezth]

But what are you basing your notion of good ideals and shame on? If, as you seemed to imply earlier, that it's a case of moral relativism, we have no "reason" to think Nazism is "wrong."

You are correct, but as El_Machinae pointed out we are still privy to our judgments. That is, we may still be entitled to our prejudice that hate is wrong, no matter who or how many people think that hate is good. In our case, we accept the premise of tolerance and decency to be good, nevermind the paradox that this necessarily requires that we be intolerant of hate.

The funny thing about human society is it rarely, if ever, need be consistent. We are freely spurious on so many occasions. We may desire consistency for the sake of delicacy but that's simply not born out by the human experience as necessary. With that in mind, there is no sensible objection to the notion that we should be tolerant of all ideals except the intolerant ones. It's about what works and what makes people happy, prosperous, and free - not about what fits most cozily into someone's ethical handbook.