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Paul Krugman: Conscience of a Liberal
The Confluence
Suburban Guerrilla Ian WelshYou can’t have all three.
Discuss.
BTW, when I say “Religious Extremism”, I am referring to any religion. There are many more Christian extremists in this country than there are Muslims. A lot of them have guns.
Mountain Meadows Massacre? 120 people killed
David Koresh? 76 people killed
Filed under: General | Tagged: David Koresh, Gun Control, mountain meadows, Orlando, religious extremism |
Corrente (Lambert) Avedon’s Sideshow
The Confluence 
You offer a Hobson’s choice if it is two out of your three. I think the basic issue is that we are at the most significant turning point in our country’s existence. The “me first” generations have become a “my culture before country” generation and from there our country has become divided into multiple little countries within the border of what used to be one country. And I am not referring to just one cultural group. I refer to either religious or ethnic or “beliefs about what is right” cultures. There are hundreds if not thousands of cultural (broad sense) groups who think that their way is the only way for the USA to operate. Or that they should be exempt from national laws they don’t agree with due to religious or other reasons. If religious and ethnic cultural groups want to maintain their group identities, come hell or high water, is it possible for them to agree on a common cause relevant to our nation’s laws and to show respect for one another, if not agreement? There is no “American” culture or unique American values to instill loyalty to our nation. [aside: please let Hillary not ever call it “our homeland”]
Will we ever be “one nation” again and respect each others and each group’s individualities? I do not know. But to answer your question: I can’t really but I do not want my public safety to be at the cost of our original values of freedom and privacy. I don’t want any citizen to have an assault weapon. I do not think that religious beliefs, of any religion, aimed at harming others should be tolerated.
I agree. But I think that religious extremism is fuel for acts of terrorism.
Sure, you can have mass shootings without it. Then again, some of the most adamant 2nd amendment types are religious people. There’s a very end-of-the-world, us-vs-them mentality that’s very tolerant of ammo and guns. Very bunkeresque. It’s synergistic.
I can’t argue with anything you say here. I wish there was a solution for the majority to be able to have a better world. It seems as if we have to fight continuously for every decent human condition. I do feel so very lucky, however, to have been born in the USA.
Media coverage keep repeating the sound bite about Islamic extremist’s view on LGBTQ and failed to address that this intolerance and hatred of LGBTQ community is shared by mainstream Christianity. Christians after failing on their assault on marriage equality, pursue the religious freedom route on marriage equality in an attempt to legitimize and institutionalize discrimination. A web search will give you a list of sitting politicians and church leaders whose rhetoric attempts to incited violence against the LGBTQ community.
And we haven’t even heard what’s up with James Howell from Indiana who had an arsenal in his car on the way to the Pride parade in LA. What’s up with that?
His views are not shared by a lot of mainstream Christians. Most of his views are shared by evangelical Christians who many would not consider mainstream.
I think you could make the same case wrt Muslims. Most Muslims are not extremists with terrorist tendencies.
My point is that Christian extremists are no better and before 9/11, they were the cause of the higher body count.
It doesn’t matter if the vast majority are peace loving individuals. The problem is that both religions trace back to a 3000 year old text that has some genocidal, brutal, homophobic, misogynistic features. Some of the faithful say that was then, this is now. But the truly faithful are strict practitioners who do not differentiate between past and present.
I am not truly faithful because I am a liberal Christian?
The authoritarian, right-wing kind of Christians don’t think Christians like me are real Christians, either. Do you want to agree with them?
“But the strict practitioners, who think they are the only truly faithful, do not differentiate between past and present.” would be better.
Strictly speaking, no Muslims are extremists with terrorist tendencies. The Muslim religion is a peace-loving religion. Violence disqualifies one as a Muslim. Learned a lot from Morgan Spurlock’s old show, 30 Days, where he put a Christian man (who had a boatload of prejudices, which dissolved by the end) from VA? SC? NC? in a Muslim home in Dearborn, MI for 30 Days, where the guy had to dress, eat, worship as a Muslim. Great show.
Yep, and I’m sure no Mormon would consider themselves extremists either. Nevertheless, Brigham Young undoubtably instigated the mountain meadows massacre with his “who will rid me of this meddlesome wagon train?”
Christians would NEVER do something so heinous. Then there was the crusades against the albigensians.
Why don’t we say that most empathetic human beings of any religion love peace. It’s the radical extremists of ALL religions that we have to worry about.
Just because we stand up for Muslims because we believe in freedom of religion doesn’t mean we have to tolerate radical fundamentalist Islam or should feel uncomfortable calling it out.
Same goes for the radical fundamentalist Christians who are hiding in plain site but believe with all their hearts that we are part of the evil world who they have to protect themselves against.
They’re out there. And they have guns too.
Better, but let us not forget that not all bloody-minded and bloody-handed radical extremists are religious.
Two words: Khmer Rouge.
OTOH, some scholars think Communism should be counted as a religion, despite its lack of gods and afterlives.
You go with the extremists you have. America doesn’t have a history of atheistic totalitarian regimes.
Puritanical and eschatological theocracies?
Yep
I was not aware you wished to confine the discussion to the USA.
Trying an Occam’s razor type thing.
My take on this is that 50 or people were killed, whether the reason religion or homophobia or anything else isn’t important at this point they are still dead. The most important here is a crazy deranged wife beater get to buy assault weapons legally and use to murder people. The guy didn’t even pledge allegiance to ISIS till like 5 minutes before the killing. He wanted a justification for his rampage. How about adding mental health to the mix. If by public safety you mean that the law can check everyone who owns firearm I am all for it. Heck I don’t mind if they subject them for psychological exams annually
He did it cooly, he planned in advance, he drove two hours to his destination, he held down a job for years.
This is not the behavior of someone who is unhinged in the regular sense of the word.
This may be the behavior of a person who has a specific worldview. What he did may make perfect sense in his “system of things”. This is the danger in religious extremism. It looks crazy but if has a certain internal logic that only true believers understand.
I totally agree. Religious extremism and their system of things, ie: The Inquisition.
From Unexplained World:
https://t.co/5KyddR74Ch
something that should be brought up the lawmakers…
Well, I wasn’t expecting… 😉
Parenthetical to the discussion today…if you need something to lift your mood…
ONE YEAR AGO TODAY!
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-year-of-hillary-clinton/
Thanks. That was really cute!
From Salon, Amanda Marcotte weighs in.
Toxic Masculinity drives gun violence
Gun used: AR-15. The most popular rifle in America. Also very popular in mass shootings here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-15 I wish I lived in Australia right now. Love how they, after their mass shooting, just said, NO, immediately, and restricted the heck out of guns.
Listing David Koresh seems a tad unfair considering that the government did the killing.
The largest mass shooting in the United States was the Massacre at Wounded Knee, where once again the government was responsible.
The government did NOT do the killing. The buildings were torched on Koresh’s command. Every one of them prepared to be martyred.
And the had an arsenal which was the thing that provoked the ATF to drop in on them in the first place. What were they going to do with all those weapons?
In a way, it’s a good thing that the Branch Davidians were so insular. That could have been a much bigger catastrophe.
Off topic: Happy Flag Day!
Thank you!
Looks like HRC is trumping BS in DC tonight. Big win already with 46% in. Would like to be fly on wall as Hill and BS talk tonight.
A post by The Rude Pundit, uncharacteristically free of naughty language:
The Terms of Our Surrender to Our Domestic Terrorists, the NRA
Weds 9 pm EST: In case anyone hasn’t yet heard, there’s a filibuster on gun control happening now on the Senate floor, in hour #8, started by Sen. Chris Murphy this morning. Many Dem senators in support; some oddly absent. Consider phoning yours, in case they haven’t weighed in yet.
Sen. Murphy is getting very tired, and has been very inspiring. Live stream: http://livestream.com/accounts/300260/events/4963928
Woot! Go Chris! Is it a tag team?