The Glade 4.0

Breyer is an idiot and always has been.

Fire in a theater isn't about people being trampled to death, it's about the property rights of the theater owner.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

First, let's clarify. I said that RADICAL Islam is no different than RADICAL Christianity. The one area where there IS a lot of difference is in the amount of radicalism in both religions. The number of radical Christian organizations these days is very small and they are not overly popular. The degree of Radical Islam is most definately a very large problem.

That said, if you look at the actions of the IRA during the height of their conflict with Britian, they certainly were just as violent as any jihadist. The stories coming out of Belfast and the intimidation and violence committed betweens Catholics and Protestants was abhorent. Not to mention the various terrorist actions against numerous targets.

I also recall the many month manhunt for one of the Army of God members who blew up an abortion clinic (killing several folks if I recall right) during the late 80's (? on exact date). One of the reasons why it took so long to apprehend him, was that he was hiding in a rural and very Christian part of the Appalacian Mtns. and while no one would come out and endorse what he did, they were all sympathetic to his cause and so didn't rat him out and in some cases helped hide him.

I don't really view either of those situations as any different than what's happening with some of the Radical Islamic groups today.

I will agree, that the frequency or proliference of Radical Islamic groups is different. There seems to be many more people who support or join Radical Islamic groups than there have been in other religious organizations for some time. Part of the difficulty that we have with Islam is that the cultural maturity of most Islamic countries is several hundred years behind that of the West. It's like living in the ages of the Salem Witch Trials or the Spanish Inquisition. It's my belief that a large part of why there is broader support for Radical groups within the Islamic world is due to lack of education. When all information comes through your religious leaders, then you're going to have a very skewed perspective on the world.

When they actually got around to it. I discuss the issue here.
http://irishjackie.blogspot.com/2008/03 ... ution.html

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Heh.

Ha the poor british bastards car. In any event, the IRA did what it did to get out from under England did it not? That they happened to be Christians seems tangential at best.

Wiki puts the death toll at 1,800 people over 30 years fwiw, not sure how many beers they base that on.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Na, while often wars in the name of religion are using religion as a pretense for political ambitions, with Ireland, over 400 years of unrest in various forms dating back to Willem van Oranje in the 16th century, it's the opposite. This has been a religious war, with politics as a pretense. It started because the Irish Catholics wanted the Catholic tyrant on the British throne instead of a protestant reformist in favor of limited monarchial power.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

It started because England occupied Ireland. If you spend some time in Ireland you'll learn that the animosity toward the English goes back hundreds of years.

Anybody see that "Deadliest Warrior" episode where it was the IRA vs. the Taliban?

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The Dude abides.

LOL, now that would have been funny to see. What was the result?

YES! I saw that one. I think the IRA barely won even though the taliban had freakin RPG's and the IRA knifed someone heh.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

The issue here is you can't compare Christians in the West to Muslims in the Middle East. The West doesn't have violent Islamic extremists any more than it has violent Christian ones. Pretty much all the Muslim terrorists (9/11, the London bombings, the Spain bombing, Lockerbie, etc.) were either first or second generation immigrants, and the majority came to the West for the specific purpose of carrying out their attack.

Africa, for example, has loads of violent Christian extremism, so I really don't think the specific religion that's followed really has much bearing at all on whether or not a culture is going to be violent.

First of all, yes it goes back hundreds of years as I said...

(However, I was wrong. It was over three hundred years, not four.)

However, Ireland was not "occupied" at the time. In fact, it was a willing and happy participant in the British Empire until William III (AKA William of Orange) deposed the Catholic tyrant King James II. King William reformed politics in Great Britain to be more Parliamentary rather than Monarchially centered.

We Irish threw a fit over this. We would rather have our beloved Catholic tyrant than some do-gooder liberal protestant on the throne, and so began the Irish unrest.

Ireland eventually won its independance from that Protestant abomination known as England, but six counties in the North overwhelmingly wished to remain part of Great Britain (and still do, to this day). The terrorist organization known as the IRA was formed to wage bloody terror on the predominantly protestant people of Northern Ireland. Note that it was always the Northern Irish people that caused England to hold on to Northern Ireland, not England maintaining some sort of power/land grab. This was not about British "occupation," ever. Northern Ireland is no more occupied by the British than New Hampshire should be considered occupied by the Americans.

(And as a side note, the IRA lost. Badly. They attempted to change people's opinions by scaring them, and it backfired.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Yeah - pretty much that. They basically said something along the lines of how the Taliban had more dependable weapons but the IRA was more effective with what they had.

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The Dude abides.

Isn't your father an episcopal minister, Taly? What's this "we the Catholics of Ireland" crap?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yes. I come from as Orange a family as ever existed (check the comments on that blog I linked earlier). A few years back, over a few pints, my dad says to me, "Jackie, I know ye do not believe in the Lord, but I thank Him daily that at least y'aren't Catholic." I say "we" in reference to the Irish in general--I don't really see the two sides as any different from each other. I consider both to be completely hate-filled lunatics once they get going, but at least it's entertaining. It's actually this idea that somehow, only the Irish Catholics are really Irish that has lead to the myth that the IRA was fighting a British occupation. The IRA primarily targeted Irish people...Protestant and therefore Loyallist Irish people. Northern Ireland was occupied only by its inhabitants, and it's those that the IRA didn't like. (Note that the Ulster Unionists weren't any better, I'm not defending them. They just weren't as militant or organized. They didn't need to be -- they had the backing of the British.)

The Irish flag is one of the greatest ironies ever: White (symbolizing peace), between Green (Catholic) and Orange (Protestant.)

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Africa just has loads of violence, period. Most of it is tribal and political in nature; relatively little has to do with religion and of that, a great proportion is really just the same tribal and political issues dressed up with a religious facade.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Sort of like... the Middle East?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Sort of. In the Middle East the religious aspect isn't just a facade to the same degree, especially for militants and terrorists. It is in other conflicts like the problems with Israel which has relatively little to do with religion, although even that depends on which aspect of the conflict you mean. For the Palestinians, it clearly is primarily about land and economic issue. Iran.. more about religion, although even there it's about other things too.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Bush said very similar things. It's just a useful rhetorical tactic for marginalizing the bad guys.


Moderation is relative, and a mediator (which is what Rauf is trying to be) has to have credibility with both sides. It'd be nice if a "moderate" Muslim could unambiguously condemn Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Iran, the Taliban, Wahhabism, Sharia, etc., etc. and still have credibility in the Muslim world, but if that was the case, we wouldn't be in the situation we're in anyway.


Both statements are true. "Accessory" is a lousy term, but US policy obviously did help create the circumstances that led to the September 11th attacks, and moving the Cordoba center now, after all the publicity opposition to it has received, likely will damage Muslim perceptions of the US and hence our national security. What's "troubling" about acknowledging reality?


So the problem isn't that people like Gingrich, Palin, Angle, etc. have been saying crazy, and in some cases bigoted things; the problem is that liberals (and only liberals, apparently) have the temerity to call them on it? Seems kinda backwards to me.


Agreed. When Republicans were in power, they didn't pull this sh*t in order to create an identity-politics wedge issue they could campaign on.

That is a truly appalling statement. Here's hoping it's a misunderstanding or an out-of-context quote.

perhaps he's just being careful? Wait till the ruling comes down I suppose

There shouldn't be any need for caution and no case on the issue should ever reach the Court. This is pretty much a slam dunk for First Amendment protection. Yelling "Fire!" in a theater is considered outside the First because it doesn't involve "expressive content" and poses an obvious, immediate, and direct threat to public safety. Burning a Qur'an in protest of its content and its adherents is pretty clearly expressive in nature, and the threat created (if any) is neither obvious nor immediate, and it's indirect in that it would only arise if other people choose to respond in violent, criminal ways.

well said RD.

So do you believe the numerous threats from various radical islamist groups were idle?

It's irrelevant.
As RD stated, any public safety issue would not arise by the burning of the Qur'an; it would arise through the agency of others not immediate or direct) and it's obvious that the people in the theater are put in danger by the "false fire" statement. Terrorist threats don't rise.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko