Letters to the Editor
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Bless your heart.....
Shooter, don't you mean treat them with equal hatred and a complete lack of empathy or understanding just like you would? And tell me Archie Bunker, who are the "you people" to whom you are referring? Better scurry down into your bomb shelter and wait out the apocolypse. Oh, but I forgot you'll be saved during the Rapture.
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tu quoque
Golden Boy, through either honest misunderstanding or willful ignorance, insists that the comparison of Muslim and non-Muslim responses to similar questions is an example of a tu quoque fallacy.
It is not.
The tu quoque ("you, too") fallacy, as I understand it, takes the form:
A makes criticism P.
A is also guilty of P.
Therefore, P is dismissed.
The point that Glenn is trying to make, as I understand it, is:
A poll states that Muslims believe P.
Polls have shown that all people regardless of creed believe P.
Therefore, the poll says nothing specific about Muslims.
Thus, the argument is not fallacious.
QED.
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Exactly. Let's see you people treat Muslims as badly as you do Christians
OK.....
Anybody who believes that the creator of the Universe loves them but hates other people is an evil moron. Present company included.
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@shooter242
Exactly. Let's see you people treat Muslims as badly as you do Christians. You know, equal treatment? Tsk.
I'm a Christian and I'm not worried at all about my treatment. Christians that fail to conform to even the most basic approximation of Christ's exmaple deserve all the criticism they get, no Christian can be in favor of institutionalized torture, for instance. The early Christian martyrs went to their deaths rather than violently react to the Roman rulers, modern American Christians seem to think that a bump in gas prices is sufficient to warrant mass murder.
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Posted on wrong poll
Golden Boy did you even read the poll on Muslims? Being a self proclaimed Democrat, you should find pg 47 particularly interesting. It would seem that 63% of American Muslims identify themselves as Democrats and 71% voted for Kerry in the last election. So you really do belong to the "terrorist party", ever consider "becoming" a Republican?
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Probability theory
Well, let's see, RealName...Léopold Senghor could have been your great uncle, or in your zeal to bash liberals, you could have lifted an entire family history straight from the pages of Wiki.
Given your history here, which would you consider more likely?
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Golden Boy says:
"It would be like a poll in Iran that revealed 25% of its own population refused to condemn a nuclear strike on itself (one of al Qaeda's stated plans for Americans.)"
Hmmm .. having atough time following the logic even geographically so I'll just quote from Huckleberry Finn:
"Why, Huck, doan' de French people talk de same way we does?"
"No, Jim; you couldn't understand a word they said -- not a single word."
"Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?"
"I don't know; but it's so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. S'pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy -- what would you think?"
"I wouldn' think nuff'n; I'd take en bust him over de head -- dat is, if he warn't white. I wouldn't 'low no nigger to call me dat."
"Shucks, it ain't calling you anything. It's only saying, do you know how to talk French?"
"Well, den, why couldn't he say it?"
"Why, he is a-saying it. That's a Frenchman's way of saying it."
"Well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en I doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout it. Dey ain' no sense in it."
"Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?"
"No, a cat don't."
"Well, does a cow?"
"No, a cow don't, nuther."
"Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?"
"No, dey don't."
"It's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't it?"
"Course."
"And ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us?"
"Why, mos' sholy it is."
"Well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a Frenchman to talk different from us? You answer me that."
"Is a cat a man, Huck?"
"No."
"Well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. Is a cow a man? -- er is a cow a cat?"
"No, she ain't either of them."
"Well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of 'em. Is a Frenchman a man?"
"Yes."
"WELL, den! Dad blame it, why doan' he talk like a man? You answer me dat!"
I see it warn't no use wasting words -- you can't learn a nigger to argue. So I quit.
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Americans and bombing civilians
We've got a history of having some relatively tolerant views of "collateral damage" campaigns.
During WWII, US citizens polled higher than British citizens in finding it exceptable to bomb civilian areas. The reason for that, it is speculated, is that the British had been suffering from Nazi air raids over British civilian areas, and this led the people to believe bombing non-military targets was wrong. The US, on the other hand, did not have such an experience.
In other words, the Brits couldn't rationalize attacking civilians because it would justify the Nazi attacks on them. The Americans, however, were able to engage in this rationalization. This is one of the chief critiques that Noam Chomsky has always had of American foreign policy ... we tend not to apply universal prinicples to ourselves.
When thinking of this topic in regards to the conservative movement, Altemeyer's work on the ethnocentrism, double standards, comparmentalized thinking, and hypocritical thinking that is commmon to authoritarians adds another level of understanding.
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I really wonder how that poll would go
Unless American Muslims favor suicide attacks on civilian populations
Really, this would be hard to predict. Obviously, the majority don't believe in attacks on civilians at all, we already have that. Of those who do, as multiple people have mentioned, they may have very specific examples in mind (the same way Dershowitz does when he advocates torture).
And then, there is the problem that the most devout believe that suicide is a grievous sin. This feeling is strong enough that some media outlets, Al Jazeera for example, use the word "martyr" to refer to suicide bombers because they don't want to use the word "suicide" (i.e. they believe using "martyr" is more objective than "suicide").