Letters to the Editor
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Don't kid yourself, GasBag
Just because I'm a leftist doesn't mean I'm opposed to violence. I'm no pacifist.
Get over your own bullshit.
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no more role-playing
GB,
Here's the thing. Not everyone here agrees with your conclusion that the poll results are anything to be scared about or even discussed at length. I think that was obvious early on. Plenty of reasonable people here seem to have put the poll results in perspective and found a couple of larger issues to tackle because of that perspective. No one is avoiding you because they are apologizing for Islamic/religious extremism. People are attacking you or ignoring you because you are being very dishonest and you seem to pick and choose when to listen. People here just don't seem to agree with your alarmism. That's why you're not getting whatever it is you need to move forward. The evidence seems to point to the fact that lots of different groups, if polled, will give similar percentages of answers to similar questions of those in the Pew poll. I thought that was closer to the core of this discussion than anything you were focusing on.
Do you see the difference? There's no panic here. What IS here is an attempt to decipher the dishonest BS we are constantly being fed. This poll being published, with no added perspective, no comparison with other groups' opinions about similar issues, is not as useful an analysis of the state of American Non-Muslims versus American Muslims as you think it is.
Standing alone, the poll is startling scary or unimpressive, depending on your own thresholds of panic. When you look at the poll as a piece of a bigger picture of information about how human beings think, it seems to be just slightly short of irrelevent.
~D
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Ignorance and GB
Terrorists such as the thousands who ran into the streets in Paterson and West Paterson NJ cheering as the World Trade Center burned and then even more ran out cheering as they fell..
Not true, speaking as someone who lives near West Paterson. You be fulla crap, KWIM? Far as I know, the only cheerers in NJ area that day were the Israeli movers, based out of Weehawken, who were on the waterfront in Jersey City, pumping their fists and cheering. A few days later, they closed up their moving business and disappeared. (See Antiwar.com archives and/or Fox News archives for info re same.)
And Golden Boy, where are you from? Certainly, not the U.S., judging from your choice of words. Do tell your nativity.
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And if I had threatened you...
which I did not do, you'd have an actionable cause.
But I did not, so you don't. It's not against any rules or laws to tell you to piss off and go away. You have conclusively demonstrated your difficulties with comprehension of the language and see things that aren't there. I suspect that soon you won't be here, either.
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Svensker and TheHallmark
Given the increasingly overt and bizarre threats from LWM, it seems imprudent to say where I'm from ;). Let's just say that I am eligible to become President of the United States.
I must admit that my native tongue is English. I'll hang my head in shame at your no doubt justified criticism of my grammar, spelling, sentence construction etc.
Hallmark, it seems remarkable to me that many progressives continue to deny the reality of Islam, that it is is intolerant, illiberal ideology opposed to everything that we believe in. Even when large percentages (take your pick, 5 to 25%) of Muslims in America say they favor al Qaeda, or simply don't answer the question, we are expectedly to blindly parrot the official line. I hoped (vainly) that some people would engage on those lines.
But maybe it's cause I don't rite sentences real good. :)
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The failure that is Golden Boy
Hallmark, it seems remarkable to me that many progressives continue to deny the reality of Islam
It seems still more remarkable that you are unwilling to accept the 'reality' of Christianity, even as you embrace the 'reality' of Islam.
None of which is any more real or applicable than the "Left Behind" novels or "The Late Great Planet Earth".
You really don't get how big a bloody fool you're making of yourself, do you?
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Terrorist sympathisers in our midst
Somewhat entertaining thread...
Individuals tend to over react to certain threats and ignore others. Americans in particular are incredibly interesting where this phenomenon is concerned.
I'd like to point out that I don't support al queda but one sure can admire how effective they have been.
19 guys with armed with box cutters managed to get America to turn on itself AND attack an entire country that had nothing to do with the result of those box cutter wielding terrorists.
We've sacrificed thousands of our own soldiers and countless billions of dollars in our reaction in our war against a tactic. Our republic now hangs in the balance because we can't do a reasonable risk assessment.
Are we really this weak? I'm afraid that's not a rhetorical question.
I think that certain individuals that display an inability to discern between polls that demonstrate that particular demographics of our society might sympathize with extremist view points and the level of threat that those sympathies will engender is more dangerous to our long term health than those particular extremist sympathies.
In other words, all extremism is a threat but how to we react to it? And, to what weight do we give each form of expression of that extremism?
If we subscribe to the one percent doctrine we act as if all threats, no matter how small, are a certainty. I would posit that that is not a good use of resources and defies common sense.
My particular take is that we use our greatest strengths in a manner consistent for best results. Marines have their place as do investigations. Providing legal process is NOT weakness. Transparency in our reasoning does NOT embolden anyone.
I think we've gone the opposite route. We've turned against reason, and the results speak for themselves.
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Maybe we should define terms
Golden Boy,
1) Would you please tell us of a religious ideology that is tolerant and liberal, so we can understand what you mean?
2) Would you please specify what Islam you are talking about?
BTW, when something is "in the noise", like a 1% result inside a survey that has a 5% margin of error, it means you can't draw conclusions from it, it doesn't mean pick your favorite point inside the error bar to support your point of view. Similarly, when a respondent is listed DK/Refused, it means they didn't give an answer to the question, for their own reasons, not that you can assign any meaning you want to the lack of answer. Assigning meaning to either is an error. You could speculate on lack of responses, which the polling people do to try to alter their technique to maximize the number of completed survey questions, but you can't infer anything from a DK/Refused.
If you commit these errors, your statements are not validly transferred to the whole population. What you end up with, in the case of the Pew sample, is a conclusion valid for exactly 1050 people, not the whole Muslim population.