Contemplating the sin of getting between a tractor and my truck. That and counting the days 'til the cast comes off.
Growing older doesn’t seem to correlate to growing wiser… least not in my case.
Oh no!! Maybe it’s just that your good luck ran out. Sounds like you’re lucky to be alive.
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This event was not obscure, it was widely reported and advertised on the Internet....how else did the two guys in Arizona hear about it?
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These weren’t local jihadis reading the local paper. I’ll bet the event, pre-attack, rattled cages as far away as Syria.<<<
How novel is it for Jihadist terrorists to … target people who express views different from their own and their criminal leaders. Don’t they place “offenders” on a “must eliminate” list.
Baloney. I would be willing to bet that the VAST majority of people who became aware of this event only learned of it after the attacks. I live in Dallas and didn’t know anything about it until after the fact and never heard of Pam Geller either until this happened.
And in any case, one would still have had to actively seek out these images in order to be offended by them. It was a small venue in a town most people in the world have never heard of. It would have been a complete non event had the radical idiots just ignored it.
I think Geller was already on their list because of her previous books and speeches. I seem to remember her being denied entry to the UK a couple years back because of Muslim opposition to her giving a speech at an event there.
Similar to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Some people just don’t believe in free speech when it goes against them.
I attend lots of religious meetings and when we discuss areas where our religion is being denigrated, we address how to protest this, how to lobby the local, state or federal govts to take action.
Let me just say that, if someone portrayed our religion in an appropriate way and held an event to do so, we would have a silent protest lined up there. No one would bring a gun.
OK, but don’t come telling me how this is a Christian nation.
I find this an interesting discussion, because of the straw men that will not die. I guess there are a few people who are willing to say that what Geller did was a positively good thing–but many continue to argue primarily that she was within her rights to do it, which nobody has disagreed with.
Why must we apply a moral judgment to what Geller did?
From a legal standpoint, Geller was in the right and the extremists were (dead) wrong. What more do you need?
I call 'em like I see 'em. That’s all.
“I recall seeing a quote by her that she is specifically not talking about all Muslims.”
Yes she claims to be merely anti-jihad and anti- sharia but what she says in a broadcast interview and what she and her organization do off camera is another matter.
She has a long record of hyping anti-Muslim hysteria, campaigning against Muslims’ rights to build mosques and worship in this country, smearing innocent people who are Muslim as jihadists, routinely conflating Islamist radicalism with all Islam.
She is no champion for the First Amendment.
I no longer live in Dallas but I also never heard of this event nor heard of Geller or her group. I was aware of the Dutch politician as his voice has resonated in the parts where family members are witnessed firsthand the impact of the growing expansionism and intolerance of Islam.
The conflation is always wrong. Sooner or later, 1/3 of the world’s population will be Muslim, and a similar number will be in a new Europe. It is pure lunacy or heresy to conflate ALL Muslim with their radical factions.
Just as it pure lunacy to conflate zealots such as Geller with the reasonable and well-educated people who can make the difference between Jihadists, criminals, religious zealots and the Muslim population in general, AND recognize the dangers of the growth of the radicals and the danger of an expanding Shariah on our culture and lifestyle.
Extreme views should not mask the real problems, or being used as excuses to dismiss the arguments altogether.
I find it equally interesting, and part of it due to the repeated dismissive claims of “straw men” by the … opposing side.
The fact about the “good thing” of Geller’s actions and positions is irrelevant. All she needs is to believe that SHE thinks it is a good thing to “expose” the dangers of radical Islam, or perhaps Islam in general. We are going back to Voltaire or the even better Oscar Wilde version about having the right to express views and seen as a lunatic.
The difference remains, and despite its spirited defense via the straw men, is that there are people who express support to the view that the reaction of the criminals was prompted by the obvious provocation, and that the organizers were … wrong to hold the event, and wrong to exercise their RIGHT to deride the questionable tenets of a religion.
Again, I am not sure why it is so hard for see their stated opinions for what they are. In the end, it is pretty simple. It is not that Geller’s event was a good thing; it’s all about labeling it … bad thing as a de facto conclusion.
But xiggi, you just made the exact same straw man arguments again. The issue of whether what Geller did is a good thing or not isn’t irrelevant–it’s the specific point that I’ve been addressing over and over. I don’t think it was a good thing, even though I think she was entirely within her legal rights to do it, and that the people who attacked her event were entirely wrong to attack her.
And I don’t think labeling it as wrong was a “de facto conclusion.” I think it was wrong because it was based on bad motives, and that it was primarily designed to hurt and insult others–I also think it was designed to elicit responses, and if it was designed to elicit a violent response, there must be some setting at which that would be irresponsible, even if still legal.
@ Bay-
Geller has a first amendment right to do the stuff she does, but that does not mean what she is saying is necessarily useful or doing anything but riling people up. Geller is someone who is a professional agitator, and her entire schtick is that muslims as a whole are terrorists, jihadists, wanting to bring Sharia to the US, you name it, and it is vile. It is one thing to point out the failings of a religion, to point out that for example the Q’Ran has things in it that are not even matters of interpretation, the same what that the Bible has a lot of things in it that quite frankly are vile and have caused others serious harm and death (for example, in the gospel of Matthew, the overt anti semitism of it was on of the causes of the anti semitism that dogged Jews for thousands of years and was part of why the Holocaust happened, it basically says the Jews as a people were responsible for the death of Christ). When people criticize the Catholic hierarchy and the vatican for how badly they have handled the abuse crisis, it is not denigrating Catholics or the faith.
As far as the extremists being wrong, of course they are, but trying to say that Geller therefore was okay is to me two different issues. Criticizing Geller doesn’t mean you agree with the extremists who committed this act, criticizing Geller is basically saying that in some ways she is no different than the extremists, that instead of bringing up valid issues to talk about, her basis was hate, and therefore in many ways is the same thing that drove the extremists to act. Geller isn’t offering constructive criticism, what she is doing is deliberately enflaming hate, what she did to me would be no different than if a neo nazi group put on an exhibit with cartoons offensively depicting Jews, Blacks, gays, whatever, and I think that is where hunt is coming from. Neo Nazi expression is legal, too, but doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t treat it with the contempt it deserves.
And of course, there is the hypocrisy, Geller is part of the hard right, one of whose operating mantras is that the US is a “Christian Nation” and that the law should reflect Christian values, things like banning legal same sex marriage, things like banning not only abortion, but certain forms of birth control, laws regulating private sexual behavior, or allowing 'Christians" to use their faith to discriminate against others they don’t like, so they are whining about muslims wanting to bring shariah when they basically want the Christian form of that…
The first amendment exists because it can be very hard to discern between civil discourse and good use of free speech, and the use of free speech to hurt others or to be deliberately uncivil, the founders knew that so they made it hard to burden it. On the other hand I suspect they also hoped people would use speech civilly, though why I don’t know, if you think politics is dirty today, doesn’t hold a patch to what it was like back in the founding decades:). The beauty of free speech is you can hate what someone says, and use free speech to make that quite clear.
This has been the underlying message – written or unwritten here. It is painted with the same colors than the ones who intimated --no straw men-- that Geller’s purpose was to incite violence, that she got what she deserved, that it was criminal to put the life of some in peril, and similar non-sense!
And that is simply wrong. The extremists do not need provocation nor justification. The extremists are gun-toting criminals. Their incitation to violence comes from their own leaders.
I do not think so, but that is what makes this discussion and its interpretations interesting. I really think people talk by each other as they want to keep it a black and white issue. The foundation is simple: everything Geller’s event advocated is wrong and despicable. And, that in fact, might be … wrong. Beyond the veneer of despicable obnoxiousness (and perhaps arrogance) one could find reasons to pay attention to what the participants or organizers think.
In the end, I also believe that people are simply agreeing that drawing cartoons of Mohamet is wrong on all accounts, and that the best path is to accept the positions of the mild and radical muslims without further questioning. This is the way “we” ended accepting that the wearing of niqab or hijab is a clearly established part of their religious texts.
I wrote about looking at Europe for omens. The result of kowtowing to deluded religious zealots and adopting a path of least resistance is now visible and tangible. Huntington wrote about the upcoming clash of civilizations, but the clash might be of a different nature altogether.
If we deplore some deeply offensive depiction of Jesus or the Virgin Mary are we “kowtowing” to religious sensibilities that shouldn’t have any consideration in regard to expression of our First Amendment rights?
Can we be considerate without kowtowing?
I was just visiting my Dad and he brought out his Ipad and insisted I watch the sketch I’d missed from SNL this past weekend:
It’s celebrity Pictionary, and the first couple guesses their clue immediately. The second couple draws the category “Trendsetters.” The clue is: “The Prophet Muhammed.” Of course, the husband balks, and his wife (Reese Witherspoon) is yelling at him to get started. The “celebrity” does a trade with the husband and he (Kenan Thompson playing Family Matters’ Reginald VelJohnson) is shocked when he sees the clue.
If you feel like it:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/snl-takes-on-the-fear-of-drawing-muhammad/
ETA: I see in the comments that SNL is being accused of lifting the skit from a Canadian show.
I don’t have to analyze and make a judgment about the personal motivations of every protester I see in order to decide whether they are entitled to make their protest.
If someone is marching and carrying a sign to increase the minimum wage, what difference does it make to me whether that protester secretly hopes a higher wage will put her despised brother in law out of business, if she wants a higher wage anyway?
That is how I see Geller, whom I’d never heard of before this event. Which I do see as a protest against the threat of dangerous religious beliefs. Something I already oppose.
And I don’t have to refrain from noticing that something that quacks like a duck is almost certainly a duck. Look, if any of you think that baiting Muslim extremists in the hopes that some of them will fall into your trap and try to attack you is a good thing, you are entitled to think that. But I wish you’d knock off ascribing some ulterior motives to those of us who think it’s an immoral thing to do.
Here’s a little thought experiment. Let’s assume an artist has painted a picture of Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha sitting down together for a friendly cup of tea. The artist wants to exhibit this in an art gallery. Do I think his act is immoral? No. Although some Muslims may not like any depiction of Mohammed, that particular picture suggests a motive that I don’t think is immoral. Should the public display of such a picture be prohibited? Of course not. If an extremist Muslim attacked the gallery, would the attack be deserved? Of course not. Does it require some kind of superhuman power of discernment to distinguish this situation from Geller’s? I don’t think so.