Looks like I'm going to need another one


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I'm starting this thread to throw random posts in it--usually snarky one-liners without any intellectual content (but not limited to that).

I may not always be obliging in citing where the post came from, so a post could come from any thread.

I refuse to provide top-quality consideration to troll-like behavior and will do so sporadically at best.

Michael

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Don't bash him! Michael says he's a good person!

Bob,

That's enough.

You've had your jollies. So let's stop this crap and get back to ideas.

No doubt many readers out there are interested in the topic, not in this stuff.

For instance, Robert is talking ideas from a point of serious opposition. Not kindergarten-level baiting, like you are starting to do.

Michael

Right on cue you've spectacularly missed the point again.

For instance, Robert is talking ideas from a point of serious opposition.

Sure is. But what he's saying is diametrically opposed to your position, and yet you miss that central point and choose to take pot-shots at me.

Let me spell it out for you:

Robert says:

____________

"If your top priority is getting Muslims to adopt more enlightened attitudes, how many of those 1.6 billion do you suppose you can count on? How many can you reasonably express solidarity with?

If, on the other hand, your top priority is Islamic empire spanning much of the globe in the near future, and individual rights maybe a long while later, how many of those 1.6 billion can you reasonably express solidarity with?"

____________

The implication is that comparitively few can be counted on to "adopt more enlightened attitudes", while we have comparatively many with "top priority is Islamic empire spanning much of the globe in the near future". Which is of course not in agreement with the idea that it's only the radical Islamicist fringe that is a problem.

Try to keep up with the ideas here...

Bob

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More importantly for me, is it worth the effort when someone is not committed to cognitive precision?

Michael

Now, that's some quality humour!

Bob

I quoted this one and deleted the original so I could start the thread with my previous post.

Michael

So let's look at the above and discuss where the "snarky, troll-like" behaviour originated shall we?

Bob

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Bob,

I'm just not going to waste time on you.

This is a good option--so far.

Michael

I think so, MSK. It's working at least as well as those Shell Insect Strips, at least when they first came out.

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Bob,

I'm just not going to waste time on you.

This is a good option--so far.

Michael

Well Michael, I must say, nice deflection attempt.

But let me just end on this note:

You're the one who repeatedly accused me of being a bully. It makes no sense at all, but there's no doubt you're convinced of this. So be it.

However, one of us is just fine with double-tapping an unarmed man even if he posed no physical danger, and the other feels that situations like these are the true tests of whether one values human rights.

I really really think you need to reflect on this.

Don't think I'll be back.

Bob

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Bob,

I'm just not going to waste time on you.

This is a good option--so far.

Michael

Well Michael, I must say, nice deflection attempt.

But let me just end on this note:

You're the one who repeatedly accused me of being a bully. It makes no sense at all, but there's no doubt you're convinced of this. So be it.

However, one of us is just fine with double-tapping an unarmed man even if he posed no physical danger, and the other feels that situations like these are the true tests of whether one values human rights.

I really really think you need to reflect on this.

Don't think I'll be back.

Bob

Bringing the guy to trial would have resulted in his execution, placing him in the same category as Timothy McVeigh. Treating like a combatant in a war is a higher level of respect. As such even unarmed it might be okay to waste him. Depends. To capture him and make him a POW raises problems, so he'd probably be turned over to a military court mixing up these categories. Maybe he might have been turned over to Saudi Arabia after the war had been won? I dunno. It's a real war but it violates the US Constitution making it an illegal one, but what authority is saying so? If this war in Afghanistan was about respecting human rights, there wouldn't be a war. By the very nature of what it is doing at home and abroad the US government is grossly violating rights including the rights of its own citizens. To then complain about not treating this purported bin Laden with respect respecting his rights is simply beside the point and trite, Bob.

--Brant

the reason you blow a guy's head off is those with you and about you can't see who it really is leaving DNA only--what a joke!

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Brant,

I am starting to think there is a real difference between a true individualist mentality and a tribal one.

I notice that the people who insist that bin Laden be given a trial are HUGE admirers of authority as their moral base. I can understand this out of a Muslim, since his own religion is based on submitting to a final top authority as his standard of justice. When I see this out of people who are not within a culture like that, though, I start thinking that they want the Big Brother authority as their moral standard because they like to imagine themselves as part of those in charge of Big Brother.

Michael

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I am starting to think there is a real difference between a true individualist mentality and a tribal one.

I notice that the people who insist that bin Laden be given a trial are HUGE admirers of authority as their moral base. [...]

So the ones who want individuals judged for their individual behavior, according to at least an attempt at objective standards of evidence and law, are the tribalists? The ones who don't admire a mob hit are "huge admirers of authority"? You're making no sense here.

In any event, I disrupt your observation by noting that I, the anarcho-capitalist who detests authority, am among those who wanted bin Laden (and anyone else) to have a trial.

Even Adolf Eichmann, with ten-thousand-fold more blood on his hands than bin Laden, got a trial.

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Bob,

I'm just not going to waste time on you.

This is a good option--so far.

Michael

Well Michael, I must say, nice deflection attempt.

But let me just end on this note:

You're the one who repeatedly accused me of being a bully.

Point of fact. Michael Stuart Kelly dislikes (if not hates) bullying, bullies and bully rhetoric. He has written a lot on this subject/word over the years.

But here's the thing -- he has not repeatedly accused you of being a bully. I don't think he has ever accused you of being a bully. I spent a half hour searching the archives to check my memory -- going back a year.

So the rest of the horseshit argument falls apart. If by your final comment here ('Don't think I'll be back') you mean you are flouncing from OL, I am of two minds. If you feel you cannot get a fair hearing or treatment from OL's owner and leader, you would only be frustrated by sticking around, so I support a departure that preserves your peace of mind. On the other hand, if it means that you are simply bailing on the thread, I wish you wouldn't. I wish you could put meat on the bones of your contention: show us where Michael repeated accused you of being a bully.

Because, from my point of view, your charge is false. Do you want to head out the door of a thread or the list itself with a false charge?

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So the ones who want individuals judged for their individual behavior...

Steve,

Judged by whom?

The collective authority?

Or do you have another judge in mind?

After a certain point of obviousness, there is no reason to have such an authority.

Do we need a trial by government to find out whether Osama bin Laden really was a mass murderer? Come on.

This is precisely why I believe the concept of justice as a priority for killing him is all wrong. We primarily made an act of war against him. And you kill folks in war. That's why it's called war.

The only thing a trial does in this case--from what I see--is sanction the central authority, the government, as the arbitrator of reality, not just the arbitrator of justice.

Orwell's "war is peace" comes to mind. (I.e., we pretend war is peace by imposing a trial structure on it.)

And for the record, Eichmann was captured and the war was over when he got his trial. He didn't get one while he was still fighting.

But since he was a high commander in the Nazi government, I would have had no problem with a summary execution. A trial was not needed to ascertain whether he really was a Nazi leader, nor whether the Nazi's really killed innocents in concentration camps. That trial was primarily a formality to sanction a collective authority, not primarily an act of justice.

The only reason a trial structure exists before punishment is to correctly ascertain guilt to make sure innocent people are not punished. It does not exist to grant the rights of civilized people to monsters.

A person who has openly waged war on you and killed masses of civilians does not need a trial to prove he really did it--not when he has basked in the news of his killing, has continued to make threats and has kept up the killing for years.

Trial for what? To pay for salaries of judges and court officials with taxes? To pretend that if an authority says it, it must be real? I see no other reason.

I admit, I am not a nice person if someone comes after my family (including me) with intent to kill. I don't give a damn about justice in that case. I will weigh my options and take the killer out if I can, then worry about justice later.

There's an exception. If he surrenders of his own volition, like say, from remorse, I'll go with justice first in that case.

I am the authority, and so are you, not the government. The government serves us, not the other way around.

Michael

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William,

I called that dude a bully a couple of times when I had to intervene in his bullying of others. He used to talk about smacking people upside the head and things like that, in addition to low-level taunts, when they disagreed with him. So I told him to stop bullying.

And I remember another occasion when he started up again after being OK for a while. I told him there was no sense in him trying to bully others here on OL in a game he could not win, so knock it off.

Michael

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Robert says:

____________

"If your top priority is getting Muslims to adopt more enlightened attitudes, how many of those 1.6 billion do you suppose you can count on? How many can you reasonably express solidarity with?

If, on the other hand, your top priority is Islamic empire spanning much of the globe in the near future, and individual rights maybe a long while later, how many of those 1.6 billion can you reasonably express solidarity with?"

____________

The implication is that comparatively few can be counted on to "adopt more enlightened attitudes", while we have comparatively many with "top priority is Islamic empire spanning much of the globe in the near future". Which is of course not in agreement with the idea that it's only the radical Islamicist fringe that is a problem.

For what it's worth, I don't claim to know what percentage of those who profess Islam would meet all of LM's stated standards for truly understanding the religion and being a good Muslim.

Nor do I know what percentage of professed Muslims are in favor of a caliphate, conquest in the name of their religion, or some other manifestation of the drive for Islamic empire.

My highly limited knowledge suggests that both groups are minorities among professed Muslims.

My worry is that at the present time the second group may significantly outnumber the first.

Robert Campbell

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