THE LEPERS OF OBJECTIVISM


Barbara Branden

Recommended Posts

Mark, you understood only one issue in my posts, that I am "against a swift and thorough elmination of the whole of terrorist nations." You are correct. I am opposed to mass murder.

I see no way to make myself further understood. Nor do I require your lectures on the meaning of Objectivism. So I shall bow out of this discussion with you.

Barbara

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mark cited something like 18 tracts from the Koran. And there are more things in there that are heinous, or at least just frigging stupid.

Same with the Bible. Same with most religious text. They are usually filled with both beauty, and horrors. That's where hermenutics comes in handy. They have to be studied in full context in order to get any kind of a feel for what's what. It's hard work, and the common man rarely has the means, motive, or opportunity to do so. Usually, they are at the influence of their immediate contacts within the ecclesiastic world.

The Bible, of course, is neck-to-neck with the Koran as far as, well, let's just say there's stuff in there I wouldn't use for kiddie bedtime stories. On the other hand, great beauty. Very much so in the Gnostic Scriptures too.

Hmm...I've seen that before somewhere, outside of religion: where could that be? :cool:

So do we throw out the baby with the bathwater?

I'll say this again: True religious sentiment does not, ever, support violence, abuse, subjugation, or killing. So I believe, anyway; just like I don't think Objectivism supports genocide.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think Mark has made some good posts here, and that people are not as far apart in their opinions as they might seem. Mark doesn't want to fight ideas with force, but the thing is, in this conflict, Atilla and the Witch Doctor are the same guy! Those pointy-fingered clerics are military leaders. We cannot let militants hide behind a protective cloak of religion, or literally take refuge in a mosque or madrassah. Is this principle really something that Michael or Barbara would disagree with? Instead of accusing each other of fighting straw men or of misrepresenting other's views, let's acknowledge areas of agreement.

I'm not going to suggest an answer to the problem of radical Islam because I really don't have an answer. But I wish we could stop bickering about it and realize that we all share the same core values. Nobody's advocating genocide; nobody's advocating the destruction of American mosques (correct me if I'm wrong...).

We are in a tough situation, because those Islamists who say they want to destroy Western civilization really aren't that strong! If we chose, we could easily annihilate them. But we choose not to, because we don't want to kill so many innocent people in the process. If they were more of a threat and if we had already incurred a heavier cost in lost lives, ironically, it would be easier to defeat them because we would be past the point of worrying about their civilians. Look at Japan.

Michael says we already won two wars handily. But did we? Did anyone surrender? I think that's the problem; it's not like Japan, where the Emperor told everyone to stop fighting. Occupying a nation before they've surrendered is a difficult situation.

I think any solution has to include the idea of not enabling them, not helping them to become stronger, containing the threat, while exposing them to positive ideas that will eventually change the culture. It's not going to happen overnight.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Laure, always the voice of reason, true that!

Nobody's advocating genocide;

Well, maybe so, although I've read a few who didn't seem adverse to it.

Biddle, though, again:

'All Iranian mosques and madrassahs, and the residences of all Iranian...imams [and] clerics. Hit these targets when they are most likely to be occupied (e.g., mosques during the day and residences at night).'"

Yeah, genocide is a little more of a large-scale undertaking than that. This here is more like a warmup. Certainly every bit as callous, just not the same breadth and depth. What the heck, so we blow up a few regular churchgoers and such?

Laure said it: the problem is much more complex. The principles of war are very different now. Of course, perhaps, given that, Biddle agreed and proposed this Machiavellian-style tactic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The argument that it is altruistic not to have dropped nuclear bombs on Iraq instead of invading it to spare the lives of American troops, refuses to acknowledge that there would have been a bigger sacrifice involved in doing such a thing. (I'm talking only about the invasion, not the subsequent occupation.) Genocide in search of a philosophy sometimes lands on Objectivism and makes a mess.

--Brant

Edited by Brant Gaede
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Laure,

I don't object to taking out military leaders when they double as religious leaders. I don't even object to bombing places of worship when they are proven military centers of operation.

What I do object to is preaching wholesale killing of an entire population--and that is what was being preached. At least, that is how I interpret phrases like "corrupted beyond repair" and "like those afflicted with a deadly plague" and so forth. My difficulty is that people were and are preaching genocide in the name of Objectivism.

I am an Objectivist. Let them speak for themselves. They do not speak for me.

I also object to the oversimplification and cowardice I detect in many people who advocate preemptive nuking. They don't want to understand anything about the situation beyond what some guru or another at ARI (or sympathizers) preaches. They certainly don't want to do anything and they cower in fear, but with macho rhetoric, behind any self-styled leader who preaches the virtues of nuclear weapons.

There is a serious problem in the world and it is dangerous and it must be solved. Preemptive nuking will not solve it. It will unite a very disperse culture of over a billion people. That is a reality that is ignored constantly in these debates. Islam is a tribal mentality and despite the factions, if they perceive genocide of a country of one of their own, they will unite. If that ever happens, those who blank this fact out will finally understand what the number one billion means in concrete terms of people.

The ARI faction preaches Japan's plight as a solution and blanks out the fact that Japan had a small population and a leader all Japanese bowed to. The South in the Civil War had a small population and a President and General Lee who spoke for them.

Islamism has nothing similar. It is in several countries and is trying to grow in other environments where there is an intellectual war that needs to be waged. This is a whole different problem with an entirely different reality.

I learned to solve problems by isolating the trouble spots and working on each part in a specialized manner. Not just blowing up as much as possible and hoping for the best while blanking out the details.

Here are the problems I see so far, just from off the top of my head. But there are many others.

1. A fanatical minority faction within one of the world's major religions (10-15% according to Daniel Pipes). The reality of these factions is completely misunderstood by the ARI-type Objectivists at the present. For instance, they are not as united as they seem. There is no "one" enemy. There are several enemies. To the extent they use force, they need to be dealt with by force. I completely agree with Bush's present policy of addressing the situation of not letting them arm themselves with nuclear weapons. I also see signs of a willingness to strike Iran to destroy that capacity and I fully support that.

I also would support an accumulation of intelligence where Iran has funded and trained terrorists and using this as basis for a retaliatory strike against those guilty, including the government.

2. There is a huge Muslim population that could swing either way. If an Islamist country is subjected to genocide, the "us against them" mentality will undoubtedly wipe out their reservations against fanaticism and actually convince them that they better band together to survive. If an Islamist country is punished for obvious abuses it has committed (like Iraq), they feel that is just and fair. They don't proclaim this for many reasons, but they also do nothing, which is a strong indication of how they feel. These are normal people like you and me who happen to be born where they were born. They want to live constructive lives in peace and have no urge whatsoever to conquer the world. This is the area where I submit that the intellectual war needs to be waged.

3. On the USA side, the problem is not so much altruism, although I do admit that there is an small (not humongous like what is being preached) overdose of that. It is what I call the "remote control mentality." People in Western countries are losing contact with reality. They think that watching something on TV or the Internet is the same thing as what it is. This is not a cognitive problem, but an emotional one. I can best describe it by the phrase, "I am tired of that war. It has gone on too long. It's time to change the channel or click on another link and see something else." Our intellectuals need to focus on this just as much as they rant and rage against altruism.

4. Related to the problem above is the overwhelming irrational fear generated by the communications media. A terrorist attack is a danger, a very real one, but not nearly as great as what people are portraying. The problem with the 9/11 attack was not the number of people killed. We constantly have more than that on our highways and nobody hardly even mentions that. It is that the best and brightest of our population was attacked. That makes people very insecure and the media plays on that.

5. Back to the enemy side, but related to the above in another manner. There is a wide array of easily portable and highly deadly means of killing people that could be used by terrorists. They go from biological to chemical to explosives to nuclear. The only one that has been exploited so far is explosives via suicide bombers and planted bombs. But in general, this is an area where I think our military and intelligence agencies are doing a wonderful job. They are not working from a general "one size fits all" mentality. They isolate the elements, monitor suppliers, buyers, carriers, etc. It is a lot of work and that is the only way to do that job. I think they need to be praised.

6. Back to us. For as much as Objectivists do not like to address the following issue, there is an enormous backlog of accumulated sins by the American government in foreign policy and a firmly entrenched "old-boy" mentality in dividing up the spoils of third-world countries. Rand usually said that some issue or the other--like whether it was proper to burn a draft card--was not appropriate to discuss because at that moment the country was at war. This is one such issue (for the most part), but it is a very serious problem and it will not go away by ignoring it. Preparations need to be made now--right now--for how to deal with it once the hostilities are abated.

7. Related to the last, one area where this can be addressed is in the protracted occupation of a country. If we were to rebuild a country properly, we would close the borders. Islamist influence should not allowed easy access to a people undergoing the privations of reconstruction. From what I can see, there is no interest by our government in getting the real work done, but in doling out fat contracts to cronies instead. Our soldiers are being killed for that and it has to stop. I am actually for a more heavy-handed approach to rebuilding the country. It would work. But walking away is also an option. This last runs the risk of watching an Islamist government take over, but then we could take that government apart once again if it got dangerous.

This is just a start. Each area has its own problems and realities. The main principles I use in my own thinking about the solutions is (1) Force needs to be met with force and ideas need to be met with ideas; (2) Active engagement of the enemy includes intellectual efforts, not just force; and (3) People in general are essentially good regardless of where they were born and they can be swayed by reason.

One general theme I see permeating the ARI approach is that its spokespeople wish to blank out engagement with an alien ideology, pretend that it does not exist, and when that is no longer possible, bomb those who think differently because some of the members of that ideology want to bomb others who think differently than they do.

This is pure tribalism. One bombing another without intellectual engagement. (Actually, the Islamists are more organized with schools, etc.. They are growing by our default.)

ARI preaches to the choir and it preaches easy war and genocide. It does not preach to Muslims who are not really swayed by the enemy, thus it does nothing to advance the purpose of making this world a safer place to live in.

I know about fear, too. I have e-mails from Objectivists who do not want to get involved with an intellectual effort among Muslims because they worry about becoming targets of the fanatics.

That, I submit, is the main source of all the saber-rattling. There is no intellectual war from Objectivist quarters because we won't fight it because we are yellow. The rants against altruism, etc., are merely window-dressing.

Well I am stepping up. Some others are also.

As for the rest, please stay out of our way. We have a job to do.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Laure,

From an Objectivist standpoint, Brook and Epstein's article opposing just war theory, Biddle's various pronouncements, and the other statements about war coming out of the Ayn Rand Institute are most peculiar, on account of their heavy reliance on the concept of a nation. Though she occasionally referred (not all that clearly, IMHO) to "national self-interest" and "national security," Rand didn't talk all that much about nations otherwise. I suspect this was because she considered the notion of a nation more than a little collectivistic.

The ARI writers' methodological nationalism particularly impedes their comprehension of what has been happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.

You noted that

Michael says we already won two wars handily. But did we? Did anyone surrender? I think that's the problem; it's not like Japan, where the Emperor told everyone to stop fighting. Occupying a nation before they've surrendered is a difficult situation.

Iraq under Saddam was a nation in the same sense that Yugoslavia under Tito was a nation. What kept "Yugoslavs" from fighting one another was fear of a dictator. With Tito gone, Yugoslavia fractionated along ethnic and religious lines; with Kosovo not yet formally independent of Serbia, the process is still incomplete.

The ARI writers insist on treating Iraq as a unified entity, as though being enclosed within boundaries drawn by the British and the French in 1920 when they were carving up chunks of the Ottoman empire, and being ruled from some compound in Baghdad, somehow gives Iraqis a significant common identity. Consequently, they never specify what complete "surrender" by the "Iraqi nation" would have required.

In the end, Iraq may well break up into three countries, one mainly Shi'ite, one mainly Sunni, and one mainly Kurdish. It might have been better for Dubya et al. to anticipate this possibility before going to war there, and it certainly does American and British soldiers no good to order them to keep getting in the middle of a civil war. As it stands now, all American and British troops could be airlifted out tomorrow, and various Sunni and Shi'ite militias would be so busy blowing one another up that they would scarcely miss them.

As for Afghanistan, the British Raj couldn't subjugate it in the 1840s or the 1870s. The Red Army couldn't subjugate it in the 1980s. When Afghanistan had a king, he had to share power with tribal chieftains and local warlords. At the height of their dominion, the Taliban came well short of controlling the entire country. Running off the Taliban army and eliminating the Taliban governments in Kabul and in various provinces was one thing; getting the entire "Afghan nation" to "surrender" would be quite another.

Robert Campbell

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Before I make one final comment, I need to express my dismay at the general angle from which some of the posts approach the problem. The solutions presented are likely to be ineffective at best, and terribly costly to America in terms of lives lost and monetary losses. I was also dismayed that Michael deleted my last post. I must have struck a nerve.

Well I was about to delete my account here, when I read Laure’s post. She states the facts eloquently and in a manner consistent with what I believe to be correct. Her first paragraph hits squarely dead-center on the issue. Her third paragraph recognizes the need for us to act in the interest of the US, by preserving our soldiers’ lives and by hitting the enemy so hard that they will have no choice but surrender.

The forth paragraph illustrates the futility of our current military activity in Iraq. We’re wasting lives—our own soldiers’ lives here.

Now if there were only a magical way that we could contain the threat, while re-educating them. Certainly it will not happen with those who are adults and steeped in Islamic idealism. Our only chance is to educate their children. But the whole scenario is impractical. Already, our efforts at ‘nation building’ have turned sour—their elections were a disaster, voting in ‘more of the same’, and there is little change to the fundamentalism.

My complaint is with the notion that we should be obligated to tread lightly in our war on terror and protect civilians, when the process of doing so means that instead of turning some keys and pressing some buttons, we now have to commit 150,000 troops, billions of dollars per year of tax money, and spend decades with this ‘nation building’, which may turn out to be an utter and total failure anyway.

On the surface, Michael’s desire to tread lightly in war seem noble, but he is turning the situation into the sanction of the victim by forcing the US to sacrifice troops instead of bombs.

My stance on this issue is that the US government’s responsibility is ONLY to US citizens. We pay the taxes—not the enemy civilians. Therefore, our government should fight the war in the most efficient manner, with the minium of US lives lost. Fighting a “just” war is inconsistent with responsible government. We’re not in the business of saving other nations from themselves. We’re in business to protect ourselves. Whatever we must do, to that end, is morally-justifiable, so long as it is in defence of US lives and done in the manner that it spares the most US lives. No other lives matter, in this context.

Edited by Mark Weiss
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On the surface, Michael’s desire to tread lightly in war seem noble, but he is turning the situation into the sanction of the victim by forcing the US to sacrifice troops instead of bombs.

Mark,

Very respectfully, I wish you would not attribute things like "treading lightly in war" to me. I didn't write these things and I don't endorse them.

If you really need to complain about people who do hold these ideas, I can find some for you. We can start with the LaRouchies.

I, Michael, was very clear that I loved the way the USA went in and completely dismantled the military capacity of the governments of two countries in record time. They did not do that "treading lightly" and it was magnificent to behold (as much as things like such destruction can be magnificent).

I am against what I perceive to be moral cowardice by ARI supporters of refusing to engage Muslims in intellectual terms, hiding behind some rationalized "moral sanction" of blowing up everything in a hostile country and committing wholesale slaughter when the real issue is irrational fear and collectivist thinking.

Let me be clear that I am not accusing you, Mark, of cowardice. Only you know what is in your heart.

Like I said, I have a job to do and I intend to do it.

I don't know how successful I will be, but I do know that there is a universe of like-minded people out there who are willing to do something and the cause is noble. I am already in contact with some of them. ARI people screaming nuke 'em all do not help because I have to apologize for Objectivist fanatics, just like others are apologizing to me for Islamist fanatics.

I will unveil concrete plans in due time. They are taking shape backstage.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On the surface, Michael’s desire to tread lightly in war seem noble, but he is turning the situation into the sanction of the victim by forcing the US to sacrifice troops instead of bombs.

Mark,

Very respectfully, I wish you would not attribute things like "treading lightly in war" to me. I didn't write these things and I don't endorse them.

If you really need to complain about people who do hold these ideas, I can find some for you. We can start with the LaRouchies.

I, Michael, was very clear that I loved the way the USA went in and completely dismantled the military capacity of the governments of two countries in record time. They did not do that "treading lightly" and it was magnificent to behold (as much as things like such destruction can be magnificent).

I am against what I perceive to be moral cowardice by ARI supporters of refusing to engage Muslims in intellectual terms, hiding behind some rationalized "moral sanction" of blowing up everything in a hostile country and committing wholesale slaughter when the real issue is irrational fear and collectivist thinking.

Let me be clear that I am not accusing you, Mark, of cowardice. Only you know what is in your heart.

Like I said, I have a job to do and I intend to do it.

I don't know how successful I will be, but I do know that there is a universe of like-minded people out there who are willing to do something and the cause is noble. I am already in contact with some of them. ARI people screaming nuke 'em all do not help because I have to apologize for Objectivist fanatics, just like others are apologizing to me for Islamist fanatics.

I will unveil concrete plans in due time. They are taking shape backstage.

Michael

Michael,

It is what I read between the lines of your writing, how the implied meaning comes across--that I am responding to. I look at the overall picture you present, not the concrete examples alone. And it appears that your refusal to accept that fighting war with total commitment to neutralizing the enemy, instead raising so much concern about collateral damage, that you come across as 'treading lightly' in war. In my opinion, that is the position of the appeaser, and the position taken by the US already.

We cannot engage Muslims in intellectual terms, because one cannot engage the functionally insane in any intellectual discourse. Religion is a form of psychosis. The very state of mind that enables on to believe in fairies and demons and gods is the state of mind of an insane person. And Muslims in particular, due to the teachings of their Q'uran, are especially militant about their beliefs. That is why I believe that your plan will fail.

I wish you good luck with it, but I have reservations about sacrificing even one more American soldier for this cause, when we can end these states by launching missiles instead.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm going to make some minor edits to Mark Weiss's post, as shown below:

We cannot engage Christians and Jews in intellectual terms, because one cannot engage the functionally insane in any intellectual discourse. Religion is a form of psychosis. The very state of mind that enables one to believe in fairies and demons and gods is the state of mind of an insane person. And Christians and Jews in particular, due to the teachings of their bible, are especially militant about their beliefs. That is why I believe that your plan will fail.

I wish you good luck with it, but I have reservations about sacrificing even one more Muslim soldier for this cause, when we can end the United States by launching attacks against their homeland instead.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wish you good luck with it, but I have reservations about sacrificing even one more American soldier for this cause, when we can end these states by launching missiles instead.

Mark,

Once again, we need to be clear and stop attributing incorrect positions. I have a proposal. Instead of responding to "between the lines," how about responding to the lines themselves? If one consistently gets the lines wrong, how is he able to read in between them correctly?

I have never stated that I am in favor of sacrificing American soldiers and am against using missiles. On the contrary, I am against sacrificing American soldiers and am for using missiles.

My plan is not "this cause," either, whatever that is. I remind you that who is killing our soldiers is not me. I am looking for a permanent solution to the hostilities and what I can do about carrying my share (and I am aware that my part is a small one that hopefully will grow as it gains momentum).

If you want a more thorough explanation of my views on conducting the military part of war, which is not my area of interest (mine being the intellectual part), you have to wait for a review I intend to make of ARI's criticisms of the Just War Theory (especially the Brook and Epstein essay). For now, let me say that I reject both the Just War Theory and ARI's position as impossibly flawed and a false dichotomy to boot.

I find breathtaking moral flaws in the "nuke 'em all" plan (especially collectivist tribalism raising its ugly head), but I find even more wrong with it than that. I sincerely believe that not only will it not work, it will do the contrary. It will unite a fragmented Muslim culture worldwide under a hostile agenda. Simply put, setting aside the immoral collectivism, we can't kill one billion people without killing American soldiers and damaging our planet in some highly unpredictable ways. Reality will not let us.

I categorically reject your hypothesis about the insanity of over one billion people on our planet, although I do see folly in believing in impossible things. I remind you that Christians also believe in impossible things.

Thank you for your well wishes on my plan. I have no doubt it will have some success, hopefully a great deal.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll be very interested in your proposed plan to end these states that sponsor terrorism through the re-education of their citizens, however, I will remain skeptical that any such plan can work until a clear line of reasoning can be presented in support of the theory that it could be achieved.

A press release at the ARI says it well:

"Yet this is perfectly consistent with Bush's Iraq policy, which aims, not to defend U.S. interests, but to sacrifice American wealth, security, and lives in service of Iraqis. So long as the welfare of Iraqis is paramount, there are no grounds for asserting our right to direct our soldiers as we see fit."
Link to comment
Share on other sites

IN case there is any doubt that I do not understand the horrible tragedy of war on civilians--particularly children, I offer a link to the Japanese film Hotaru no Haka (Grave of the Fireflies). Japan, WWII, just before the end of the war. The lives of Seita, and his little sister, Setsuko, who is but 3 or 4 years old. It's in ten parts:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_quer...p;search=Search

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ciro,

I agree with the general tenor of the issues on that site, when issues are presented, but the jingoism and propaganda are so thick that they bury the issues in the presentation. (Nice music, though.)

I forgot to mention one other thing that needs to be addressed, although I keep repeating it. We should stop doing business with our enemies. Our intellectuals need to drive this point home.

This is a matter of simple logic. If you see someone who says he wants to take over the world and you give him billions and billions of dollars and provide high-tech products for him to purchase, what do you think he is going to do?

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I forgot to mention one other thing that needs to be addressed, although I keep repeating it. We should stop doing business with our enemies. Our intellectuals need to drive this point home.

This is a matter of simple logic. If you see someone who says he wants to take over the world and you give him billions and billions of dollars and provide high-tech products for him to purchase, what do you think he is going to do?

I agree wholeheartedly with this!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with the general tenor of the issues on that site, when issues are presented, but the jingoism and propaganda are so thick that they bury the issues in the presentation. (Nice music, though.)

I forgot to mention one other thing that needs to be addressed, although I keep repeating it. We should stop doing business with our enemies. Our intellectuals need to drive this point home.

This is a matter of simple logic. If you see someone who says he wants to take over the world and you give him billions and billions of dollars and provide high-tech products for him to purchase, what do you think he is going to do?

I've discovered a number of sources over the years that present quite reliable information. I hesitate to recommend them to people because they "read like propaganda". I can read them and screen out the tone just as easily as I screen out the ads on web pages, but I fear that the people to whom I recommend them won't be able to do so as easily. Nonetheless, sometimes "propaganda" is "true"! :)

As far as doing business with our enemies -- an excellent idea. I just finished a book the other night that provided a web site that helps one to divest one's portfolio of stocks in companies that do business with terrorists and those who advocate Islamic extremism. Haven't been there yet, but I'm going, I'm going....

Unfortunately, until we can stop using oil, we can't help but do a LOT of business with some of them....

Judith

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We cannot engage Christians and Jews in intellectual terms, because one cannot engage the functionally insane in any intellectual discourse. Religion is a form of psychosis. The very state of mind that enables one to believe in fairies and demons and gods is the state of mind of an insane person.

*sigh*

*shudder*

This is so broad, unfocused, and rife with holes. Staggering.

Now, are there intersects between certain types of religious consciousness and various psychological pathologies? Indeed. But, off the rip, a huge term like "religion" juxtaposed with a huge term like "psychosis," is, well, painfully vague, painfully broad.

I strongly recommend a better circumspection of the topic(s). The good place to start is going back to William James' 1904 "The Varieties of Religious Experience."

This statement I quoted is, above all, intellectually sloppy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We cannot engage Christians and Jews in intellectual terms, because one cannot engage the functionally insane in any intellectual discourse. Religion is a form of psychosis. The very state of mind that enables one to believe in fairies and demons and gods is the state of mind of an insane person.

*sigh*

*shudder*

This is so broad, unfocused, and rife with holes. Staggering.

Now, are there intersects between certain types of religious consciousness and various psychological pathologies? Indeed. But, off the rip, a huge term like "religion" juxtaposed with a huge term like "psychosis," is, well, painfully vague, painfully broad.

I strongly recommend a better circumspection of the topic(s). The good place to start is going back to William James' 1904 "The Varieties of Religious Experience."

This statement I quoted is, above all, intellectually sloppy.

Rich,

I guess you didn't get the joke. The above statement, which I made, was a parody of Mark Weiss's post. What I did was to take his post, which was a rant against Muslims, and transpose Christians and Jews in their place, otherwise leaving the post unchanged. I was attempting to illustrate that, with this transposition, the post would clearly be recognized as bigotry against Christians and Jews. The point being that the original post should be recognized as bigotry against Muslims.

Martin

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rich,

You misunderstood Martin Radwin's post #487. He was parodying Mark's post #486 to highlight the absurdity of Mark's statement.

Here's what Mark wrote:

[Mark Weiss] We cannot engage Muslims in intellectual terms, because one cannot engage the functionally insane in any intellectual discourse. Religion is a form of psychosis. The very state of mind that enables on to believe in fairies and demons and gods is the state of mind of an insane person. And Muslims in particular, due to the teachings of their Q'uran, are especially militant about their beliefs. That is why I believe that your plan will fail.

I wish you good luck with it, but I have reservations about sacrificing even one more American soldier for this cause, when we can end these states by launching missiles instead.

Here's what Martin wrote:

[Martin Radwin parodying Mark] I'm going to make some minor edits to Mark Weiss's post, as shown below:

We cannot engage Christians and Jews in intellectual terms, because one cannot engage the functionally insane in any intellectual discourse. Religion is a form of psychosis. The very state of mind that enables one to believe in fairies and demons and gods is the state of mind of an insane person. And Christians and Jews in particular, due to the teachings of their bible, are especially militant about their beliefs. That is why I believe that your plan will fail.

I wish you good luck with it, but I have reservations about sacrificing even one more Muslim soldier for this cause, when we can end the United States by launching attacks against their homeland instead.

Hint to Martin: The technique you used is always a dangerous one to employ on a discussion list because of the high likelihood that someone(s) or other will read too rapidly and misunderstand your intent.

Ellen

Edit: I see that Martin already corrected Rich's misunderstanding while I was in process of posting.

___

Edited by Ellen Stuttle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, really guys, I got it. I was being lazy and cutting Martin's, er, "Mark" thing. The point I was going after is the religion as psychosis thing, which I did see come out of Mark. Sloppy of me, and sorry, Martin!

Although, to clarify, are there religious pathologicals? Indeedy-o and for sure.

But the blanket version of that is just b.s.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No, really guys, I got it. I was being lazy and cutting Martin's, er, "Mark" thing. The point I was going after is the religion as psychosis thing, which I did see come out of Mark. Sloppy of me, and sorry, Martin!

Although, to clarify, are there religious pathologicals? Indeedy-o and for sure.

But the blanket version of that is just b.s.

Rich,

If religion isn't psychosis, then please tell me what it is?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now