interesting cartoon

I'm willing to see the flaws in my logic when they're shown to me with evidence and convincing argument.

---San Cho

An argument of complete and utter unassailability is only as strong as the willingness of people to listen to it. You're not. I'm just a hateful, bigotted jerk who refuses to see the light of your obvious wisdom. Well, one night when you see a bright light on the horizon, followed by a mushroom cloud, remember everything you said here. It's that simple.
Allow me to further expose my lowbrow lifestyle; there's a scene at the end of "X-Men III"....Magneto, running from the unleashed, full power of Phoenix/Jean Gray, turns, looks back and says, "What have I done?"
Will that be you, or Baker? I doubt it.

You and Baker make it so complicated, with your semantic arguments and relativism; but it's not. There are people who want to kill you. They will not care that you're trying to understand them and their motives. They will laugh at your efforts here on their behalf; they'll call you fools. Why? Because you are. Intellectual fools who refuse to hear the wisdom of common sense.
Don't worry; it's coming....and people like you won't do anything to stop it. And ,you'll be as gulty when it comes as the ones who did it. Me? Those who think like me? We're clean. We've spent time untold trying to warn you. But no...we're wrong; just hateful, bigotted jerks. Heh. You'll see.

Yet according to the bible, christian theory is essentially socialistic. Oh well. Yet another point I expect ignored.

---San cho

Helping people out and dividing wealth in time of need is one thing....giving all your hard earned scratch to a government that wants to give it to people---often the leaders, at the expense of "The People"---who haven't worked for it is quite another. When Marx is shown to have been a devout Christian, maybe I'll go along....'til then. This is simply "muddying the waters". I'm done.

Evidently the example of other fundamentalists hasn't shown you that you can be totally certain of something and still be wrong.

---Baker

Heh...right back atchya, chief.

So do they, Rightwinger. They know it so certainly that they'll blow themselves up to prove it. You're only certain enough be verbally hateful, I guess.

---Baker

So I should go blow myself up and take a few of them with me and actually, really, become the monster that I oppose. I suppose that would prove your point.
There's still a difference: I'm only willing to kill people I know for a fact are trying to kill me. Otherwise, I'm perfectly willing to live and let live. They're not. That makes me a better person.

It's still simplistic, ignorant, and hateful.

---Baker

Except for the little fact that I'm not out there calling for the violent deaths of millions of inncoent people just because they happen to disagree with me.

you took the bait and became a mirror of what you hate. You expect me to do it with you? Nope. I don't want to be like you, or the fundamentalist Muslims you ape.

---Baker

Yeah, like I didn't see this coming. You're not like me, Baker, so rest easy. I would prefer to try to stand against chaos and violence, rather than warmly embrace its purveyors and try lovingly to understand it, and them.
I see an actual threat where you prefer to see....well....whatever it is you prefer to see. I used to admire your intellect Baker; now that I see how wide open your mind is, I see how small it makes your brain. The sad arrogance of the intellectual elite.

Okay....tell you what....when Jews, Christians of all stripes, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Wiccans, Scientologists, whatever....start blowing themselves up for no good reason other than to kill as many as possible of a people they hate, I'll agree with every little point you've made here.
Unitl then, no go.....such utterly hate-based religious violence might not be a common part of the Religion of Peace, but it's enough, and it's not a part of any other faith that I've ever heard.

"There's still a difference: I'm only willing to kill people I know for a fact are trying to kill me. Otherwise, I'm perfectly willing to live and let live. They're not. That makes me a better person.

Calling other people's religion a "cancer" is just a hair short of calling the people themselves a cancer. That's not being a better person, that's being a low-calorie hateful, or just scared to admit the truth.

"Except for the little fact that I'm not out there calling for the violent deaths of millions of inncoent people just because they happen to disagree with me."

Come on. You call Islam a cancer, and then expect people to think you just want to "live and let live"? What kind of monster would see the world being overtaken by a "cancer" and not want to do something about it? You don't want your "cancer" cured?

Just because you don't have the guts to say it out loud doesn't mean it isn't reeking there between the lines.

"Unitl then, no go.....such utterly hate-based religious violence might not be a common part of the Religion of Peace, but it's enough, and it's not a part of any other faith that I've ever heard."

You have no clue, because the only terror you bother paying attention to is Islamic in nature. Like I said, the patent definition of terrorism to me is someone who doesn't differentiate between the guilty and innocent, and lashes out indiscriminately to create fear and intimidation. The rhetoric I see coming out of you, though sanitized, isn't much different than that I see translated from Al Jazeera.

You don't differentiate much between Muslims that preach hate and the ones that blow them up. Why should it matter whether or not YOU blow people up, or just preach hate? I would suggest anyone who thinks I am overshooting sit and try to imagine how Rightwinger would respond to a Muslim that called Christianity a "cancer" here at JU.

You don't differentiate much between Muslims that preach hate and the ones that blow them up.

---Baker

Hate is one thing; hate me all you want. You're only hurting yourself. Violence and/or murder in the name of hate is another.
Up til 9/11, I could really have given a crap about Islamics; they were haters and murderers and I saw long ago that there was no way to reason with them, but I pitied them.
Hey----I even liked a couple; Sallah on the Indiana Jones movies was cool....Azzeem, Morgan Freeman on that Robin Hood filck was okay....a history-bending nod to PC, of course, but it was Hollywood. Y'know.

Their hate may have been real, but their murder was more or less piecemeal and small-scale. Here and there. On 9/11, they went professional in a big way, and suddenly their hate and murder affected me and mine. That changed my attitude a lot.
They killed 3,000+ innocent people, pretty much in one fell swoop, just because of what our country and its people believe and/or support. Know what that's called? That's called an act of war.

Baker, you see no difference between attitude or perspective, and action. I'm just as bad as they are because I call their religion a cancer. I think it is....why? The evidence of my own eyes and ears. You refuse to see or even to acknowledge that evidence. In fact, you compare it to the tenets other religions. Fine. Know what that's called? That's called equivalency. That's called relativism.
You go ahead and do what you want. When the storm comes, I hope someone who's acknowledged the gathering clouds graciously offers you an umbrella. You probably wouldn't take it, though.

To some, Christianity is a cancer. Maybe it was, a thousand years ago, back when our present situation was theirs. Maybe on some level it was, but it's matured. Changed. And so has weaponry. A catapault loaded with rocks or flaming wood chunks is one thing; a small nuke in the back of a Ryder truck is quite another.

Their faith doesn't much seem to allow them to mature. Instead it seems to encourage them to hold onto all that hate and injury and poison from generations and generations ago. Christianity, on the other hand, favors forgiveness and love.

As I pointed out above, you yourself said that one of Islam's problems was that it hadn't had its Reformation. I honsetly don't think it'll get the chance, and that scares me. I look at it all from a standpoint of practicality. You don't.

"I look at it all from a standpoint of practicality. You don't."

Hate is always excused in terms of 'reality' or 'practicality' in opposition to pragmatism over the long term. It's easy to look at a tiny slice of the current events from a tiny slice of the reported news and use short-term, self aggrandizing logic. Your economy bad? It must be because of the Mexicans, or the Jews. Crime? It's "them" or "those people".

The kind of terrorism you are talking about hasn't been around much longer than most of us have been alive in terms of Islam. In terms of attacks in the West it hasn't been around for more than a couple of decades. It's a handful of groups who struggle to function at any operational level in the West, regardless of the existence of millions of Muslims.

But, because you guys have some empty spot in your personality that has to be filled with prophetic warnings about "those other people", you see 'a coming storm'. That, too, is always an excuse they make to rationalize hate against people who have yet to become a 'storm'. They're always vermin, or a disease, or a cancer, or whatever, too, but always because of what they potentially might do next week.

You toss the word "they" around like it actually means something. There are tens, hundreds of millions of Muslims that don't fit your "they". What you are spouting here is a projection of your own needs and eccentricities. I feel sorry for you if you really need to hate people this much.

You are no different than people who claim that black people are a cancer, or the jews, or any other group wherein the vast majority is peaceful and good. Hateful people look for something to gnaw on, and they see a "pattern" in the news, and it gives them a personal cause. The "coming storm" is a theme used in the most grim, bloody eras of human history, and always by people who didn't have the self-awareness to see their own hate.

The kind of terrorism you are talking about hasn't been around much longer than most of us have been alive in terms of Islam. In terms of attacks in the West it hasn't been around for more than a couple of decades. It's a handful of groups who struggle to function at any operational level in the West, regardless of the existence of millions of Muslims.

---Baker

Yes, I understand all of this and yes, I do thorw "they" around....a lot of it started in Munich in 1972. More came with a call for suicide bombers by the Ayatollah Khomeni after he took power in Iran. Been downhill ever since.

I also clearly understand that it's just a handful of groups, really. My problem here is with the "rest" of Islam....the ones who say they don't like the zealots, but don't really take much of a stand against them.
If the mutant's attitudes and views of the faith are really so isolated and reviled....where are the mass demonstrations against them? Every so often we'll hear from an Imam or other cleric of some type, maybe a professor of Islamic studies or other Muslim intellectual, about how the zealots are just way are out there on their own. But they rest of Islam...hey...why, they's jes' folks, lahk you'n me....Fine.
Baker, there was dancing in the streets all over the Mideast on 9/11; were they all crazed "zealots"? I doubt it. If they were, this is a much bigger thing than we'd hoped or been told. A lot bigger. Either way, they joyfully supported the actions taken by their "hated" zealots.
There was a picture in Time or Newsweek, maybe, of a guy in a turban with a flag draped over his shoulders. A token Muslim, we suppose. Okay. Thing is....maybe he wasn't Muslim; they aren't the only turban-wearing culture. I question.

When I see the mass, violent demonstrations over some stupid cartoons, or the rumored flushing of some Korans (which turned out to be a blatant falsehood---did that stop the demonstrations? No---just the rumor was enough) or some other slight, but I don't see anyone saying or doing much of anything at all about this supposed "hijacking" of their religious tenets, something which, with such a touchy, easily-riled people, should just piss them off royally, yet for some reason doesn't, I have to admit that it plants seeds of doubt. I doubt that they really oppose it at all. They may not actively support it, but they don't come out against it, either. And that's just as bad, especially where suffering, killing and maiming, all in the name of their god, are involved.

You hate me, Baker...because I dare to question the motives of a people you, in your vast wisdom, have chosen simply to accept. I resist your supposed logic...your wisdom; I don't just go ahead and accept them simply on the basis of your word, your reasoning. I see what I see, and I don't like it. That pisses you off.

The face of Islam you choose to accept is the nice, happy, smiling face of the Westernized women at the bus stop. That's okay....but don't deride me for opting for the hundreds of thousand of chanting, fist-pumping, angry faces I've seen over the years on the news, in violent, flag-burning mobs.

While you're chatting with these women, do you wonder what might be going on, or being built, in their husband's basement workshops? Perhaps preached or discussed, in hushed tone, in their mosques? I do. I'm not a dupe.
Equivalency and relativism like yours are sapping our will as a people, Baker; it makes us question ourselves and our reasons and actions, and theirs, in a time when there's no room for it.
See, I don't blindly trust on the basis of PC and diversity, the way you do.
If that makes me a hater....so be it. Feel sorry for me if you like. I don't care. At least no one can compare me to Chamberlain.

"While you're chatting with these women, do you wonder what might be going on, or being built, in their husband's basement workshops? Perhaps preached or discussed, in hushed tone, in their mosques? I do. I'm not a dupe.

'nuff said. You deserve whatever bleak world you make for yourself. I don't hate you because you dare to question. I hate you because you're like every other closet Nazi we have here in America, just willing to hint at your sweeping, ugly hate, but without the balls to strap on your swastika and go march in the street.

If you think being compared to Chamberlain is somehow worse, then it's all the more valid. You're just a mirror of the kind of people you hate. They hate and distrust us ignorantly, you hate and distrust them the same.

P.S. I won't be responding anymore to this or any of your other blogs. So bang away if you want. Your kind needs all the free licks you can get in.

Baker, you may not read this, but so what:

You know, Baker, let me just say, I've been very nice through this discussion. You're the one, as is usual for you, heaping gobs of sarcasm and bile on someone who strongly disagrees with you.
Time and again over the years, you've taken potshots at my beliefs because you just don't see this my way. But you've given me not one good, real reason to see things your way. Not one. Not ever.
Yet, I'm just supposed to accept your point of view...because, boy howdy, you're smart. Because you're Bakerstreet, and people give you attaboys for deigning to come and leave your ~~~usually~~~ wise and intelligent input on their blogs.

In all this, though, this whole thread, you've made not one solid point to dent, or to make me question, my own views. Just your own usual, vague, rhetorical PC, eqivalency and diversity crap.
You and your withering, arrogant, sniffing contempt....you work so hard to belittle me those like me and shoot down our beliefs. Yet, you present no good ideas of your own. No real reason why we should see it your way. We just should, because you're smarter than we are. You must surely vote Democrat, because you act like one.

So millions of Muslims aren't trying to kill me. So what? Thousands upon thousands would still like to, and as I've said to you, time and again to no avail, those smiling, happy, "jes' folks" millions you refer to aren't really trying very hard to stop them. That makes them a little suspect, in my mind. Logic like that doesn't fit into your self-deluding, all-accepting worldview, though.
I'm just a no-good hater because I take a stand and don't blindly trust someone who has voiced a serious desire, indeed an intent, to kill me and destroy my civilization. I don't just disregard those voiced intentions as empty threats simply because it's the trend of the moment to do so.
But hey....Baker says it's all good, and indeed it must be, because his massive brain thinks it is.

Give me a real, tangible reason to trust these people, Baker, besides your own trusting, biased opinion....just one. I've been waiting. A long time.
But you won't; you're tired now of fighting with a neanderthal bigot like me, who uses common sense and my gut instinct to resist your opinions-as-arguments rather than simply nodding in surprised-"gee-I-never-saw-it-that-way-thanks-Baker-for-opening-my-eyes-what-a-fool-I-was" agreement and knuckling under to the unfathomable, unquestionable (and in many ways, truth be told, unquestioning) intellect and wisdom that are Bakerstreet.

You'll get no attaboys from me on things like this, Baker....and that annoys you. Sorry, and.....Goodbye.