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Well, my initial thought is to wonder whether you are including war in your definition of violence. This is not to say that war is always wrong, but it is usually violent. Also, do you consider Germany, Russia, Japan, Western? Not sure, but Stalin alone might outrank all Muslim killers combined in the last 100 years. 


 

 

It feels like we're moving into the weeds a little bit now.  Stalin was the dictator of a country and wielded power over millions of others, not sure how that enters into this discussion.  But in general no I wouldn't include collateral damage of war in this discussion as I'm not sure how that compares to citizens actively targeting other innocent citizens.   We're talking about individuals that have no power over anyone except the power and desire to snuff out your life if you are unprepared to defend yourself and at the same time these people are showing solidarity for an ideology and religion.  Killings associated with the Islamic ideology and religion far outweigh any other type of killing that is associated with any other type of ideology.  Secondly we're not under a dictatorship where ideas and solutions don't flow freely.  There is a mechanism for change of policy if there is support for it.

 

Lol, moving to a different color to try to keep it organized. Let me try to clear some weeds. You made the comment about violence due to culture, religion, and the differences compared to 'Western Society'. My point is that 'Western Society' has done some acts of violence that far exceed the numbers we are talking about as attributable to Islam. So whether the -ism is Muhammedism, Catholicism, Naziism , Capitalism or Stalinism, both West, East, North and South have had their share of barbarism.


 

 

Well, I am not sure, but I think that the total number of deaths caused by Muslim immigrants is greater than other immigrants. I draw this sketchy conclusion from the list
here
 .  I think one of the killers in the 2015 California killings was an immigrant. I am not aware of any of the others on the list being immigrants of any kind. So I guess it is Muslim immigrants 1, Non-Muslim immigrants 0. How you get conquering a nation from that I have absolutely no idea. Allow me to put it this way - If there were 70,000 cases such as San Bernardino, the number of civilians killed would not equal the number of civilians the U.S. has killed in Iraq since 2000. Yet Iraq is still around. Dysfunctional yes, but still there.


 

 

Well this requires some foresight on your part as domestic Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil is relatively new in the grand scheme of things as we have been further away from the source than the rest of the world.  But it's clearly increasing in frequency at home and has been a major problem abroad for a very long time.   If you don't get that example of 50 million new immigrants from anywhere over a short span of time can conquer a nation as it currently exists, we should probably just stop here and move on to other topics.  I'm already growing tired of this and have spent too much time responding and should have known better than to comment in a political thread, and when the sarcasm begins it usually signals the beginning of the end of legitimate debate.

 

Regarding 50 million new immigrants, however, it's more than just the potential additional violence their ideology may bring.  It's a significant increase in a voting block of a people who's ideas on a lot of things don't jive with the current majority populations of Europe or the U.S.  I never insinuated that we are conquered or will be in a couple of years.  As I explained, the example was extreme to make the point that if we were already committed to such a policy and had to poll the current citizens of this country where they would prefer to receive these immigrants from that overwhelmingly I believe the answer would be from the non-Muslim population sample and for good reason.  I think if you were being honest you'd choose the same unless perhaps you are a Muslim.  I'm not sure if your intent is to actually minimize the San Bernardino event, but comparing it to casualties of war is again apples to oranges.  We know the circumstances surrounding the victims demise in that case.  We don't know the circumstances of each individual infraction of civilian casualties in Iraq and quite frankly it's performed by uniformed individuals in a war zone vs. citizen against citizen with ideology being cited.

 

Ahh, ok, this might be why they really need to develop a sarcasm font, maybe a hyperbole font. I hope you will forgive me for thinking you might actually be serious about thinking those dirty Moslems were gonna destroy Murica. Given that some have advanced a total ban ion immigration for Muslims seriously, I suppose I tend to err on the side of taking these things at face value. And no, I do not intend to minimize the San Bernardino event. Every life is sacred. I do intend to provide some context. You talk to me of possibly 'minimizing' those victims, yet your sole comment to the deaths of (minimally) 100,000 others committed by the U.S. is to claim they fall into a different class, partly because of their religion? I am not talking about combatants, i am talking about civilians. I am talking about orders of magnitude more deaths. Realtorpat a while back posted a link to a pbs documentary about iraq, I urge you to take a look at it. There were a few points that really stood out to me. One of them was the gallantry of our troops being in a really bad situation. Another was the fact that our tactics would include dropping mortar rounds and artillery shells on areas with civilian populations. We are in a democracy. This is on us. Our -isms killed more than 100,000 plus of their civilians. Again, just to be clear, I do not put this on our troops. They were put in a lousy position, in a combat situation their generals argued against. The purpose of the military is to prosecute the mission, and the mission did not include holding civilian casualties as of equal import as casualties to our military. Finally, I regarding about the results of your hypothetical poll. If the majority of the country believes a policy of bigotry is better than rational thought, well, that is sad. I would like to think that the would say, before we exclude a class of people based on say, being Muslim, we had better have much better grounds than a few examples. So just to be clear, because I have seen a lot of tiptoeing around suggested policy - I believe a blanket ban on Muslims is bigotry. Now maybe my thinking is in error. I am more than happy to discuss it, and perhaps I will come to realize that a ban is good thing. I doubt it, but it is a possibility. But I am tired of being politically correct. Further, I believe your statement about me believing in this poll 'unless I am a Muslim' makes me think that you, specifically might be a bigot (although comments like you make below regarding "Islam-related or otherwise" give me hope). . However, I might have missed the sarcasm font again, or I am missing something really obvious, and instead of you being a bigot I am being an idiot for thinking that way of you. Hey, could be both. 


 

 

From what I understand, the San Bernardino example is a case where an immigrant was granted residency based upon marriage. I also believe they were planning the attack prior to the engagement. I am wondering, though, are you stating that you believe it should be the U.S. policy not to allow citizens to ever marry Muslims of a different nation? Or they can marry, but not allow the spouse into the U.S.? I really don't quite get that based on one example.

 

I've espoused no specific policy, only wondered aloud do we need to continue bringing in new citizens en masse who are committed to an ideology that's grounded in violence and whose rulebook allows and encourages the targeting of non-military targets in order to terrorize the citizenry.  And on top of that whose 2nd generation children are now carrying out attacks here in the name of Islam.  I get how difficult it would be to implement such an idea aside from just putting a moratorium on immigration from majority Muslim countries.  That's a band-aid not a true solution though.  Perhaps the best answer is to just have a highly publicized $1 million dollar reward (or whatever is feasible and significant enough to illicit a proper tip off)  for anyone tipping the authorities off about any planned attacks, islam related or otherwise.  If they can give $1 million away on game shows, surely they can give it away for saving lives from potential perpetrators.

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Better info about planned attacks is good. What is even better is the idea about solutions that would help in any potentially harmful attack, regardless of motivation. Love that part. I seem logistical issues, but like the general gist of it. White I don't know that it would work, and might result in clogging the system, I think just letting folks know that there is a place to report information (like the coworker or ex-wife in this case) might help. Or maybe they did report it and we have other issues. Still, solutions deserve to be explored.

 

Even if you go back generations, I guess you then include a few others. But we are all descended from immigrants. Does the Virginia shooting mean we should exclude Asians? I also didn't see any weighing of the benefits of immigration. What if we lost a few current citizens but save the lives of 10-fold new citizens. 100-fold? I realize this is a hypothetical, just trying to get an understanding of your thoughts on relative values.


 

Did the Virginia Asian man cite an ideology?  I don't recall that he did other than mocking those that had more than he did.  And yeah we're all descended from immigrants and if you take that thought to it's conclusion no one can justly own property anywhere because it all traces back and belongs to someone else right?  We can get as wishy washy as you want but it ultimately ends up an argument for anarchy and good luck with that.  Again, we're moving way into the weeds with your Virginia example.  There are plenty of bat [BAD WORD REMOVED] crazy people that go on shooting rampages.  Bat [BAD WORD REMOVED] crazy isn't exclusive to one ideology, but there does appear to be more than their fair share of bat [BAD WORD REMOVED] crazy within the Muslim community.  I guess let's just get to the point and ask if you agree or disagree with that statement or not?

 

I think I addressed this about, but to be clear, my answer is no i do not agree, I think most -isms have more than their "fair" share of causing harm to others, and I believe singling out Muslims is bigoted. But again, I want to be clear. It is possible that I am being "bigoted" by having such an inflated opinion of my own beliefs. I hope that my stating that my belief that those who would deny access and opportunity to an entire enormous class of individuals based on a few examples pretty much fits the definition of bigot will not scare others away from correcting me of the error of my ways.

 

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