“You can’t handle the truth!”

There is no hope for anyone that blind. I’m reading it and I don’t want to believe it.

But upon reflection, a couple of books have been written about him.

“Animal Farm” and “1984″.

The way conservatives talk about political correctness, I’d swear they think there’s an actual body of law somewhere, maybe in the USC, that specifies what they (alone, apparently) are not allowed to talk about or even think. Some kind of Liberal Sharia, I guess, enacted into law when nobody was looking, maybe one of those secret corners of the Patriot Act.

But other than hate crime laws, which deal with the consequences of speech, much like the traditional “inciting to riot” offense, there is no such thing as “political correctness”, except in the minds of poor persecuted conservatives, and, as you detail, in the history books.

A consistent, almost ecstatically ritualistic expression of adoration among the Trumpetarians is “he speaks his mind!”. There’s a clear subtext that because Trump is a billionaire, he’s above those imaginary laws that constrain the ordinary followers from speaking their minds. Put Trump in the White House to finally liberate the American id from its shackles of civilization!

Good luck with that here.

Another good quote:

“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” — Richard P. Feynman.

I agree that what we loosely term as “political correctness” can be abused, and carried too far, even if the intentions are noble. I also agree its misuse is not limited to one side. But to dismiss anything we don’t want to hear, or wish to discredit out of hand as “political correctness” is itself political correctness.

I don’t like the Muslim religion. In fact, I don’t particularly care for any religion. They are all based on the fallacy that the faithful have the right, and the permission of the almighty, to persecute the infidel. This may not be present to the same degree in all the religious, in all religions, or in all the sects within a religion, or in any particular religious community over historical time, but it remains the fundamental defining concept in all religion. And I get especially suspicious when I see fear and nationalism mixed into the equation. Add racism to that mix, and I get paranoid. I have skin in this game.

Maybe I’m just one of those increasingly irrelevant ’60s folks, but I get very suspicious when I see that mechanism hijacked for political reasons, or in the service of racism or bigotry of any sort. I was brought up in an era when far too many evil and ugly people thought that way. Maybe that’s the origin of my political correctness.

If we are at war with Radical Islam, fine, lets fight it the same way we fight wars with Christians and Europeans.

The science vs religion theme : Religion is a thing you do. The misinterpretation of people like Dawkins and Hitchens is that religion is just a mistaken proto-science. But religion is about action, and faith is about trust. Religious truth is not something you sit in your private room and decide, “oh, does God exist or not?” You will never understand God unless you are involved in some kind of community where that word begins to make sense in the life of that community. And lately brain science struggles to come to grips with qualia. The distinction between registering (as on a scientific instrumental dial) and actually feeling a phenomenon (as in “consciousness”) becomes central. Personal experience and conscious moral accountability – science doesn’t do well with such. I share Harris’ respect for the best of the genuinely experimental aspects of Indian religion, especially Buddhism.

One of the better Harris quotes:
If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”

Muslims often call simultaneously for tolerance and understanding as well as for violence and aggression. In fact, both options are present in the Qur’an and the sunna. These are two legitimate manners—two distinct ways to interpret, to understand, and to live Islam. It is up to the individual Muslim to decide what he wants Islam to be. This is a kind of freedom, but can we live with it?

It is better to confront the Islamists rather than seek to persuade some Islamists to police others. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) proposed to designate the Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization in legislation filed Nov. 3; this measure would make CAIR’s position untenable given its multiple connections to the Brotherhood and its affiliates. A substantial part of French opinion favors similar toughness, judging by the record 28% vote for her National Front in Sunday’s regional elections.

Muslim community leaders must be persuaded that their interests lie in cooperating with security services rather than in abetting terrorists. In the United States, a few dozen Federal prosecutions and a hundred or so well-publicized deportations of prominent Muslims in the CAIR orbit would turn thousands of Muslim immigrants into willing snitches for the FBI.

An analogue of The Enlightenment, the revolution of science and philosophy in the 18th century, stemming from the progress in individualism and rationality during the Reformation, is what Islam doesn’t share with the West. Islam didn’t go through the equivalent of the 30 Years War and the Peace of Westphalia.

We have to recognize that Muslims , nominal and otherwise, comprise at most 25% of the world’s population. A large minority, but a minority. The pressing requirements of globalization, including the increasing fragility of all society, ecologically, intellectually, demographically, DOESN’T HAVE THE SPACE to tolerate the tantrums of this minority.

And not because its full of lies, I agree with the facts as presented, I don’t dispute the lady’s numbers. It’s her interpretation, and her conclusions and the policy they lead to I find disturbing.

Yes, Islamic terrorism is a huge problem, and it is growing, and it must be fought, but I don’t see the authorities as being blind to it, or that our efforts to combat it are being hamstrung by some kind of liberal effeminacy–you know, the same namby-pamby kumbaya weakness that was soft on Communism, soft on crime, soft on everything that authoritarians and reactionaries find threatening or inconvenient.

The reluctance of the authorities to engage in the kind of rhetoric and policy this video seems to be promoting is not weakness, or stupidity, or cowardice. It is military necessity, it is pure practicality. It makes sense.

We depend on moderate Muslims, the great majority, both here
and abroad, that we need as allies and informers (and translators) in the fight against radical Islam, especially those overseas who are the major victims of radical Islam. The last thing we want to do is provoke some kind of government oppression or vigilante movement against anyone with a turban, Muslim or not, which is where the ignorant knuckledraggers will surely go with this. Its happening already, provoked by amateur and professional haters and bigots.

This video very subtly undermines this attitude. Although the statistics and logic are fundamentally correct, and I DO AGREE WITH THEM, the presentation is subtly slanted in the Trumpian direction. We are treated to soft Western Liberals saying how they failed to report their bomb-making neighbors because they didn’t want to be called “racist”, but they failed to point out that according to the FBI, it is tips from American Muslims that have led to the majority of arrests of radicals and suspected terrorists by the authorities. We need these people, they are on our side, lets not let careerist rabble-rousers and provocateurs drive them away. As trite as it sounds, that is exactly what ISIS and other terrorists want. To divide us, to force a peaceful Muslim majority to run to Jihad because they are hated in the West.

The folks on this forum know I used to work as a professional propagandist, I was trained to produce effective material to promote a specific point of view. I know it is possible to do this without uttering one lie. I recognize that hand at work in this video. Its a point I make very frequently, and even stridently here. Its more than just “the facts”, truth is open to interpretation, to subtle shadings and colorings, it is not necessary to utter untruths to plant a seed of doubt in someone’s mind, to make them feel the way you want about some controversial subject.

Watch the video. The data is useful, and we all need to know it, but listen critically to the subtext, too. I know what I’m talking about.

I have been following him for awhile. Very interesting take he has on *regressive Liberalism*

“Today’s Western elites, in the U.S. as much as in Europe, have never been so self-confident. Products of meritocratic selection who hold key positions in the social machine, the bien-pensant custodians of post-historical ideology—editorial writers at the NY Times, staffers in cultural and educational bureaucracies, Eurocratic functionaries, much of the professoriat, the human rights priesthood and so on—are utterly convinced that they see farther and deeper than the less credentialed, less educated, less tolerant and less sophisticated knuckle-dragging also-rans outside the magic circle of post historical groupthink.

“And while the meritocratic priesthood isn’t wrong about everything—and the knuckle-draggers aren’t right about everything—there are a few big issues on which the priests are dead wrong and the knuckle-draggers know it. Worse, as the mass of the people become more aware that the elites are too blind and too wrapped up in the coils of elite ideology to deal effectively with society’s most urgent problems, an age of demagogues is opening up around us. People need leaders; when the meritocratic priesthood seems incapable of providing leadership, people start looking elsewhere.”

Here is a good presentation about worldwide Muslim opinion for those who to get a handle on the numbers:

http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=6f33facd52316b5c258168da6&id=809bc25b2b&e=cf382e75e3