(08-26-2017, 04:59 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(08-26-2017, 01:05 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: When a label fits, it is used. The NRA leaders are insane. You exaggerate as usual and claim I call anyone who disagrees with me on gun policy "insane." No, I called the NRA insane. The Nazis were insane, The Islamic State is insane, and the current NRA leaders belong in that category. And no, you can't change my mind on that. Don't even try (and you keep trying by comparing me to nitwits like kinser).
Well, to start with, both you and Kinser are extreme partisans. You need to be compared. To me, 'nitwit' is compatible with 'stupid'. You're just proving my point.
Eric is less extreme. Kinser is Eric Hoffer's True Believer. He has gone from being a Stalinist to being a fanatical supporter of President Trump. Political sobriety is not his way.
There are many ways that I can imagine having gone, including conversions to religions very different in their philosophical foundations from what I grew up with. So imagine me as a Buddhist, as I toyed with it in my thirties. It seemed to offer plenty of solutions.
You can't imagine me in Aum Shinrikyo, can you?
Quote:I also see the old Nazi and current day ISIS as going more extreme tribal thinking. If someone isn’t of one’s tribe, sure, throw them in a gas chamber, or commit an atrocity against them or perhaps two. That, alas, is not insanity, a dysfunction, a taking of someone outside of his culture and peer group. It’s part of the picture.
Fervent belief, but empty of principle. There are causes like that -- the KKK, neo-Nazis, Black Panthers, ISIS, Kahane Chai, many Marxist-Leninist movements, and even some feminist movements best described as "female chauvinist". People have gone from being Nazis to being Communists and vice-versa suddenly and without obvious reason for doing so.
A sane cause says "I don't want you" to people with violent proclivities. A brutal cause needs its toughs. If you wonder what happened to the rank-and-file members of such causes as the Ustase, Hlinka Guard, Arrow Cross, and Iron Guard ... many became the muscle behind Commie regimes.
Quote: Many individuals or even whole cultures will behave abnormally according to the standards of a culture they don’t belong to. ISIS has seen much of the worst of western civilization,
No question -- there is much that is wrong in Western syphilis -- excuse me -- civilization (apology to Bertholt Brecht on that one, I believe). We don't need to defend the strip clubs, casinos, loan-sharking, and porno palaces. We need not defend the ethos of every man for himself. To defend the worst requires that one abandon any claim to any moral high road.
Quote:and [ISIS] has come to fight wars by atrocity, by trying to make war so horrible that the other side will back down. This seems their only option, so they take it. They go all out with a form of ‘religious’ values. Will I endorse these values? No. Hardly. To me and many they are anathema. Insane? No. They function quite well within their culture. When a foreign power loads up with guns and explosives and wades into a region with intent to do culture shifting nation building, you had best understand the culture you are wading into. Why do they hate you? Why do they distrust what you are proclaiming about your values? You should not just dismiss it with words like 'insane'. You should not claim they are not of your tribe so you don't care. You should make a genuine effort to understand.
Comply or die -- the usual stark command of the extremist and fanatic, whatever the philosophic or religious garb. But we Americans expect to shape the local expression of Islam to fit our values, and look what happens.
Quote:The Nazi or jihadist notion of tribal morality is much more extreme than Kinser’s. Oh, she’s not of my tribe. Into the gas chamber. I still don’t like tribal morality. I feel it’s a step in the wrong direction, whether it’s Hitler’s degree or Kinser’s. I do approve that Whig progress generally has moved western culture in the other direction.
If the method of achieving an end is inhumane, it is time to examine whether the methods are apt.
So here is some fanatical logic.
The key to salvation is being baptized in the Catholic Church and remaining true to the Faith throughout one's life.
The alternative to salvation is damnation to horrors far worse than any upon Earth.
Recalcitrant parents refuse to have their children baptized, or if their children are baptized the children will again come under the 'pernicious' influence of their parents and revert to paganism.
So take the child, baptize the child, then promptly kill the child so that it be saved!
(The Catholic Church now renounces this).
Were I a missionary I would try to convert by example. Where there is cowardice, show courage. Where there is ignorance, show learning. Where there is cruelty, show kindness. Where there is doubt, show resolve. Where there is madness show reason. When war looms, suggest a just peace. Then and only then do I try to sell my religion.
Quote:The NRA? That a rural culture. With professional police far away one wanting personal protection is understandable. If you grew up with the founding father's ideals of rights, where they are heading is quite understandable. Well, understandable to most. To a partisan extremest with contradicting views, some will start throwing out worlds like ‘insane’. No. Again, the NRA leadership are perfectly rational citizens, acting quite functionally within their culture. I see no reason to start throwing people into asylums.
The best protection is general human goodness. We need to promote that, and political leaders who push an ethos of every-man-for-himself creates a climate of fear of bad guys lurking everywhere.
Let's not deny that guns are a way of life and a part of some cultures. We must accept the reality of sport hunting. Tough luck, deer!
That people fear street crime reflects the perception of street crime as a clear and present danger. I have seen a drug deal near a hospital. A child born in that hospital's maternity ward is in danger leaving with loving parents should the drug deal go bad. It's not the parents' fault. It's the drug activity.
Quote:It’s the extreme partisan wishing to protect a narrow way of looking at things by rejecting opposing thought that’s the problem.
Some opposing thought needs to be challenged. Is there a valid scientific defense of young-earth creationism or a moral defense of pedophilia? Some ideas are either stupid, absurd, destructive, or cruel. 3 + 5 = 8 has been settled for as long as there has been any record-keeping.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.