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Well it was in Kashmir, so I don't know what the exchange rate is like.
I'm truly amazed at how little you think it must be worked at to succeed.
I mean, shit. We had to fight two civil wars here in the US just to get to where we are now.
Which religion did Ted Kaczynski belong to again?
I want to be able to steer clear of it, since it killed a bunch of people
Same thing with Pentecostals or whoever. Just because it's not specifically mandated doesn't mean it's not externalized by a religious community. Religious community is as religious community does.
I'm sure you'll be quite tolerant of your children thinking for themselves if or when they decide to explore different religious faiths.
Oh, wait.
Also, you are not the sum total of all secular belief systems.
They're free to think what they like as long as they end up thinking like me goes hand in hand with its ok because I'm right.
Clearly, we need to make short skirts and toplessness mandatory to fight rape.
Of course, if you do single out a group, you get problems and frequently radicalization.
Ah. The old "wholesale dogmatic irrationality is no worse than random acts of psychosis" chestnut.
That's the one you want to play.
Well the whole "all people with a belief system are crazy people" chestnut has gotten kind of stale.
No atheists have ever become attached to an supposedly rational philosophy and killed millions in China and Russia all while claiming that their shit was completely verifiable and 100 percent scientific.
It is precisely because we know we are not perfectly rational robots that we should allow freedom of speech.
Which is why I've quite openly been opposed throughout this thread to just about any special protection afforded to extreme religious expression, regardless of specific faith. Since my first post.
Then you are incredibly mistaken. Much as how I believe that politics is a strong slow boring of hard boards I believe that a free and liberal society takes constant vigilance and effort.
One thing to be vigilant against? The State mandating a dress code targeted at a maligned minority.
No you just prefer laws to persecute them.
Ah. The old "rather than acknowledging that violence can be motivated by both secular and religious concerns I'll transparently try to dodge the point with a silly and annoying 'Ah the old 'so and so thing, so that's the move you want to play is it?' non-engagement engagement" chestnut.
That's the one you want to play.
If we just have to go there, those voices in your head are more real than the voices in red letters.
You forgot non-white people are crazy!
Not "them," just their religions.
Do you actually know any Muslims? Like, real honest to goodness breathing human beings to self identify as followers of Islam? Because you're pulling the same bullshit in the opposite direction here.
Just to be slightly pedantic, harm to other people isn't the issue here. It's about harm to yourself, more analogous to not wearing a seat belt. Only they're legislating against (what they perceive as) social, not physical, harm in the long term.
I think this is a terrible law as it sets an extremely dangerous precedent. It also doesn't help the women in question at all.
Faith *is* identity. Just like your non-faith is a key part of your identity, seeing as how you are the single most tribal person on these boards.
I understand the history classical liberalism. I began my political leanings as a liberal back in school. Other than economic theory, I seldom notice much difference in the end goals of liberals and libertarians... perhaps some contrary reasoning, but ultimately very similiar. I'm surprised by the frequency of discord amongst the two groups.
Liberals and libertarians come to the same end on social issues but through different chains of logic.
I'm liking what I read here.
Because 9% think it's too high, and shouldn't be cut! 9% of respondents could not fully
get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check for, "I
have utterly no idea what you're talking about. Please, God, don't ask for my input."
Westerners (myself included) have the noblest of goals in trying to subtly or unsubtly force western values of liberalism (and specifically, sex equality) on the east. We just want them (all) to enjoy the freedoms we do here, and thereby liberate them. The problem, in my view, lies in the execution. You can't legislate social progressivism. You can't force people into your worldview. As has been noted, the women themselves want to wear burqas, because they've been thoroughly inculcated to believe it's in their best interest. Frankly, from a practical perspective, they're probably right -- men in Pakistani markets will leer at a woman who isn't covered up.
I've only seen two forces thus far that can accomplish this: economics and time. The former in the sense that industrialization brings with it western amenities, which bring with them western values (capitalism, personal socioeconomic fulfillment, etc.); the latter in the sense that the youth of the Middle East is the most liberalized of any group of people to live in that area in history, and their children will be even more liberalized than they are.
That's not to say that gross human rights violations shouldn't be forcefully rebuked -- you don't get to mutilate your infant daughters or stone homosexuals to death thanks to the magical umbrella protection of Cultural Relativity™. I do not, however, see the wearing of burqas on a par with either of those two.
(Bolded for emphasis.) This is the central problem with this legislation, right here. (Not to mention the civil rights angle, which others have touched on previously.) Also, it is important to remember the political context in which this is taking place, i.e. France. To say there has been tension relating to the Muslim immigrants in France is an understatement.
I thought for a second that the French had banned sammiches, and was thoroughly dismayed!
Having said that, the stark reality is that France is legislating against the burqa because there is significant tension in the community - the Burqa is not really the issue here, but rather France's feeling of being "threatened".
Unfortunately I can't really defend their decision because it hasn't been made on good fatih - ie it hasn't been made because they're really concerned about Islamic women, hasn't been made because of some overt issue regarding the burqa and public spaces and it hasn't been made because they feel like they will make significant gains in educating/changing the Muslim minority.
Its been done for base political reasons and as such I can't condone... which is unfortunate because I think there are reasonable good faith arguments on this topic in general, just not in this specific instance.
Yes, it is viewpoint discrimination; my conviction is that we can safely judge that some views are definitely not going to win in the marketplace of ideas given long enough and so pressuring these views to go away faster is a legitimate goal of the state.
It is a common libertarian pretense that legal recognition of some set of individual rights and the protection of said rights from physical attack is the be-all and end-all of liberty; well, no, nonstate institutions are quite capable of exerting restrictions on individual liberty, and one hardly needs to have a knife waved at one's person in order to be intimidated. A media personality exhorting a massive audience to knife Bernie Madoff can reasonably expect that at least one of his listeners may take the advice to heart; if Bernie Madoff is then knifed, to assert that the personality bears no moral culpability seems to me implausible.
Libertarians argue that civil rights violate personal liberties - freedom of association, in particular - and well, yes they do; I would defend this violation on the same grounds; you may dislike interacting with protected groups but to hell with your personal disposition here - the state has every right to coerce you into doing otherwise, even if no substantive material harm would come to those protected in the absence of state action (they could always shop elsewhere, but that's not the point). I do recognize that such restrictions are, in practice, ineffective at actually fighting discrimination - their primary effect is in forming a new status quo in social interaction; identically any attempt at social engineering must consider the same pragmatic issues: one cannot change minds easily, but it is much easier to nudge the status quo so that the single violator becomes the one breaking social norms rather than the single protected individual.
In the case of women wearing a burqa, I'm hard-pressed to see how their beliefs regarding modesty and their expressions of such beliefs in any way impinge on the rights of others. The fact that someone lives their life in a manner that the majority disapproves of is not, in of itself, a legitimate reason for government to regulate said lifestyle. Plenty of people find things like homosexuality icky, and for a long time this discomfort with said lifestyle was the basis for legal restrictions on homosexuality.
Rigorous Scholarship
It may have something with me being an atheist as well (and effectively one from childhood, which is not as uncommon where I'm from), and my lousy insistence on bring up "past events" over and over, but I am reminded of Ross' part in the "isms in film" thread, when he so lovely summarized hundreds of years of Chinese culture in a few short sentences.
In my defense, I did preface the comment with the caveat, "As a jingoist Westerner,"
It was terse juxtaposition of cultural norms, not intended as an authoritative thesis.
That's absolutely true--if anyone were to follow the signature link, they'd see that as well.
Though on the other hand, it's basically like saying, in Joe Pesci's voice, "And I mean no disrespect..."
Anyway, I'm distracting us from the topic, and apologize for it. Please continue, everyone.
Not at the moment. I don't believe that such an action would definitely wrong though.
Maybe it's generic religion-hate to you. It's definitely Muslim-hate and immigrant-hate to the people supporting the ban in France. And France's habit of xenophobia is just as prolific their habit of being anti-religious. Just last year Sarkozy proposed stripping citizenship of any foreign-born French citizen convicted of a serious crime.
Supporting France's ban on the basis of being anti-religion is like supporting the KKK hanging a black guy from a tree, just because you're pro-death penalty. It's not just about religion/capital punishment. It never has been.
And voting literacy tests in the Jim Crow South purportedly applied to all people, not just blacks.
And the Minutemen claim to be against all illegal immigrants, not just brown ones.