Comments on: Huh?

By: The Modesto Kid

The Modesto Kid — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 17:49:38 +0000

No Y81, what I’m saying is that I don’t find that circumstance to be plausible. We have e.g. hate crimes laws in here in my state which make it legally risky for a group of men to spit at a woman and call her a whore. (Though I recognize that your side of the aisle is pretty well on record as believing those laws to be a bad thing, I don’t think they’ll be repealed any time in the forseeable future.) Are you saying you believe immigration of fundamentalist Muslims into the U.S. will create a social norm where it is acceptable to spit at a woman and call her a whore if she wears revealing clothing? Because I don’t buy that that would happen in mainstream U.S. culture. (There are probably neighborhoods where it happens now, probably some are majority Islamic, some Hassidic.)

By: Justin

Justin — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:24:40 +0000

But it is clear in your modelling of the argument that the ‘threat’ of ‘B’ is a contested fact amongst the ‘A’ set. The problem is that the ‘A’ set is not a single set with respect to ‘threat’, the contested phenomenon, but is instead a set containing two subsets: ‘A threatened’ and ‘A not threatened’. Clearly ‘B’ is a threat to ‘A threatened’, but no to ‘A not threatened’. The conclusion reached, that it is wrong to say that ‘B’ IS a threat, does follow from the propositions presented thus refined because the fact of ‘B’s threat cannot be generalised for the un-differentiated ‘A’ set.

By: Farrold

Farrold — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 21:53:03 +0000

A remarkably large number of posts on this thread appear to reason as follows:

Groups A and B are opposed.
Some in A say that B is a threat.
But A is, in fact, a threat to B.
Therefore it is wrong to say that B is a threat.

This is rather far from being a syllogism.

By: Martin James

Martin James — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 21:34:16 +0000

Well Bad Jim I get three points.

Russia still has its nukes and its communists. Did you miss the viva la rasa chants at the immigrant demonstrations and isn’t dhimmitude just the difference in Iran from 1978 to 1980?

How can anyone look at the history of the world and not see that bat-shit insane always has its day.

If there’s going to be an end of the world, don’t you want to see it?

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 21:20:17 +0000

And then decide whether to worry about the nutcases who actually do believe we have to worry about subjection to Caliphate 2.0, or the nutcases who actually do want do blow our shit up.

Why do I have to decide? At this point I find them both pretty terrifying.

By: Barry

Barry — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 20:56:09 +0000

Agghhh – sorry, Tim, I misread your post.

By: Barry

Barry — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 20:55:43 +0000

Tim: “Well, you can’t say no one is that crazy,…”

Tim, haven’t you noticed one or two posters here who are acting as if they are that crazy? I won’t mention names, but a skim of the comments will reveal them.

By: y81

y81 — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 20:40:13 +0000

Well, modesto kid, et al., are you telling me that if every time your wife left the house with a skirt above her knee, several men spat at her and called her a whore, it wouldn’t affect her clothing choice? Your wife is that much braver than the president of NYU?

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:36:27 +0000

Belle’s posts are always riotously funny and smart, which makes it easy to be captivated by some of their hidden assumptions. Let’s take a dose of the earlier post title here: “No one’s that crazy, right?”

Well, you can’t say no one is that crazy, but you can say that some people have a reasonable fear of terrorism (which is higher than your level of fear), and they want to do something about it. And some of those people are going to get sucked into defending an unreasonable viewpoint because that’s what the post asked them to defend.

So if people say some wacky things in response to the post, bear in mind that it was a pretty wacky post to begin with.

And then decide whether to worry about the nutcases who actually do believe we have to worry about subjection to Caliphate 2.0, or the nutcases who actually do want do blow our shit up.

By: Noumenon

Noumenon — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 16:03:13 +0000

At the moment I think the biggest risk of a wimpy response to terrorism is encouraging more terrorism. It seems to me that once that happens a few iterations it could go a sad dhimmitude route or a sad racist fury route—neither likely reaction really appeals to me. Which why I think that keeping the ugly feedback spiral from starting is very important. Like the Iran nuke issue, I would rather deal with it now than the ugly version of it later. For a graphical representation of Sebastian's argument, see LibertarianHawk's State Diagram of the War. (contents of link: sincere, not snark.)

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 14:27:32 +0000

“Whereas terrorist attacks like 9/11 are very unfocussed. You would have to postulate that terrorists start attacking say, U.S. women who are not wearing burkha, which I don’t find even remotely plausible, and I think the class being attacked in this case would be way too large for it to have an effect.”

But death threats and murder carried out against artists who ‘offend’ Islam are not unfocused. The parallel between that and attacks like 9/11 is that for some Islamists the set of things that offend is enormous.

By: soru

soru — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 13:46:27 +0000

To be fair, I think the word did once have a legitimate purpose in describing those, including in my view bin Laden, who used Islamic language and footsoldiers primarily in support of a campaign for a Greater, and no longer Saudi, Arabia.

Pretty much a lost cause now though.

By: The Modesto Kid

The Modesto Kid — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 13:35:04 +0000

I don’t think Sebastian’s argument quite works. Here is how I am understanding it: (1) Scattered violence against abortion providers has worked over the past decade to reduce greatly the availability of abortion clinics in the U.S. (2) Similarly, ongoing terrorist violence against U.S. targets by Muslims could cause U.S. citizens to self-censor anti-Islam viewpoints and adopt Islamic dress. (1) is totally accurate but I just don’t see the parallel to (2). In (1) the terrorist violence is directed toward a very small group, licensed medical practicioners who work in abortion clinics. The violence has not to my knowledge caused a reduction in demand for their services, it has affected supply by intimidating people who might go into that line of work. Again, a very small class. Whereas terrorist attacks like 9/11 are very unfocussed. You would have to postulate that terrorists start attacking say, U.S. women who are not wearing burkha, which I don’t find even remotely plausible, and I think the class being attacked in this case would be way too large for it to have an effect.

By: Andrew Reeves

Andrew Reeves — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 12:22:04 +0000

…presumably the mouth-breathers mean Wahhabist or something like it…

Sometimes. But then, when the next Existential Threat to Western Civilization happens to be a Shi’ite nation, the Shi’ites as well as Salafis are part of “Islamofascism.” But then, only some Shi’ites are part of Islamofascism. Iraqi Shi’ites are good democrats just like us, except for the ones who vote for or participate in Sadr’s orgainization.

Sadr, even though he comes from a family of Shi’ites who spent the Iran/Iraq war denouncing Iran is not only an Islamofascist, but a tool of Iran. The organization that was headquartered in Iran for twenty years, though, is neither Islamofascist nor a tool of Iran. Unless, of course, they denounce the U.S. presence in Iraq and call for a withdrawal timetable. Then they might be a little bit Islamofascist. But still fighting The Terrorists. Unless…

And so round and round it goes.

By: Carlos

Carlos — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 11:51:59 +0000

Hm. Y81, have you noticed who else Belle’s web log links to? Judging from the list—Tacitus, Chris’s Invincible Super-Blog, James Lileks—one has to assume that Belle thinks the greatest threats to American society are a) people who dare to criticize Ben Domenech for plagiarism, because he’s an honorable guy! no, really! wait, where are you going? b) Gorilla Grodd, and c) repainting America in burnt orange and avocado green…. the true colors of radical Islam!

I LOVE this guilt by blogroll association thing. TAINT TAINT TAINT TAINT. MORE TAINT! Woo-hoo, this is fun.