The Rodeo

What a crap definition. And what a crap guy.

And I quote…
“that we must gullibly swallow the claim that a religion named after the Arabic word for submission is a “peaceful and tolerant faith”".

You don’t have to swallow that definition. You have to acknowledge that it’s, at least partly, true. Or rather, that most practicioners of it are like that. The “submission” in the name is to submit before God. Not to force others to submit.

Setting aside all of that, practicioners of all faiths, including Christian ones, are hardly in a position to take the moral high ground on religious tolerance and war.

What I hate is Republican American, support our troops, give me my guns, let’s kill some towel-heads websites with tediously simple thoughts dressed up as practical thinking.

It’s always been a lot easier to define US and THEM (and either laugh at them or kill them) than to actually try to understand where they’re coming from. That’s why people keep voting for authoritarian governments. People keep voting for ’strong’, never ’smart’.

On the actual topic of Political Correctness, as always, it depends. Niggardly is stupid. The word has no etymological root in nigger and I wouldn’t care if it did. Its meaning is divorced from anything racist.

Avoiding overtly ofensive remarks I would consider to be less PC and more polite. But in the end it’s not the word that matters, it’s the spirit behind it. Political Correctness, like so many things in modern society attempts to band-aid the symptom (seemingly offensive phrasology) without addressing the underlying cause (an inability to embrace or understand THEM on an equal level).

No no no. You misunderstand. There will always be crazy people that want to do crazy things (someone who straps explosives to themselves and kills a whole bunch of people is obviously a little psycho). That does not mean that you can condemn millions of people around the world for those actions.

Indonesia is the largest Muslim nation on earth, but we are not attacking them or even mildly angry with them. Why? Aren’t they a ‘them’? They are the perfect example of a reasonable Muslim state. A country that doesn’t care what you believe in (although amusingly enough they do care if you don’t believe in anything…).

By comparison to other Muslim nations, Iraq was secular and socially advanced, with excellent rights for women. The fact that it’s ruler was a complete bastard was obviously a bad thing and it is a good thing that he is gone. Destroying the country to achieve that aim is not a good thing. Inventing new reason after new reason to do that is also not a good thing. Iraq was no threat. This has been proved time and time again even by the US government and the CIA.

Osama is an example of a crazy man from the most fundamentally Muslim state in the world, Saudi Arabia. He is also a member one of its richest families. The Saudis have the most socially oppressive regime in the Middle Eastern world (Iran gets pretty close though), but we trade with them freely because they have a lot of money, oil and influence.

Hitler is what happens when you cripple a country economically and turn it into an angry state, us against the world.

The difference between you and me is that I look at a terrible situation in the world and I ask why did it happen so that we can try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Not by killing people, but by understanding the situation. Answers like “they’re crazy” are just plain ignorant.

You look at the same situations and say “Who did it? How do we get them?”

The facts are that most people in Islamic nations don’t hate ‘us’. They hate US foreign policy. The way to fix these problems isn’t by killing people, it’s by understanding why people are angry and working to figure it out.

Extremists and fundamentalists will always exist and they’ll always be psycho, but there’ll be less of them if we stop blowing up the places that their friends and families live in.

Maybe the problem is that Joe Average on the streets should read more than the Daily Telegraph and watch more than Today Tonight or Fox News to get their daily ounce of impartial knowledge.

You are assuming a lot from a definition of political correctness I happened to like.
I read the rest of the site. Let’s just say that the author and I have a lot of differences of opinion…

What should Joe Average read?
Anything and everything. But he shouldn’t trust everything that he reads or hears. He should pay attention to the bias inherent in all media. He should see that the Telegraph and the Australian push Packer’s view which is, at best, distorted (read The Rise & Rise of Kerry Packer by Paul Barry) - which is not to say that other papers aren’t doing the same thing.
He should also see that commerical networks spin complicated topics in order to build a response in the community, hooking more viewers and advertising money. Not to give a fair and balanced view of any situation.

To learn about things like Islam and the Muslim world he should read books on the subject (Tomorrow’s Islam by a couple of Australians gives an excellent discussion on the troubles it faces moving forward).

Above all he should read anything and everything to make sure that he bases his opinions on more than one position.

And really… really don’t even begin to get me started on Fox News.

He should see that the Telegraph and the Australian push Packer’s view which is, at best, distorted
Why would these papers push Packer’s view? Murdochs view granted, but Packers?

Sure the commercial tv networks put spin on their stories - my housemate is an ACA reporter, so I know that! But so does the ABC. Everyone brings bias into the equation.

I dont think the Fairfax columnists are more or less biased than the News columnists. I agree that you should take everything with a grain of salt. But only a grain or you will end up wrinkled and cynical…

Why would these papers push Packer’s view? Murdochs view granted, but Packers?

Good point… forgot. Murdoch owns ‘em, not Packer. My mistake. Packer’s Channel 9.