No need for me to say much only that i mostly agree with him.

[BeerAdvocate]

Nonsense. Agreeing on a common use of language and imagery that doesn't offend the target of that language or imagery isn't a gag on freedom of speech.
Unless you think being able call people "pakis", "darkies" and such is the bedrock of freedom of speech.
Racist language can be sometimes so instinctive it needs wider political correctness to highlight how people are using it.

 

[get_away_with_love]

I love this guy, he says things that most people are afraid to say due to fear of 'offending' someone. As far as sharia law superceding national laws, I used to work with a muslim doctor (who was also a government employee) and he openly said that our government has no say over how he treats his wife and children. That if one of our laws conflicts with sharia, he'll ignore it as much as he can.

What pisses me off is that people who are openly flaunting laws use our government benefits and culture to be successful when it helps them to get ahead but ignores a law that might conflict with their 'religion'. He finally lost his job when he refused to allow his oldest daughter to be photographed for an base ID which is required.

 

[eeksdeeks]

I don't think anyone really hates Christmas. There do seem to be a few doubtless well-meaning but utterly misguided individuals who take the idea of not doing anything that THEY think might offend others to the extent that they just piss everyone right off. The idea that Christmas celebrations might somehow offend people of other faiths being a classic example.

However, I think the number of people who think like that is probably tiny. Far, far, fewer than the tabloids would have us believe. But it makes good stories, and a lot of people would love to believe that this sort of thing is going on all the time. And as we all know, people tend to believe what they want to believe.

I think that you've hit on a good point about anti-Christian sentiment, except that I think it isn't so much anti-Christian as much as anti religion in general. But aggressively militant athiests often tend to aim their fire at one religion at a time, so they simpkly come over as being anti-Muslim or anti-Christian, depending on their Target of the Week.

 

[DenisL]

And they are often from Christian countries (it being veru problematic being an "out" atheist in muslim countries) so christianity is a more viable target for them. They understand it more and it's a closer entity.
That said...all of the prominent atheists that are sometimes lumped together as being militant (Dawkins, Harris etc) have ALL targetted islam at some time.

And..I hate the words militant atheists.
If people really want to see militancy then they need look no further than the religions the atheists are railing against.

 

[synergyman78]

So profiling wouldn't have been any use in stopping the seventh of July bombings in London, because the bombers were wearing western clothes and weren't (to the best of my knowledge) intoxicated.

It isn't a question of 'appeasing people'. It's a question of not talking nonsense, to be perfectly honest. If I took the actions of a few gangsters from the USA to be representative of the average US citizen then you'd tell me I was being daft, and you'd be right. And yet you persist in saying that it is justifiable to base your view of umpteen million Muslims on the actions of a small minority. That's silly.

But isn't this what YOu are doing? Making wild generalisations? Or am I completely misunderstanding you?

 

[sickwillie13]

Absolute bilge.

I certainly don't use the term "paki" or "wog" and didn't use such terms in the seventies when such language was commonplace.

What I am talking about is genuine debate on mass immigration.For years people were afraid of discussing this topic for fear of being called a racist.

 

[greeneyeglitter]

But the fact that you know such language was "commonplace" in the seventies shows exactly what applying political correctness has achieved.
Which is kind of the point really.

 

[ehnstephenson]

Part of the problem was that the immigration debate was driven by the extreme right, and was always presented in a racist way. It became a bit of a hot potato for the mainstream parties. To a large extent the far right was having the immigration debate purely with itself.

Of course this was largely due to the fact that the tories used offensively racist language to try to score political points back in the fifties and sixties.
Once that kind of blatant racism was no longer seen as socially or politically acceptable, the legacy was that the subject of immigration bacame a bit taboo for the leadership because they didn't want the electorate to be reminded that a few years previously they'd been campaigning using terms that were now forbidden under the 1967 Race Relations Act. So while the rank and file seethed, the leadership avoided the subject.

It's only since the last Labour government ballsed up by allowing ridiculous numbers of eastern Europeans to move here that the subject has become part of the mainstream of political debate. But minus the racist terminology this time around.

 

[DippyD]

I find militant athiests and militant theists to be very similar. They both like to ram their opinions down other people's throats.

I also find reasonable atheists and reasonable theists to be very similar. They don't ram their opinions down other people's throats.

 

[trendsetter175]

But doesn't the motivation make a difference?
In other words the atheists are pushing back against something (religions impact upon people that don't follow that religion for example) while the religious are just continuing the push they've been on for last few thousand years.

 

[CodyDe]

It makes a difference to them, I'm sure. But when you're on the receiving end, militants are equally tedious whichever variety they are.

 

[blue_wolf_paw]

Being half English myself I have often been referred to as "a bit of a wog".I didn't lose any sleep over it and just put it down to some people being small minded bigots.Political correctness hasn't altered that at all as the same people still hold the same views and use the same language.

Despite such language being commonplace in the seventies I can't remember it being used in the workplace by the management.We had a lot of Asian engineers working in the company I worked for and they were employed on merit rather than the need to reach a certain target quota.I would like to see a return to that sort of system as it helps prevent resentment.

 

[justleftldalres]

Well no wonder you didn't use the words then.



Again that's nonsense. When I was a kid I routinely referred to the shop across the road as "the paki shop". I don't anymore of course. Because society has moved to a point where that is unnaceptable and I've grown up enough to see how wrong it was.
For sure people hold the same views and may use the same language (amongst people who hold similar views) but they most certainly don't voice those views in the public forum anything like they used to.

 

[Batista4WWEChampttt]

Fair enough, but a lot of people find being called racial insults quite offensive. Nowadays they don't have to put up with it, and I think that's a good thing.

What target quotas? I never heard of a company setting itself a quota on ethnic lines. I think it has been suggested that large companies try to employ a certain percentage of disabled people, but I never heard of anyone actually adopting a quota system.

 

[KevinFlavoredRootBeer]

There are a number of profiling techniques. I'm not saying it works all the time, but it's a tool to be used and it's a tool that is often used incorrectly and is abused. There were awkward things about the Sep. 11 guys, but because we were the invincible Americans and complacent and drunk with our perceived awesomeness I'm sure nobody gave them a second thought. You have to experience things and notice trends in order to profile correctly. And sometimes individuals are trained to counter profiling and seem normal as can be. It's not a cure all, it's a tool. What I gave you were just a few examples of difference in profiling correctly vs. JUST picking out ethnicity.

As far as basing my opinions on a small minority, how many middle eastern countries have you been to? I've been to about four or five with lovely extended stays in some of them. I've seen decent people, and I've seen people who want to kill me and have tried to do so. It is sort of like your comparing it to American gangsters though. No you shouldn't judge all Americans by it, but you can definitely judge those who present themselves with that sort of lifestyle and who associate themselves with it. There are 7 billion people in the world. Minorities are in the millions. Yeah it's a minority . . . . . but there are millions in the minority!

My generalizations would seem a bit too blanketing to somebody who hasn't had the same experiences as I have, I agree. I also come from a very different back round from very different experiences from most people as well. Yet I'm not condoning the abuse of profiling and making generalizations, I'm just stating they can and are useful tools.

 

[rockintherocker]

I agree that profiling isn't as inherently ineffective/evil if done professionally as one inexperienced in working security might assume it to be. The problem is the level of training received by the majority of the people working in professions who would be exercising the techniques in America for security. And that's laughably bad. While no officer who values their job in the US will admit it, profiling is pretty much an unspoken accepted policy for LEO.

 

[WiiPlayer]

I was an Atheist but they have become just as annoying as the religious lot so i just call myself a none believer, anyway i dislike all religions equally it has nothing to do with raise.

 

[endoscented]

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding things, but it seems to me that once you actually know something about the individual then you are getting into the realm of 'intelligence' rather than 'profiling'.

 

[Lost_G20]

You're not misunderstanding at all. You're just not putting things together in the order of progression to get to the point of 'intelligence'. What do you think you do to gather intelligence? Profiling is one way of many to begin gathering intelligence on an individual or group.

Is it the best method? No, not at all. But it is a tool to be used.

 

[JustTink]

...In the same way as beating up a suspect is one way of obtaining a confession.
Seriously, I'm struggling to see your point here. We should use racial profiling because it's a 'tool to be used'? There are plenty of other tools in the metaphorical box, and they don't involve tacit racism