philosophy
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Joined: 2/15/2004 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: TheHeretic quote:
ORIGINAL: philosophy expect to hear a lot of voices you thought absent, but that have been here all along. Phil, I've been watching and listening for those voices for quite some time. There are echoes in the wind, but no chorus, no harmony. There should certainly be some common ground to be found. Theo Van Gogh should be a no-brainer. The restrictions of free expression to avoid offending a violent minority in Europe. Honor killings. Where is the outrage? Shouldn't there be some? Fuckit. I think a change of the light and focus is a damn good thing. The process is fun to watch. Where else are we going to see the perspectives shift? ...well, in Europe the killing of Theo Van Gogh did cause a lot of fuss. It certainly opened up the debate. However, it opened up a much borader debate for me and my friends at the time than just Islam. Take your sentence, "The restrictions of free expression to avoid offending a violent minority in Europe.". One could very easily rephrase it, "The restrictions of free choice to avoid offending a violent minority in the USA", and use it to describe a bunch of events in north america. Firebombing abortion clinics for instance. It is a fruitless argument for a culture to decry the violent extremists of another culture without considering the violent extremists within its own culture. As for honour killings. Hot topic in the UK, one addressed by an awful lot of low key community building efforts. i think the prism of the last 8 years has been wholly opaue in some areas. One of those areas being the reporting of how the rest of the world deals with topics that are seen as intractable in the USA. The war on terror is clearly a culture war. Thing is, wars are rarely won by annihilating the other side. Wars are won by doing two things at the same time. Holding onto the military high ground is one thing.....the second thing is hard core diplomacy. This involves talking to ones enemy, and too many Americans foolishly see that as a bad thing. As this prism changes, i fervantly hope that talking to ones enemy is seen as more statemanlike and less traitorous in the US. Only then can any war on terror be finished and won.
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