Posted on 11/08/2009 9:52:14 AM PST by Chi-townChief
See? This rampage by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan who shot dead 13 people at Texas's Fort Hood Army base Thursday, confirms everything I've been saying all along -- psychiatrists are dangerous, unbalanced individuals; they go into the profession seeking the mental help that they themselves need . . .
Scratch that. Bad joke. But of course, Hasan does represent another suspect group in our society -- Virginians. Edgar Allan Poe was from Virginia. Shirley MacLaine, too. They're not stable people . . .
No one is suggesting that, maybe because the bias against psychiatrists is more of a mild suspicion, and general dislike of Virginians began to ebb after 1865.
But Hasan is also a Muslim, and people who would laugh off the psychiatrist/Virginia slurs view that aspect differently, because it scratches a shameful itch.
"We should seal the borders!" said a friend of mine, someone I generally respect when he isn't saying stuff like that.
"Tell me," I challenged him "how the actions of this Muslim American indicts all Muslim Americans?"
He sputtered, and I went on.
"If a lady murders her kids and says that Jesus told her to do it, does that indict all Christians? All ladies?"
I've said this before, but it bears repeating. There are two false logic threads that define racism. The details don't matter, you can plug in anything.
The first is extrapolating from the specific to the general. You meet someone from the Netherlands and they need a shower. You therefore conclude the Dutch are a dirty people. That's racism.
The other is to go from the general to the specific. You meet a guy from Iceland, and you automatically pat your wallet, because your dad taught you that Icelanders are thieves. That's also racism.
The killings at Fort Hood might say something about the strain that overtaxed U.S. soldiers are under. It might say something about security on Army bases. But if you think that it says something about religion, what you're really doing is saying something about yourself, and it isn't something good.
We don't do that kind of thing
Here's another example.
A few days before the Fort Hood massacre, one of my depressingly regular correspondents sent in the following brief, taunting e-mail:
"What, no comment on the Richmond rape? No thoughts on the richness that the perps add?"
The first sentence refers to the vicious gang rape of a 15-year-old girl two weeks ago after a high school dance in California. The second refers to my oft-stated opinion that, rather than ruining the country, as bigots claim, Hispanic immigration enriches it.
I've learned long ago that it's not my job to argue with everyone who can type an e-mail. Don't bother trying to teach a pig Latin, the saying goes: it only frustrates you and upsets the pig.
But the attitude of that message -- See what these people do? -- screams for reply. He doesn't mean high school students or Californians. He means Hispanics. Sometimes you have to answer.
I wrote back:
"One of the keys of being a racist is to hold other groups accountable for things you dismiss in your own group. The crimes committed by whites don't undermine your status, so why should crimes committed by Hispanics undermine theirs? Oh right, because you hate them already. Thanks for writing."
Assuming the Fort Hood murders are an act of extremism and not a symptom of mental illness -- it can be hard to tell -- then what could the killer possibly have hoped to accomplish?
Well, an American soldier of Islamic extraction committing such an atrocity will be seen by some as supporting the notion -- embraced by both fundamentalists and bigots, ironically -- that Muslims are somehow not part of the American story, that they don't belong in the U.S. Army. That they don't belong here.
There are Americans -- many, I would guess -- who draw that conclusion, oblivious that they are doing exactly the thing that the terrorists, knowingly or not, want them to do. Highlighting our differences, embracing sectarianism, strife, disharmony, jihad.
So how does the patriotic American try to thwart negative results of such a crime? Only one way, obviously, by rebutting the fundamentalist message, by reaffirming that America is an open tent to all who would come and peacefully accept our values, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that lone unbalanced individuals who do barbaric things do not sweepingly indict their co-religionists, even if thinking they do feeds into our comfortable prejudices.
Especially if thinking they do feeds into our comfortable prejudices.
mailto:nsteinberg@suntimes.com
....with a name like Steinberg and he makes excuses for a Muslim mass murderer?
Who is this idiot?
This clown of a writer is pathetic, and not a fraction as clever as he fancies himself to be. But, no, the actions of Hasan don't indict all Muslim Americans. But all believing Muslims read the same holy book, and one can definitely find precedent for Hasan's actions in that holy book, and throughout Muslim history, and in the sermons and statements of many Muslims.
Killing infidels is hardly an idea that originated with Hasan.
Steinberg is definitely a sick puppy if he can equate Judaism to Islam ~ that's a very dangerous road to go down and leads to no good end.
Judiasm does not demand that I kill apostates for example. Islam does.
Judaism (except for the brand possessing Reformed Jews in the media industry) does not ask that I kill hypocrites. Islam does.
It is simply not possible for a sane person to ignore those two really glaring differences.
“If a lady murders her kids and says that Jesus told her to do it, does that indict all Christians? All ladies?”
The difference being that other Christians don’t set up web sites to praise her and damn her children.
Obama got 75% of the Jewish vote...
“Tell me,” I challenged him “how the actions of this Muslim American indicts all Muslim Americans?”
Tell me how this action does not indict all islamic jihadists.
“Who is this idiot?”
...he’s gonna be another Daniel Pearl one of these days is Islam is allowed to get stronger in America.
Another liberal who openly welcomes the hordes of hate-filled jihadis.
The Dutch are a race? Remarkable...
Steinberg is a BIG LIB, Obama supporter and anti- military, anti-police.
The Sun-Slimes is still in bankruptcy, but might be purchased locally as a play thing for the Chicago fat-cats.
No offense to conservative Jews, but liberal Jews have such twisted logic! I’ve often wondered how so many of them went placidly along with the Nazis.... hoping the Gestapo would be nice to them. Maybe its a syndrome based on living more or less like guests in other people’s countries. For sure the Israeli Jews act more rationally.
“Obama got 75% of the Jewish vote...”
....yep, and they should be very ashamed of that when the next Holacaust comes...because the genicide that the Muslims will give the Jews will make Hitler look like an amateur.
Who needs to generalize? The Army appears to have had abundant reason to act against the major for clear advocacy of violence against non-Muslims.
I am so tired of the left wing's INSANE view of the world. They can wallow in their 'let's build heaven-on-earth' fantasies, but I refuse to participate and will not go down with them.
Steinberg is a drunken wife-beater. Nothing more to say.
Monday, November 28, 2005
Steinberg is back and then some
A candid, grateful though not particularly repentant Neil Steinberg returns to the Sun-Times today after a 68-day absence with a higher profile than ever.
The columnist lightly outlines his battle with alcohol and the physical altercation with his wife in late September that led to his arrest for domestic battery and his entry into a 28-day rehab program: “I could fill this space with apologies, but that’s our business and not yours,” he writes.
He then notes that the theme of self-pity that used to run through his column “isn’t going to be possible to maintiain...because I have found that I am rich in friends, many of whom I have never met.”
Their words of support “truly buoyed me through the dark hours before this unexpected dawn,” he writes.
His “unexpected dawn” includes an extra column a week.
Steinberg previously wrote three times a week, but an editor’s note today says he will now be writing four times a week. Additionally, Sun-Times news stories no longer refer to him as a member of the paper’s editorial board.
” For sure the Israeli Jews act more rationally”
....I agree fully, but fear that Islam will nuke Israel the first chance it can....and Obama will not stick up for Tel Aviv one bit.
Politically correct speech is doublespeak.
It is polluting people’s brains to listen to this continuous narrative.
Propagandists. Lying propagandists.
Islam is not a race. It is a belief system and, like Nazism, is very dangerous.
A typical liberal. When something like a massacre happens, he cant bring himself to focus on the perp. Instead he finds a way to criticize large numbers of law-abiding folks.
I'm thankful he's not a judge.
Think of it as our little reward for beating your wife...
And yet, if you encounter, let's say, a few thousand terrorist attacks by members of a particular group in a couple of decades, and somewhere between 75% and 90% of members of that group approve of each individual attack, it's not unreasonable to generalize from that pattern of behavior. In fact, it's a foolish (and deadly) rejection of inductive reasoning if you don't draw broader conclusions from experience. "Gee, that's the seventeenth electrical outlet that shocked me when I stuck a butter knife in; but I don't want to assume that all outlets are a risk."
The other is to go from the general to the specific. You meet a guy from Iceland, and you automatically pat your wallet, because your dad taught you that Icelanders are thieves. That's also racism.
Again, we have a fundamental rejection of logic, and this rejection is a prerequisite for liberalism. I taught my kids to be careful in bear country, particularly when the bears are just coming out of hibernation, with cubs, or a couple of other times a year. I taught my kids to be careful in cities, particularly at night. It's not "racist" to be concerned about a rowdy group of young black males after dark in a big city, it's foolish not to be cautious (whether the rowdies are black, Hispanic, Muslim, or white). It's equally foolish to reject all forms of logic that allow us to apply the lessons of the past to similar but not identical situations in the future.
Hey, Steinberg! Wake up and smell the jihad!
Muslims have only been attacking US citizens since 1785. No big deal, right?
I agree - it wasn’t terrorism - it was treson!
- Treason!
Who is generalizing. The nutjob is a Muslim terrorist.
Ha, they’re first in line to make excuses for them, where have you been?
And they practice what is preached: List of Terrorist Attacks
The difference being that other Christians don’t set up web sites to praise her and damn her children.
Another difference being that Jesus doesn't tell anyone to murder anyone, but Allah does.
Mr. Steinberg has made a false assumption.
There is a difference between a person’s ethnicity and race and a person’s deeply held beliefs.
The race and ethnicity of the Ft. Hood shooter are irrelevant, just as the writer states. However, his belief system states directly and without interpretation how he should be interacting with nonbelievers. Islam is straightforward about the way believers should wage war, who they should wage war against, and why they should be fighting. In fact, they’ve even got a word for that kind of war and fighting from their holy writings.
In other words, the writer is a fool.
muslim + gun + “allah akbar” = terrorism.
"Muslim" isn't a race, idiot. It's a crypto-fascist political ideology masked as a religion.
Steinberg is obviously a government school graduate, unfettered by the constraints of logic and reason.
Here’s my letter to Mr. Steinberg:
Good morning, Mr. Steinberg.
Please allow me to disagree politely with your column concerning the shooting at Ft. Hood.
Your examples demonstrating racism are correct. Extrapolating from the general to the specific, or the specific to the general, about an individual and their race and ethnicity is an expression of racism. I’m an English teacher here in the Alaska Bush, and since most of my students are Native Alaskan, we spend a great deal of time wrestling with issues of racism. I’m Jewish, which means that those issues are also quite vivid and personal to me, too. You have provided me with some good examples to use in my classroom.
However, issues of political and religious belief and expression are not the same as race and ethnicity.
Let me use your own example:
If you know that someone is a member of the Klan and proudly attends Klan meetings, you should be able to predict that person’s relationships with others, his political stance, and his deeply held beliefs. You just might be wrong, of course - maybe he attends Mass, he sends out Hannukah geld to his cousins on Long Island, and he’s a member of the NAACP. You wouldn’t be racist to assume a Klan member hates African-Americans and Catholics, though, since those beliefs are part of Klan’s ideology, and the person has willingly joined the group.
Islam has its own visions of how the world works, political values, and relationships between people. A person who is willingly part of the religion can be assumed to share the values of the religion. That’s not racist. In addition, a person’s writings and speech about others also provide us with an understanding of how that person expresses his religious beliefs. It is also undeniable that the Islamic faith contains within it political judgments about others and informs believers how to wage war against nonbelievers. That’s not a racist statement - it’s just a statement of fact.
It’s not racist to show that the Koran states many times that nonbelievers should either convert or be killed. It’s not racist to show that Islamic holy text speaks frequently to war against nonbelievers, hatred against Jews, and provides rules of conduct about conducting those wars - rules that those of us in the West would consider genocidal or applied torture. It’s not racist to show that Islam has been at war against the West since at least the Battle of Tours, and the current problems are just part of a much longer battle between Islam and the rest of the world.
In central Europe about 100 years ago, whites were taught about the inferiority of Jews and the need for genocide. A government took those lessons to the limit and started killing the Jews. It’s not racist against Germans to point out that the Nazi Party had evil intent. Right now, from the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia and those of the Muslim Brotherhood and other fundamentalists, schools have been formed and books written about destroying our own way of life, and some people taught in those circumstances have taken those lessons to the limit and, on their own, committed jihad for the faith. That’s not racist to point out that those who write schoolbooks for kids describing the Jews as “dogs” and calling for death to American have evil intent.
I invite you to actually read what Maj. Hasan wrote and said. It is not racist to link his behavior to his deeply held religious beliefs, nor is it racist to believe that others informed of the same beliefs are willing to repeat Maj. Hasan’s actions. When I meet a Klansman, am I supposed to suspend judgment about their potential actions against others so I won’t be called a racist?
I saw an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu last year. He was asked about the primary lesson of the Holocaust. He said, “When someone says they want to kill you, believe them.” Mr. Steinberg, there are Islamic people and organizations out there right now that openly call for your death and mine, and every once in a while, someone stands up to make that vision a reality. It’s not racist to point out that there is an organized religion which proclaims those values to their believers, nor is it racist to try to defend your culture and life against it.
Thanks for your time. Be well.
Read the Quran, Steinberg, and you’ll understand why Hasan is a terrorist.
God rejected King Saul because he didn’t kill all of the Amalekites (I Samuel 15). It’s easy to find cases of indiscriminate slaughter in Christian history as well (First Crusade, for example). Maybe Steinberg admires the Muslims for keeping the faith when the other monotheistic religions have gone soft.
If this wasn’t a religious attack then who is allahu akbar?
Here’s the answer which I received to me letter from Mr. Steinberg:
>>>I’ll refute your argument as simply as I can. If Islam is how you suggest, and its one billion adherents all believe it, then why aren’t we all dead?
NS<<<
Glad he answered - but it’s a pretty pathetic response, don’t you think?
If Islam is how you suggest, and its one billion adherents all believe it, then why aren’t we all dead?
Oh lord, let me show him your mercy with a long
range .308, as they march him, sobbing into the ovens.
Amen.
>>>Good effort, red - gets a standing O from me. Must have overloaded his one brain cell if all he could muster was a one-line retort. I think he’s wanting to dodge a debate he won’t win.<<<
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. In fact, the longer his comment sits in my consciousness, the more and more absurd it gets. Why are we still alive if Islam wants to convert or kill the infidel? Perhaps they just haven’t had the time and technology. The only thing that bothers me - just a little - is the knowledge that he and I were both working in the print media, and yet he’s still paid to scribble his illogic to the masses, while I just didn’t have what it takes. Not that I’m all that displeased, considering I saw the iceberg headed for the S.S. Print Media a long time before it ripped a hole into the hull, but it still would have been nice to be able to respond to this guy word for word in the papers.
Dumb me. I didn’t know Dutch was a race.
If you meet a columnist from Chicago who is really stupid, you might conclude that all columnists from Chicago are stupid. That would be newsist and wrong. Only the liberal columnists from Chicago are stupid.
If you see a wife with constant bruising who is married to a columnist, you might conclude that all columnists are wife beaters. That would be wrong. She could just as likely be very uncoordinated and just keeps falling down the basement stairs.
Wow. I know that Steinburg’s ability to illustrate all the shades of cultural gray will really impress the maniacal jihadi’s that take over due to his efforts.
Just sent to him. I hope I get a response.
Response to “Before you generalize” column
1. Dutch is a race?
2. If you see a wife with constant bruising who is married to a columnist, you might conclude that all columnists are drunken wife beaters. That would be wrong. She could just as likely be very uncoordinated and just keeps falling down the basement stairs.
I Samuel 15, in which King Saul is ordered by God to slaughter all of the Amalekites is one of the most challenging texts in the Bible. We are forced to come to grips with God’s holy sovereign justice and His demand for exact obedience.
Saul’s problem with the Lord’s command was different from ours. He didn’t mind killing a bunch of Amalekites. Instead He objected to the Lord’s command that he destroy the valuable spoils of war because he feared upsetting his soldiers. Saul’s imperfect obedience results in the Lord taking away his kingdom.
In Deuteronomy 25:17-19, Moses illuminates Exodus’ simple report that the Amalekites attacked Israel with the additional fact that they did not attack the army of Israel. Rather, said the man of God, Amalek “smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God.” So, the whole truth is that while the account in Exodus is accurate in saying that the Amalekites attacked Israel, the Exodus information is incomplete. ...the Amalekites actually attacked only those who were too weak to keep pace in the desert with their stronger brothers. They attacked the stragglers, those in Israel who were too ill, too weak, or too young to protect themselves, perhaps even women and children. Until Joshua led the counter-attack, there must have been a terrible slaughter of innocent, feeble souls (Ex.17). This was the famous battle which Israel won because Aaron and Hur helped Moses hold up his rod when his arms grew tired.
http://www.isaiah58.com/broadcasters/amel.htm
What we have in Islam are two injunctions to INDIVIDUALS to act on their own to kill "hypocrites" and "apostates".
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