Why Do You Post Here?

As an American, let me step in to clarify the confusion on the confusion.
Fanny (round these here parts, at least) is what we call a kid's arse. We don't want to to say, "I'm going to beat your ass!!" to a 5 year old that just knocked over the 52" flat screen. Instead, we command the kid to go get a switch so that we may whip their little fanny, where a switch is usually a short green leafy branch off of a hedge or other similar yard plant.

A bum is a guy living on the street.

Flip-flops are the cheap stringy rubber things you wear on your feet at the beach or lazily around the house, while thongs are what we call particular women's under pants. Or as we like to call them in the south, butt-floss.

I find your views most ironic in light of your chosen screen name. There is a happy medium. The PC crowd mouthing off all these “isms” constantly cheapens such to the extent that they become meaningless; cheapens the usage of “Islamophobia” in the context of the recent terror attack directed at Muslims in London in an apparent revenge strike. (In fact, "Islam hatred" would be more appropriate in this context.)

The problem with the PC police is that they come off as extreme, totally unreasonable. “Islamophobia” means “fear of Islam.” Is that an unreasonable reaction in light of constant terror attacks by Islamic extremists? There is no other religion that employs such tactics. Is it unreasonable to be afraid off being butchered at random while simply going about one’s daily business? Is it unreasonable to want to maintain one’s culture within in a country where one's ethnic group has inhabited and shaped it for millennia? If I became homeless and you kindly offered me refuge, would it be unreasonable to expect me to conform to your house rules, no smoking, for example? What ever happened to: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do?”

There is no great animosity towards Arabs per se, no racism. In the United States, the majority of Arabs, at least as of now, are Christian, like the late, beloved Danny Thomas. For those that are Muslim, then if they apply to live here then they should be willing to conform to our cultural norms by, for example, limiting religious dress in public to a minimum, such as a head scarf for women, not unlike a Jewish man wearing an yarmulke.

Yet the PC crowd denounce those who want to preserve the cultural standards of their ancestors as “tribalists.” If you and I shared and owned a house jointly, then I don’t think that you on your own volition should decide to take in a bunch of homeless people without my consent. You seem to feel otherwise and thus there is conflict. We will (not “shall”) fight back and thus we have Trump. We will not cede the moral high ground to those like yourself when we feel are demands are reasonable. If our culture is so corrupt and rotten to its moral core of being, then why do so many want to quit their own ancestral homelands in favor of ours? Muslims, for example, already possess a vast amount of territory. Those that we do accept here must make reasonable concessions such as adapting to our cultural norms and assimilating in time as they have not done in Europe whose decadent, indigenous population will not fight back as they labor under that mass psychosis known as political correctness.

So go take a bow and pat yourself on the back for how so very tolerant you are. Attaboy! As I said, we “deplorables” will fight back!

Why is the fear of being butchered lumped in with not wanting people to dress differently? The first is reasonable, the second is not.

This analogy doesn't make much sense. America is not your house. And the "house rules" are the laws, not vague, fluctuating cultural norms about clothing.

America is a country founded on an idea, not a race or a tribe, so what's expected of people who come here is simply that they respect those laws and, ideally, buy into basic American principles of democracy and equality. That's it. It debases the very idea of America to suggest that it can be undermined by something as superficial and transient as headwear

The "cultural norm" in America is not expecting other people to adhere to your idea of cultural norms. Nor them you.

You really undermine your own arguments about Islamic terrorism, which are worth addressing seriously, when you try to include these general cultural restrictions along with them, as if they were part of the same issue.

While my post obviously addresses two separate issues, it does not conflate them. I nevertheless feel both are equally valid. Rightfully or wrongfully (considering our horrible aggression against the indigenous American Indians), America was founded by people of European, Christian cultures. That foundation is now over six hundred years, and I see nothing untoward let alone immoral about wanting to preserve it any more than I see anything immoral about wanting to preserve Saudi Arabia and the vast lands of the Arabic conquests by the Islamic people, religion and culture.

Unfortunately, you seem to feel otherwise. I’m disappointed. I suppose we must agree to disagree.

Who it was founded by is not what it was founded on. If the ethnicity and culture of the founders were important, they'd have enshrined those things in the Constitution, or at least the Declaration of Independence. But they didn't. Instead, in their wisdom, they made it about ideas.

The problem is what you think "it" is. You seem to believe, for no reason whatsoever, that the "foundation" of America is the skin color and mores of the people who founded it, rather than the laws and principles they founded it on.

So did the founders you're trying to appeal to. When you suggest that America is about these other superficial things, you're not disagreeing with me, you're disagreeing with them.

I notice that you didn’t quote let alone attempt to answer my question:

“If our culture is so corrupt and rotten to its moral core of being, then why do so many want to quit their own ancestral homelands in favor of ours?”

Maybe because the answer wouldn’t be very “politically correct.” They’ve made such a mess in their own ancestral homelands, despite being blessed with such natural resources as oil, that they want to come here as a refuge. Why? So the process can begin here anew based upon their cultural mores? .

To all: hear me now! People try to break out of a hellhole, not into one!

No, it's because it is completely immaterial to my argument, which does not defend any specific culture, let alone that one. Instead, it disputes the notion that America is based on these things at all, and I notice you didn't quote or attempt to answer anything I just said to you about that.

I'll go ahead and reply to it anyway, though:

People who choose to leave those situations generally aren't going to be the ones who thought it was a good way of doing things, by definition. Otherwise, your logic would apply to the founders themselves, too: why expect them to start a free nation when they came from a monarchy? Answer: because where they came from was far less important than the fact that they decided to leave.

Well that came as a surprise to me because I saw them in NYC so I looked it up. Are you referring to Goldman v. Weinberger? If so that's a bit of a stretch. And I don't think you quite understand what the headscarf is about.

I cannot see how someone wearing that on their head has any more of an impact than someone wearing a beanie or baseball cap.



I can understand people being confronted or suspicious of niqab but a piece of material covering the head?

Hope this isn't starting to feel like "jumping on Don day," but just want to point out - the key word you left out when discussing any "phobia" is the word "irrational." When actual dangers are present or patterns of behavior have presented dangers, then fear is not irrational, rather it is a natural and necessary function to survival. It is only irrational if the fear has no basis or is manifest in a reaction so extreme that it outweighs any outside chance of even the slightest potential danger.

By analyzing our discussion heretofore, it seems to boil down to that while you concede that he or she who holds a valid title to a house owns it, the same cannot be said that Americans own America. I unequivocally reject said assertion. Since our two viewpoints are patently irreconcilable, it is pointless to continue the discussion.

You quoted a part of my post out of context. Here is the relevant paragraph in its entirety:

“The problem with the PC police is that they come off as extreme, totally unreasonable. ‘Islamophobia’ means ‘fear of Islam.’ Is that an unreasonable reaction in light of constant terror attacks by Islamic extremists? There is no other religion that employs such tactics. Is it unreasonable to be afraid off being butchered at random while simply going about one’s daily business? Is it unreasonable to want to maintain one’s culture within in a country where one's ethnic group has inhabited and shaped it for millennia? If I became homeless and you kindly offered me refuge, would it be unreasonable to expect me to conform to your house rules, no smoking, for example? What ever happened to: ‘When in Rome do as the Romans do?’”

I don't know what you think it means to "own" a country, but if Americans own America, they express that ownership through laws. So the "house rules" of Americans are the laws, not the amorphous culture.

If you want to talk general American principles instead, they're based in individual freedom, not superficial things like race or dress. And if you can think of yourself as defending America while simultaneously ignoring what's in (or, more tellingly, not in) its founding documents, then indeed, it is pointless to continue.

Hi Don, I wasn't making a criticism, just submitting an addendum.

The problem when people attach the suffix of "phobia" onto a word is the indication that those expressing concern or who are simply discussing it are somehow so irrational that they should not be taken seriously or that they are suffering from some sort of brain imbalance.

This act of placing the stigma of some kind of mental derangement or illness on people who demonstrate awareness is being used as a way to silence others - it's a labelling tactic.

Fear and terror are synonyms, so there is nothing irrational about fearing terrorism, those that commit it, or the ideologies that utilize it.

Upon further contemplation, I see where the core of the problem lies. That is, what is this discussion about? Is it about exiling American citizens who are Muslims? Of course not. That would certainly be unconstitutional and immoral. What it is about is the future. By owning America, Americans have the right to defend its borders and decide whom we will admit as immigrants. This is what Trump is all about. Aliens who are not in this country have no constitutional rights; therefore, we can ban any such immigrants for any reason including that their values and cultural mores are antithetical to our own. And who these people are is decided upon by Americans through the democratic process that you speak of.

The things you initially said, and which I replied to, were about culture and head coverings, not immigration policy. You went well beyond merely stating that we have the right to restrict who enters the country (true), stating instead that immigrants should suppress their culture and religion to reflect predominant American culture and religion (which isn't particularly homogeneous to begin with, but one thing at a time).

Not only are these initial comments about more than immigration policy, but your follow-up response, which invoked the founders' religion and ethnicity rather what they actually wrote in our founding documents, confirms it.

As I said, you're free to disagree with what I'm saying. But you should direct that dissent to the faces on whatever coins or bills you have lying around.

Yoda and I don't always see eye to eye but I really don't want to respond to the above posters because I'd probably ruin his near perfect responses. So I'll just say I agree 100% with his assessment.

He's pretty wise for a lil green guy.

Absolutely. One that is being used more and more to silence anyone who doesn't agree with PC. Social media is partly responsible for this, IMO. Witness the hysteria over the man who shot the lion in Zimbabwe (or thereabouts) and that poor mother whose kid fell into the gorilla cage at the zoo. Strangely enough, when it was discovered the mother was an African American, all criticism was immediately halted. A case of conflicting PC, I guess.

Cyril the lion. What that hunter did was wrong. Just wrong.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

He paid to hunt lions. Maybe he killed the wrong one - but did he deserve death threats? Threats to his livelihood and family? You don't think that was maybe a teensy bit over the top? If you don't want animals to be hunted, then stop licenses from being issued for hunting. But the problem is, these licenses are huge revenue earners for very poor 3rd world countries. They are probably a means of survival for local populations.

And what about that poor mother whose kid fell to into the gorilla cage? She was insulted, called every name under the sun, there were petitions to have her children taken away, calls for her to be shot or jailed when, in my view, it was the Zoo's fault their security was so lax a four year old was able to breach the exhibit's defenses. But the ultimate hypocrisy was how the barrage of insults and OTT outrage immediately stopped when it became widely known she was African American. Yup, conflicting PC.