At 2/13/2016 1:10:20 AM, thett3 wrote:
At 2/12/2016 10:30:06 PM, Daltonian wrote:
At 2/12/2016 5:22:14 AM, thett3 wrote:
If somebody offered you a skittle when you knew that 1 in every 500 was poisoned, there's no way you would eat it even if it's just a small proportion of the skittles that are poisonous. Our current system doesn't even try to weed out the poison.
This argument is so flawed, it's ridiculous. Every time a Republican used this comparison on the news, they sounded like an idiot to anyone who had the slightest idea of the nature of the problem itself.
Do you really think that the number of muslim refugees who commit acts of terrorism, proportional to the total number who we have accepted, is 1 in every 500?
Considering that the only quibble you had was with the proportion, which I never claimed was representative, it doesn't seem like a flawed argument. As it stands, Muslims commit 25-50x more terrorism than we would expect given their proportion of the population, suggesting that yeah there is a problem. In the OP I gave two pieces of evidence indicating that our treasonous officials look the other way when it comes to potential terrorists and that this insane policy cost 13 people their lives...likely many more, as the first article notes.
How is it a bad policy to shut down Muslim immigration until we can establish a system that actually screens out the bad ones? It's exactly like the skittles example. If 3 in 800,000 skittles killed the people who ate them the factory that created that batch would absolutely be shut down until they could figure out what was going on.
The system already "screens out the bad ones".. can you imagine what America would be like if it didn't? In the context of your metaphor, the skittles came out of the factory perfectly; they were just poisoned afterwards. Islamic radicalization is that poison. Many of the shooters and terrorists you've named in this thread immigrated here as teenagers and children -- teenagers and children don't come here terrorists. They are indoctrinated and radicalized. That is the core problem. Not the immigrants themselves.
The actual number is something more in line with something like three in eight hundred thousand that have immigrated here since 9/11... how can you speak so urgently about a shutdown of basically all immigrants coming into this country, given the reality of the numbers?
Your fears are misguided and misplaced. The real problem isn't at all correlated with influxes of fleeing refugees and migrants into the country. It is home-grown self-radicalization of people who are already permanent citizens and residents living in the country -- and that's from Muslim and ethnically white family backgrounds alike.
Bullsh1t. Muslims are far, far (like 25 times) more likely to commit terrorist acts than we would expect.
I never said they weren't. I said that ethnically arabic/middle-eastern and white families alike were affected by islamic radicalization. I never said that they were equally represented. Just that they were both affected - which is true.
Moreover given the incompatibility of Western and Islamic culture, we have to be very very careful that we don't enter into the kind of situation that Europe is in...and I'm confident we'll be able to.
The situation is different. We have an ocean separating us. The only migrants that could ever feasibly reach America are ones that come here on our terms. The context of the situation here vs in Europe is entirely different, imo.
Like I said, I know lots of Muslim people and I love them. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss these issues, because the stakes are simply too high for us not to. We absolutely DO need to figure out what the hell is going on. Why was the San Bernardino terrorist not properly screened?
The San Bernardino shooter was never screened because he was born a naturalized American citizen (in Chicago, to be exact) -- that's what you're missing, Thett! It isn't IMMIGRANTS who are committing most of these atrocities and terrorist acts, it is AMERICAN CITIZENS who are recruited abroad and radicalized by Islamists and groups like ISIL. We need to dedicate our resources to preventing that from happening, not to shutting thousands of innocent asylum seekers out.
A mass shutdown of our immigration system that targets muslims *specifically* is going to be the opposite of productive or useful, all that has potential to do is stir up more animosity towards the west and give ISIL easier means to spread their propaganda. Rather than talking about ridiculous and infeasible proposals like that, you should be addressing how we can combat the self-radicalization of American Youths.
So your argument is that Muslims are so prone to radicalization that immigration restrictions will turn the quiet Pakistani kid into Jihadi John? Bullsh1t.
That's an exaggeration of what I'm arguing. Me saying it would make the situation worse doesn't at all imply that things would get that bad. It is objectively true that directly discriminating against Muslim people sends a negative message and incite further resentment for the west.
What radicalizes Muslims most is the fact that the United States has killed at least a million of them in the past decade...a policy that only Trump (and Rand) has shown a willingness to stop.
I don't contest this point.
There's also the issue of the incompatibility of Islamic culture and Western culture, but for a number of reasons that issue is far more grave in Europe than it is here and most Muslims assimilate to a large degree. But the fact remains that there is indeed a problem with a small minority and I don't understand how it's at all extreme to enact policies to keep that small minority as small as possible.
I don't really contest the basis of this either, but I do contest your generalizing. "Islamic culture" is a very broad term to be using when discussing something so serious -- Islamic culture variates. There are liberal muslims who are perfectly capable of assimilating peacefully into Western societies and becoming contributive citizens in western nations, yet the policies you are proposing would group them in exactly the same category as literal terrorists just because they fall under the blanket of being a part of the "Islamic culture". And I know that you acknowledge that there are good and amazing Islamic people out there, but the ideas that you support leave those people in the dust, and without any recognition whatsoever -- they treat those people like criminals and animals, which is unjust.
I sympathize with where you are coming from, but I really do genuinely believe you're just looking at the issue the wrong way, Thett. You should be less afraid of immigrants and more afraid of the people who already live in your neighbourhoods becoming radicalized into Islamic extremism and terrorism, if you're going to be afraid.
