gregintenn
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Post by gregintenn on Mar 23, 2016 8:48:10 GMT -5
Should we look at all white high school males as school shooters until we can sort that out too? The two most notorious abortion clinic bombers/mass shooters (Eric Rudolph and Robert Dear) were middle aged Christian white males. Over the past 30 years dozens of employees of abortion clinics have been shot, attacked, assaulted and/or kidnapped by middle aged Christian white males as well. Please include middle aged white Christian males in the "special scrutiny needed" category. So this is a larger problem than Isis? What is your solution?
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milee
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Post by milee on Mar 23, 2016 8:49:38 GMT -5
The two most notorious abortion clinic bombers/mass shooters (Eric Rudolph and Robert Dear) were middle aged Christian white males. Over the past 30 years dozens of employees of abortion clinics have been shot, attacked, assaulted and/or kidnapped by middle aged Christian white males as well. Please include middle aged white Christian males in the "special scrutiny needed" category. So this is a larger problem than Isis? What is your solution? Are we making decisions on who to monitor, segregate or discriminate against based on how they compare to ISIS? So ISIS is our reference point now?
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gregintenn
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Post by gregintenn on Mar 23, 2016 8:53:30 GMT -5
So this is a larger problem than Isis? What is your solution? Are we making decisions on who to monitor, segregate or discriminate against based on how they compare to ISIS? So ISIS is our reference point now? Isis is our greatest threat now. I'm asking how you would propose to deal with a large group of people who believe they should either convert you to Islam or kill you.
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milee
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Post by milee on Mar 23, 2016 9:08:05 GMT -5
Are we making decisions on who to monitor, segregate or discriminate against based on how they compare to ISIS? So ISIS is our reference point now? Isis is our greatest threat now. I'm asking how you would propose to deal with a large group of people who believe they should either convert you to Islam or kill you. ISIS is possibly the largest potential source of terrorism right now, but it's not the "greatest" threat to American life if you get over the emotions and look at the numbers. Without even looking up statistics, I'm willing to bet that drunk driving kills more Americans a year than terrorism of any type. We could totally eliminate that threat by banning all alcohol and requiring all cars/trucks to have devices that disable them if the driver has any alcohol in their system. Or if we want a similar solution to what you're proposing for Muslims, we can just ban all cars/trucks.
So if we're just looking at numbers, you can start working on getting rid of cars/trucks and alcohol if you want to save the greatest number of American lives. I'm sure there are many other causes that take more American lives than terrorism.
Why haven't we solved those issues? Because we have to balance the benefits of the solution against the restrictions to individual liberty and other costs that the solution requires. We also have to use some common sense and think about unintended consequences. The solution being proposed - banning or segregating all Muslims - is not a good one because it improperly discriminates against too many innocent people, improperly restricts individual liberty and (common sense here) also serves to create more of the problem that is causing the terrorism (disenfranchisement/alienation of Muslims.)
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gregintenn
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Post by gregintenn on Mar 23, 2016 9:24:13 GMT -5
Isis is our greatest threat now. I'm asking how you would propose to deal with a large group of people who believe they should either convert you to Islam or kill you. ISIS is possibly the largest potential source of terrorism right now, but it's not the "greatest" threat to American life if you get over the emotions and look at the numbers. Without even looking up statistics, I'm willing to bet that drunk driving kills more Americans a year than terrorism of any type. We could totally eliminate that threat by banning all alcohol and requiring all cars/trucks to have devices that disable them if the driver has any alcohol in their system. Or if we want a similar solution to what you're proposing for Muslims, we can just ban all cars/trucks.
So if we're just looking at numbers, you can start working on getting rid of cars/trucks and alcohol if you want to save the greatest number of American lives. I'm sure there are many other causes that take more American lives than terrorism.
Why haven't we solved those issues? Because we have to balance the benefits of the solution against the restrictions to individual liberty and other costs that the solution requires. We also have to use some common sense and think about unintended consequences. The solution being proposed - banning or segregating all Muslims - is not a good one because it improperly discriminates against too many innocent people, improperly restricts individual liberty and (common sense here) also serves to create more of the problem that is causing the terrorism (disenfranchisement/alienation of Muslims.)
In other words, you don't have a solution?
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milee
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Post by milee on Mar 23, 2016 9:28:48 GMT -5
ISIS is possibly the largest potential source of terrorism right now, but it's not the "greatest" threat to American life if you get over the emotions and look at the numbers. Without even looking up statistics, I'm willing to bet that drunk driving kills more Americans a year than terrorism of any type. We could totally eliminate that threat by banning all alcohol and requiring all cars/trucks to have devices that disable them if the driver has any alcohol in their system. Or if we want a similar solution to what you're proposing for Muslims, we can just ban all cars/trucks.
So if we're just looking at numbers, you can start working on getting rid of cars/trucks and alcohol if you want to save the greatest number of American lives. I'm sure there are many other causes that take more American lives than terrorism.
Why haven't we solved those issues? Because we have to balance the benefits of the solution against the restrictions to individual liberty and other costs that the solution requires. We also have to use some common sense and think about unintended consequences. The solution being proposed - banning or segregating all Muslims - is not a good one because it improperly discriminates against too many innocent people, improperly restricts individual liberty and (common sense here) also serves to create more of the problem that is causing the terrorism (disenfranchisement/alienation of Muslims.)
In other words, you don't have a solution? I don't need to have a solution to know that your proposed solution is a bad one.
"Solving" this is going to be complicated and I believe it will be a combination of enhanced intelligence gathering and also a very hard debate within the American public about how much individual liberty they are willing to give up to prevent future attacks. I do not believe we can ever 100% eliminate either terrorism or school shootings, we can only minimize them and as we approach the end of spectrum that eliminates them the individual freedoms we give up will cost us more than the attacks themselves. It is tragic, wrong and awful when one person decides to take the life of another person; we will never be able to eliminate that and will have to think long and hard about what we're willing to endure to minimize it.
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gregintenn
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Post by gregintenn on Mar 23, 2016 9:41:34 GMT -5
Great post, Milee!
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milee
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Post by milee on Mar 23, 2016 9:43:53 GMT -5
Well meaning people often cause more problems with their proposed "solutions." It's human nature to want to solve things. When something awful happens, we want to do something - anything - to make sure that something awful doesn't happen again. Sometimes the things we do to solve the problems actually make the problems worse.
A good example is with our local schools. In our area most schools are a group of individual, small, single story and sometimes even single room buildings clustered on a large, spread out campus. Most have large windows and multiple entrances. So for an example school holding 500 students, there will be 20-50 individual buildings on a 5-10 acre piece of land. After the Sandy Hook mass school shooting, parents demanded that the School Board "do something" to make sure the schools are secure. Given their layout and configuration, without tearing down and totally rebuilding the schools there really is no way to secure these buildings. There just isn't. But that's not an acceptable answer and there's no budget to completely rebuild all the schools, so the School Board had huge 6' chain link fences built around the perimeter of the buildings. Looks impressive and sounds secure, right? An answer from well-meaning people.
But a totally dumb one. The parents feel better because the school looks secure, but those 6' fences actually create a worse situation if you think through it tactically. Think about all the school shooters - they've been young men in their physical prime. A 6' fence wouldn't slow them down for even 3 seconds, so the fence does nothing to keep a shooter out. Worse, the fence is a huge obstacle to evacuating the school if a shooter does get in; while it doesn't slow down an adult male, it prevents small children and older teachers from evacuating. Even worse, the few tiny gates and openings become choke points where children will either get crushed in the crowds trying to escape or the school shooter can pick them off - shooting them while they're trapped.
The proposal to segregate or discriminate against all Muslims is the equivalent to the 6' chain link fence around our schools. Makes some people feel better but doesn't solve the problem and is likely to make the problem even worse.
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973beachbum
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Post by 973beachbum on Mar 23, 2016 9:56:53 GMT -5
Not to muck things up further by quoting Hillary Clinton, but how high a fence to we have to build to keep out the internet?
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ArchietheDragon
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Post by ArchietheDragon on Mar 23, 2016 10:00:00 GMT -5
The two most notorious abortion clinic bombers/mass shooters (Eric Rudolph and Robert Dear) were middle aged Christian white males. Over the past 30 years dozens of employees of abortion clinics have been shot, attacked, assaulted and/or kidnapped by middle aged Christian white males as well. Please include middle aged white Christian males in the "special scrutiny needed" category. So this is a larger problem than Isis? What is your solution? If you want to use body count to determine the biggest problem, it is heart disease. Over 600k Americans die from it each year. Solutions are simple. Outlaw unhealthy food. Put laws into place to require exercise. Save hundreds of thousands of Americans. Be the hero.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2016 10:10:23 GMT -5
ISIS is possibly the largest potential source of terrorism right now, but it's not the "greatest" threat to American life if you get over the emotions and look at the numbers. Without even looking up statistics, I'm willing to bet that drunk driving kills more Americans a year than terrorism of any type. We could totally eliminate that threat by banning all alcohol and requiring all cars/trucks to have devices that disable them if the driver has any alcohol in their system. Or if we want a similar solution to what you're proposing for Muslims, we can just ban all cars/trucks.
So if we're just looking at numbers, you can start working on getting rid of cars/trucks and alcohol if you want to save the greatest number of American lives. I'm sure there are many other causes that take more American lives than terrorism.
Why haven't we solved those issues? Because we have to balance the benefits of the solution against the restrictions to individual liberty and other costs that the solution requires. We also have to use some common sense and think about unintended consequences. The solution being proposed - banning or segregating all Muslims - is not a good one because it improperly discriminates against too many innocent people, improperly restricts individual liberty and (common sense here) also serves to create more of the problem that is causing the terrorism (disenfranchisement/alienation of Muslims.)
In other words, you don't have a solution? I have a solution. Accept bad things will happen in a free world. Punish those who do bad.
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gregintenn
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Post by gregintenn on Mar 23, 2016 10:29:13 GMT -5
So this is a larger problem than Isis? What is your solution? If you want to use body count to determine the biggest problem, it is heart disease. Over 600k Americans die from it each year. Solutions are simple. Outlaw unhealthy food. Put laws into place to require exercise. Save hundreds of thousands of Americans. Be the hero. I don't recall McDonald's slogan being "eat a Big Mac or we'll behead you!" I can think of another very simple way to save millions of American lives, but the topic is forbidden here.
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ArchietheDragon
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Post by ArchietheDragon on Mar 23, 2016 10:31:25 GMT -5
If you want to use body count to determine the biggest problem, it is heart disease. Over 600k Americans die from it each year. Solutions are simple. Outlaw unhealthy food. Put laws into place to require exercise. Save hundreds of thousands of Americans. Be the hero. I don't recall McDonald's slogan being "eat a Big Mac or we'll behead you!" I can think of another very simple way to save millions of American lives, but the topic is forbidden here. Good point. Forbidden topic would be #1 way to save American lives. Reduce heart diseases would be # 2 way. Continue this list and profiling Muslims would be far, far down on the list.
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gregintenn
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Post by gregintenn on Mar 23, 2016 10:35:41 GMT -5
I don't recall McDonald's slogan being "eat a Big Mac or we'll behead you!" I can think of another very simple way to save millions of American lives, but the topic is forbidden here. Good point. Forbidden topic would be #1 way to save American lives. Reduce heart diseases would be # 2 way. Continue this list and profiling Muslims would be far, far down on the list. Today, I'd agree. I can't say that something can't happen tomorrow that would change that. I'd prefer to be proactive to this avowed threat rather than reactionary. It appears I'm in the minority here.
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movingforward
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Post by movingforward on Mar 23, 2016 10:58:26 GMT -5
If you want to use body count to determine the biggest problem, it is heart disease. Over 600k Americans die from it each year. Solutions are simple. Outlaw unhealthy food. Put laws into place to require exercise. Save hundreds of thousands of Americans. Be the hero. I don't recall McDonald's slogan being "eat a Big Mac or we'll behead you!" I can think of another very simple way to save millions of American lives, but the topic is forbidden here.
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swamp
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Post by swamp on Mar 23, 2016 11:06:11 GMT -5
If you want to use body count to determine the biggest problem, it is heart disease. Over 600k Americans die from it each year. Solutions are simple. Outlaw unhealthy food. Put laws into place to require exercise. Save hundreds of thousands of Americans. Be the hero. I don't recall McDonald's slogan being "eat a Big Mac or we'll behead you!" I can think of another very simple way to save millions of American lives, but the topic is forbidden here. McDonald's doesn't have a monopoly over unhealthy food.
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gregintenn
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Post by gregintenn on Mar 23, 2016 11:08:10 GMT -5
I don't recall McDonald's slogan being "eat a Big Mac or we'll behead you!" I can think of another very simple way to save millions of American lives, but the topic is forbidden here. McDonald's doesn't have a monopoly over unhealthy food. For brevity' sake, I used them as an example. Isis also isn't the only group decrying "death to America."
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swamp
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Post by swamp on Mar 23, 2016 11:11:14 GMT -5
McDonald's doesn't have a monopoly over unhealthy food. For brevity' sake, I used them as an example. Isis also isn't the only group decrying "death to America." how many people are we supposed to round up?
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gregintenn
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Post by gregintenn on Mar 23, 2016 11:13:47 GMT -5
For brevity' sake, I used them as an example. Isis also isn't the only group decrying "death to America." how many people are we supposed to round up? All I know is that we're pissing in the wind searching you at the airport.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Mar 23, 2016 11:17:18 GMT -5
Rounding up all the Muslims in the country is also pissing in the wind. How are you going to stop people from watching the videos on the internet, converting and becoming terrorists?
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gregintenn
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Post by gregintenn on Mar 23, 2016 11:20:20 GMT -5
Rounding up all the Muslims in the country is also pissing in the wind. How are you going to stop people from watching the videos on the internet, converting and becoming terrorists? Eliminate the threat?
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Miss Tequila
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Post by Miss Tequila on Mar 23, 2016 11:20:55 GMT -5
Should we look at all white high school males as school shooters until we can sort that out too? The two most notorious abortion clinic bombers/mass shooters (Eric Rudolph and Robert Dear) were middle aged Christian white males. Over the past 30 years dozens of employees of abortion clinics have been shot, attacked, assaulted and/or kidnapped by middle aged Christian white males as well. Please include middle aged white Christian males in the "special scrutiny needed" category. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
Granted, that is just a wiki entry but it reports that there have been 11 murders in 26 years. While any murder is awful (and I say that as a very pro-life anti-abortion person) that certainly pales in comparison to the loss of life caused by the muslim extremists. More innocent people were killed in Brussels this week than in 26 years by the anti-abortion crazies. To try to equate the two is really grasping at straws.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Mar 23, 2016 11:22:27 GMT -5
We've nailed several top leaders in these organizations, someone else keeps popping up to take their place.
You can't stop people from wanting to do bad things, or organizing other people to do bad things with them.
Or is the suggestion to bomb the entire middle east/eliminate all Muslims on the planet?
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swamp
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Post by swamp on Mar 23, 2016 11:34:51 GMT -5
how many people are we supposed to round up? All I know is that we're pissing in the wind searching you at the airport. I agree with you on that. And the old half drunken bottle of Gatorade that I forgot about in my duffle bag is not a security threat.
Nor are the travel package of baby wipes that scanned as explosives.
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movingforward
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Post by movingforward on Mar 23, 2016 12:16:18 GMT -5
Rounding up all the Muslims in the country is also pissing in the wind. How are you going to stop people from watching the videos on the internet, converting and becoming terrorists? Eliminate the threat? Impossible. It's like the war on drugs...you can bust the head of a drug organization but someone is always there to take his/her place. All any of us can do is be aware of our surroundings and report anything suspicious, and by suspicious I DON'T mean the fact that someone happens to be of middle eastern descent. In the end, we all just have to live our lives or else the terrorist have won.
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kittensaver
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Post by kittensaver on Mar 23, 2016 13:40:27 GMT -5
In the middle of buying into the fear and hysteria, I think many people forget (or never knew, because they are consistently being fed fear in their homes, their media viewing habits, communities, churches and schools) that while we may be (legitimately!) at war with terrorism, we are NOT at war with a religion.
BIG difference.
Here's another paradigm that drives fear-based people in this country crazy:
Man + Religion + Assault Weapon = Terrorist.
It is immaterial where in the world that person lives, with which nationality they identify, or to what religion they subscribe. And yes, I'm saying it is possible to be a America Christian and also at Terrorist.
<<< Kittensaver goes off to put on her flameproof suit >>>
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kittensaver
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Post by kittensaver on Mar 23, 2016 13:40:54 GMT -5
In the end, we all just have to live our lives or else the terrorist have won.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2016 13:52:36 GMT -5
In the middle of buying into the fear and hysteria, I think many people forget (or never knew, because they are consistently being fed fear in their homes, their media viewing habits, communities, churches and schools) that while we may be (legitimately!) at war with terrorism, we are NOT at war with a religion.
BIG difference.
Here's another paradigm that drives fear-based people in this country crazy:
Man + Religion + Assault Weapon = Terrorist.
It is immaterial where in the world that person lives, with which nationality they identify, or to what religion they subscribe. And yes, I'm saying it is possible to be a America Christian and also at Terrorist.
<<< Kittensaver goes off to put on her flameproof suit >>>
We are at war with a sect of a religion not the religion as a whole. Yes it is possible to be an American Christian terrorist but it is not the worldwide threat we face today.
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movingforward
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Post by movingforward on Mar 23, 2016 13:52:42 GMT -5
It has happened many times throughout history. In fact, it has happened recently...I personally consider hate crimes to be acts of terrorism. Walking into a church and shooting a bunch of African American citizens is an act of terror IMO. Just because someone isn't setting off a bomb doesn't mean they aren't a terrorist.
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Miss Tequila
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Post by Miss Tequila on Mar 23, 2016 13:57:08 GMT -5
In the middle of buying into the fear and hysteria, I think many people forget (or never knew, because they are consistently being fed fear in their homes, their media viewing habits, communities, churches and schools) that while we may be (legitimately!) at war with terrorism, we are NOT at war with a religion.
BIG difference.
Here's another paradigm that drives fear-based people in this country crazy:
Man + Religion + Assault Weapon = Terrorist.
It is immaterial where in the world that person lives, with which nationality they identify, or to what religion they subscribe. And yes, I'm saying it is possible to be a America Christian and also at Terrorist.
<<< Kittensaver goes off to put on her flameproof suit >>>
Are you saying that white Christian males pose the same level of threat as muslim terrorists? Because I would love to see the stats on White Christian male terrorists causing as much death and destruction in the last 15 years as the Muslim Terrorists.....
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