People also don’t even think through the fact that people are people and actions have consequences. Suppose an ISIS sympathizer gets into the country as a refugee, then they are treated well, helped to find employment, make connections with the community, get married and have kids. When the sleeper cell call goes out they are going to be like, “Wow, I don’t think I really want to put on a suicide vest.” Consider the same person who arrives in the country and ends up in a ghetto with few prospects, hounded by racism, staring from the outside in at the vast wealth of the few who don’t care about them.
Holy shit, I think I’ve just inadvertently made an argument for not letting refugees into America.
My understanding (and they didn’t mention this part in Sunday School) is that the fact that the Good Samaritan is a Samaritan (i.e. someone from Samaria) is important. (Maybe y’all knew this, maybe it’s common knowledge, but I’d never heard about it until a couple of years ago.) The Samaritans were unpopular (I’m not sure why). We’re taught that the parable is about helping those in need, and that’s part of it, but there’s a reason that Jesus specified a Samaritan, and not some other Gentile nor a Jew. No one liked the Samaritans and yet here’s one (i.e. one’s neighbor) coming to the aid of a fellow human.
I recall that Michelle Malkin got some mileage out of it, using it to propose/justify that we treat Muslims the way that we did Japanese Americans. I saw that in Takei’s response and immediately thought, “some asshole’s going to bring up the Niihau incident.”
[quote]Jesus’ target audience, the Jews, hated Samaritans[9] to such a degree that the Lawyer’s phrase “The one who had mercy on him” may indicate a reluctance to name the Samaritan.[10] The Samaritans in turn hated the Jews.[11]
Tensions were particularly high in the early decades of the 1st century
because Samaritans had desecrated the Jewish Temple at Passover with
human bones.[/quote]
From the Wiki
I think you nailed it. Actually, I think it’s possible that a potential attacker could slip in that way, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t worry me. (I think it’s unlikely, but I don’t think it’s impossible.) That doesn’t mean that thousands of others don’t genuinely need our help. Which of these is more important? If we truly believe in these freedoms and these values (huddled masses, least of our brethren, loving our neighbors etc.), then we should be brave enough to die with those freedoms and values (if not necessarily die for them). I’m not advocating recklessness, and I certainly don’t want to be killed, nor for anyone else to be killed, as the result of such an attack. But at some point we either stand for these things, or we don’t.
Actually, I’ve not said his argument is legitimate. I’ve not said internment camps of any kind against any people is ok.
What I have done is criticize the title of the post, the interpretation of what is being said in the letter, and the manner in which this person is being portrayed.
Once again, the title of the post is completely truthful and correct. In light of this, other people are trying to guess why you are spilling so many pixels criticizing it.
You list things which are also threats, but an aircraft carrier is a much bigger, much more effective and potentially devastating one with capabilities that outclass terrorist tactics.
Okay, so you read the title, thought, “That’s inflammatory”, didn’t check to see if it was true, posted something about how wrong it was quite wrongly, predicted this would get you criticized for thinking something that you didn’t say you thought, and then it came true. Your powers of self-fulfilling prophecy are remarkable.
I don’t know if you think that people always say just what they mean, or if you think it is wrong to guess that someone means something they didn’t say. My observation is that people sometimes mean things they don’t say, and sometimes mean the opposite of what they say.
Guessing that this guy thought that Japanese American concentration camps were a good thing based on his letter was going all in on a pair of aces and winning (as he himself confirmed) and you came to criticize it for being imprudent. Guessing that the reason you would do this is that you sympathize with his position might be more akin to going all in on a pair of eights, and I’m not entirely sure whether it was a winning bet or a losing one.
I don’t think you sympathize with his position. I think you are applying an absurd standard of proof for those who would simply say that a powerful person wrong (let alone to hold them to account), a standard of proof that people without positions of power rarely get to avail themselves of, and one that serves to help people with power maintain it. You yourself might apply the same standard of proof with complete equality, but the effect of what you are doing here is to support the idea that Japanese American internment camps were a good idea. That other people jumped to the conclusion that you meant to be doing that is close enough to the truth for what they are trying to accomplish, I imagine.
OK, I LOLled. People get on here and take a position and won’t back down. It’s totally absurd. I am NOT backing down from making that observation.
BTW, racism is never a good idea. Not even looking back in history and going, “Oh, well, we needed to protect the country.” NO. Racism is NEVER ok. It never was and it never will be.
That is part of what is blowing my mind. This mayor is flat out saying something between “Racism is good” and “Racism is bad but sometimes necessary” and apparently it is time to invoke Jon Stewart on Crossfire (his holy reasonableness) to say that we ought to be carefully parsing his words to see whether we could convict him of saying those things by an innocent-until-proven-guilty standard. If Jon Stewart were alive today* he’d be having a field day on David Bowers.
I’m not even sure that you know what you are saying. It’s true you have been careful to distinguish between your disagreement with his position, and whether or not his argument in support of it makes any kind of sense.
But it sure looks like you’re defending his argument:
If this doesn’t mean something along the lines of “I disagree with his conclusions, but his argument makes sense,” then I really can’t tell what it means.
Seems it’s either saying something different from what you mean, and/or it’s irrelevant since, as several people have pointed out, there is no way (save demagoguery) to tie a “threat” from the “enemy” in either case to the population (to be) interned in the corresponding case.
