No-one is born as a person of religious faith, you thick ****.
How long ago was it that the police couldn't even enter the East End? The country keeps getting better, I think, because as I have said many times, homo sapiens are actually pretty clever so over the course of time we eventually get it right.
But I'm quite happy with people raising these issues, don't get me wrong. It makes for interesting conversation, it's just important to maintain some perspective.
It is a peculiar trait of the middle class liberal that they will do everything in their power to live, work and have their children schooled away from the problematic aspects of society and then use the fact that they don't experience these problems as evidence that they don't really exist.
It was the War wot done it, imo. After all, who could continue to support and promote a culture that had led to that. Nothing mattered anymore.
So any and all the silly ideas that would ordinarily have been roundly rejected as the foolishnesses of youth and lunacy suddenly began to gain real traction and acceptance. The adults lost their *******s completely and simply couldn't preach good old-fashioned common sense anymore.
War is a good business but it's dirty and certainly not for everyone. You have to do it right.
You make it sound like changing your choice of tea bags.
A Muslim lad might reject all the traditions of his religion and come for a beer but he is still a Muslim. is he supposed to formally reject his cultural upbringing and his family, renounce his religion and declare himself devoid of god? Or is it ok to just be 'not very muslim' in his behaviour?
When I refused monty a job you discussed him being secular and effectively 'less jewish' than your full on ones. So you can be more or less jewish? Can you not see how that isn't a flat line, in or out?
Certainly the war led to a collective loss of confidence in the superiority of our culture that has caused us to pretend other, manifestly inferior cultures should be given their head.
Utter madness, of course. Like the school genius suffering a breakdown that leads him to conclude that he should take instruction from the thickest kids in the remedial class.
I didn't say it was simple. But it's perfectly possible, there is no legal obstacle to it and - unlike race - is a matter over which you have choice. If you decide not to make that choice, that's fine. But you must accept that there may be negative consequences to that decision.
Besides, it's not this society's job to make it simple. It's the job of the individual to adapt to society, not the other way around. Thinking it is society's job to adapt is what has dropped us in the sh1t.
Interestingly, same for the winners and the losers alike. I suppose it's all very well marching off to the front for a jolly with the lads, but having done all that and seen all that, and then returning home to face your wife and family and friends, knowing what you have also made them see and do and see done is a different circle of hell altogether.
Frankly, we bottled it, couldn't look each other in the eye anymore. And basically, we've been hiding from each other ever since.
^^^^
:cry:
Beautiful
(for Redgunamo)
It was a flippant comment based on something I saw on BBC once, but the point really was that London, and England and pretty much every country, were miles worse off in terms of poverty, health care, infant mortality etc etc a few hundred years ago.
Or do you pine for the days of the Inquisition or the glory years when life expectancy was ~ 40 years of age?
As I said, perspective is important otherwise we might forget how well we really have it.
So he wasnt jewish but he was still a jew?
Why do you place such a store on ethnic heritage and so little on cultural, philosophical or spiritual? Why is outlook or belief socast away but technicalities of the blood so cherished? After all, we dont ask somebody their blood type before we decide whether we like them or not.
I don't place any store on it. :shrug: I've already said that most concepts of 'race' are scientifically meaningless. However, if we are to use it as a shorthand for certain physical characteristics related to particular geographical locations or tribes, it is undeniable that those things are simply a question of biological genetic inheritance and - as such - immutable. Culture and religious belief, on the other hand, are learned characteristics and relatively easily overcome.
Again, I do not see why you are struggling with this really simple distinction between something one cannot change and something one can. It's making you seem slightly unhinged.
It is largely because you have already demonstrated that in this instance, the thing you cant change can actually be changed to a greater or lesser extent. It is confused by the fact that race that you refer to is bound together not by nation or region but principally by faith. Yes, I am struggling to understand how jewish somebody who has renounced or converted faith really is. For example, I think some of my dad's family were jewish. I dont know it, but I think it. It may be in my blood, it may not be. Am I jewish? Does Corbyn hate me?
What I am really struggling with is how you can possibly think this is straightforward...
Firstly, throughout this entire conversation I have not called either of you racist. I have consistently drawn a comparison between prejudice based on race (the anti semitism B accuses Labour of) and prejudice based on faith (the two of you and your muslim baiting). That should make it clearI am not calling you racist- I am however equating your faith-based prejudice with a race-based one. This isnt the same thing.
Secondly, your insistence that it is purely the faith that you despise is horse****. You admit yourself it is the behaviours you despise (the ghettos, therape gangs, etc). These are the behaviours of individuals. Throughout all of our conversations you have held the line that the religion itself, and alone, is responsible for these behaviours. this is the device you both use to justify your prejudice- I dont hate people, I hate their beliefs. It hinges on you proving that the religion is responsible for how these people behave, flagrantlydisregarding the fact that billions of Muslims around the globe believe the same thing and don't behave this way.
B ridicules the notion that anyone could hate judaism, and insists that they simply hate jews- it simply must be the case. they couldnt possibly hate Israel, they couldn't possibly have an issue with US-led zionism, they couldn't possibly have faith-based objections. It is purely andsimply the hatred of individuals based on race and is therefore unacceptable.
I get your objections, I understand why you both think the way you do. But you are applying a double standard here in chucking stones at othersand the distinction, and the argument that separates the individual from heir belief is almost unbearably tenuous.
You think that the desire for muslims to remain among muslims, marry among muslims and breed purely among muslims are nothing to do with Islam and its strictures regarding other faiths? Equally, you think that Islam's attitudes to women and infidel women in particular are nothing to do with Islam?
The direct links between Islam and ALL of these behaviours is blindingly obvious. The fact that you don't want to acknowledge them because the doing so makes you feel uncomfortable is entirely your problem.
Firstly, you are wrong, I have never said that religion alone is responsible for all negative behaviour by Muslims. I could talk to you plenty about any number of contributing factors including the justifications of choice for most leftist apologists for acts of terrorism such as western foreign policy and mental illness (both of which I think can often be factors to some degree).
Secondly,I didn't say you accused us of being racist (how could I, when Islam is not a race?). But your accusation of us being inherently discriminatory towards Muslims as individuals is not much better and no more justified.
As I said, there is nothing intrinsically discriminatory about stating that things would have been better if no Muslim had ever come to the UK and it is only our ingrained sensitivity about matters of religion and race that makes it sound contentious to our ears (and i agree it certainly sounds contentious).
And no, I would certainly never casually say it to a Muslim because that would make me a giant c[U]nt. What I should be able to do, however, is say it in the spirit of open conversation without someone like you accusing me of judging every individual Muslim by the same standards as I do the worst kind of Muslim.
Let's be honest, if you had evidence that one Muslim refugee out of a million was going to murder you or your family, and had the choice of whether to let them all in, or none of them, you would soon find yourself being "discriminatory" too.
I do apologise. when you said it was unhelpful that people like me bandyabout words like racism I thought you were suggesting I was, you know, bandying about words like racism. I must have misunderstood that- silly old me.
Nor have I said that either of you hate every muslim. My original point was a contrast between B's horror at anti-semitism and how he squared that with his own 'reservations' regarding muslims. I do take issue with the attempt to distance yourselves from actual muslim people by claiming it is merely the belief you dont like. As evidenced elsewhere in the thread, this is not the case. You yourself say above that it is the behaviours you despise and your belief that Islam is the cause of them. Above you also say it isn't the only cause (but curiously the only one you ever seem to attack).
I have never used the word inherent with regards to either of you. I have simply accused you of being anti-muslim. As you know, we agree entirely that the behaviours are unacceptable. Where we disagree is in our willingness to castigate the entire religion.
you yourself said recently that you didn't think the Labour Party was genuinely anti-semitic, down to actually hating individual jews. B doesnt seem to agree, hence this entire thread. For the record, I find it rather offensive and absurd that one form of prejudice is horrific and personal, the other thoroughly justified, acceptable and restricted to a mere belief system.
Since when has anti-semitism been about hating individual Jews? 6 Million Jews didn't get chucked in the ovens because everyone hated Mrs Rothstein, ffs! 'The Jews' are an idea to anti-semites: a malign force that operates hidden levers of power and cause us all to pander to them. The modern left has adopted the sophistry of 'zionist', of course, but it's the same damn thing. And, as I said at the beginning of all this, the fact that the left gets so angry about Israel and not other examples of international injustice is nothing to do with feeling extra-sorry for the Palestinians and everything to do with the fact that Israel is a Jewish state.
I was referring to actually hating jewish people, rather than the idea or notion of 'the jew' as you put it. I wasn't attempting to blame the Labour Party's stance on somebody not liking Woody Allen.
Is it possible to be opposed the to the state of Israel without being anti-semitic? Or is this mere sophistry?
Think about what it actually means to be ‘opposed to the state of Israel’. To oppose the very existence of a defensible homeland for a people who in living memory have suffered the deliberate near-extermination of their race from the European continent. That should give you your answer.