Posted on 09/28/2001 2:44:17 PM PDT by Yaelle
Please help me. I will be spending the evening tomorrow surrounded by old friends who are well-read (NYT, WP, LAT, NPR, CNN) and educated, yet as liberal as can be. One is even a Hollywood liberal, smart though as misguided as you can imagine.
He argued with me today that anyone who would feel uneasy getting on a plane with a group of Arab men IS A RACIST. That any fear one would have in such a situation, even so soon after the atrocities, would be irrational. I tried to hold my own on this point, saying that the time elapsed since the tragedy was so short that the fear is still rational at this point. I think we merely agreed to disagree, because he thought that any Arab currently asked to leave a plane should win a lawsuit against the airline. I am no racist, and I think it is very sad that any innocent should be so humiliated, but I feel that the innocent Arabs so accused are simply more victims of the terrorists and their attacks.
I am expecting mild anti-Bush sentiment, anti-protracted war opinions, perhaps the "America may have asked for this with all their horrible activities in the world" stuff, and an inordinate focus on "hate crimes" tomorrow. I am a poor arguer contrasted with the man mentioned above, but not for lack of passion.
I need nice, neat, friendly but firm arguments to counter any of the above positions. To whom could I turn but my eloquent Freepers? Anyone want to help? Give me your best. I will be grateful!
I was out playing roller hockey a few years ago with a bunch of guys in an empty parking lot. A police car pulled up, and the offier in the passenger seat got out and asked us if we had seen a black woman walking in the area within the last little while.
Nobody else did, but I had.
"I saw her," I said, "She walked past here along that sidewalk about 15-20 minutes ago. She was wearing a dark blouse and a long skirt or dress with a flowery pattern, and she was carrying a plain brown shopping bag. She crossed the street right here and walked through the parking lot across the street. I couldn't see if she went into that supermarket or walked around the other side."
The two officers thought I was joking.
"How the hell could you notice all that about some random person walking along the street, when none of these other guys saw her?"
"She wasn't a random person walking along the street," I said, "She didn't look like she belongs here and something about her wasn't quite right, so I kept an eye on her while everyone else was playing."
I don't know if they caught her, but she was wanted for shoplifting and may have been carrying the stolen merchandise in that shopping bag.
Anyone who tries too hard not to be a "racist" runs a serious risk of being a "victim."
Well there are certainly many things about the US for people in the Middle East to hate. Osama bin Laden and his Taliban buddies must rather dislike our habit of allowing women to go out in public with their faces uncovered. His admirers and financial supporters in Saudi Arabia certainly must be appalled by the behavior of women in American movies and television - if their women see too much of it they might start asking why they aren't allowed to drive cars, too.
And then there's this business of allowing Jews to live among us relatively unmolested - heck, not only do we not kill them, we mostly can't even be bothered to burn down their synagogues! This policy is quite unpopular both in Syria ("The Jews have tried to kill the principles of all religions with the same mentality with which they betrayed Jesus and in the same way they tried to betray and kill the prophet Muhammad." - Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, upon meeting Pope John Paul II) and among Egyptians ("We express our thanks to Hitler, of blessed memory, who on behalf of the Palestinians took revenge in advance on the most vile criminals on the face of the Earth. Still, we do have a complaint against him, for his revenge on them was not enough." - from a column in Al-Akhbar, a paper sponsored by the Egyptian government.) On a similar note, we allow large statues of the Buddha to be built within our nation, and make no attempt to blow them up.
The spectacle of our presidents quietly leaving office every four or eight years must be deeply resented by the presidents of Iraq and Lybia, as it might give their subjects dangerous ideas.
I'm not going to claim that the US has never made a mistake or committed an abuse in its relations with the rest of the world. But for the US to change itself enough that the followers of bin Laden and Assad and Arafat no longer hate us would require changes to our political system, our culture, and to the way we treat women and religious minorities, that I'd rather not see us make.
If there are any (presumably feminist) women in the group you're dealing with, tell them that if we lose, they'll look real cute in a burka.
yeah, yeah, I'm feeling a bit exasperated with those kind of people, don't feel like fighting with them anymore because it's a waste of time. But the choice is yours. Feeling the way I do lately, that's what I would do.
Another good one.
And don't give up until you get a good answer... the Libs I talk to ALWAYS TRY TO HEDGE THIS!!
The end result of pacifism under these circumstances is to support Bin Laden or some other monster who will continue to attack and eventually destroy us in the name of tyrrany.
You are right. Take it down to sandbox level. They're only using their emotions, usually, anyway. ...and I LOVE arguing with them...
See? You understand me!
September 27, 2001 The Washington Times
By Robert Stacy McCain
Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, communists are taking over Washington — or at least, the National Mall. Most in the media would have you believe that the protesters who will gather Saturday across from the White House are a "broad coalition" of groups (as CNN decribed the 1999 rioters in Seattle) or perhaps a "various political, social and religious organizations" (as the New York Times described this summer's rioters in Genoa, Italy). Hogwash. They're communists, and some of them are honest enough to admit it.
One of the most vocal promoters of Saturday's demonstration is the International Action Center (IAC). The IAC's chief spokesmen — Brian Becker and Larry Holmes — are both officials of the Worker's World Party (WWP), a Marxist organization with a record of supporting repressive communist regimes such as Cuba and North Korea.
The history of the WWP is instructive. Its founder, Sam Marcy, was a follower of Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik leader who was purged by (and later assasinated by henchmen of) Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Marcy split from the Socialist Workers Party after his fellow Troskyists refused to endorse the USSR's 1956 invasion of Hungary. So Messrs. Becker and Holmes, whose party began by defending Kruschev's military conquest of Hungary, now want to protest war and "American imperialism." Isn't that nice?
But the WWP and the IAC aren't the only commies backing Saturday's demonstrations. Among those sponsoring, promoting and supporting the rally at the Washington Monument is the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
The Young Communist League, youth affilate of the CPUSA, carries this message on its Web site, www.yclusa.org: "We extend our invitation for people to come to Washington D.C. for the Peoples' Summit . . . on September 29th."
Like the WWP and the IAC, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) has its own front group, Refuse & Resist (R&R), founded in 1987 by veteran RCP activist Clark Kissinger. Mary Lou Greenberg, another RCP member, is also on the National Council of R & R, a sponsor of Saturday's protests.
Kissinger — who recently served a 90-day jail sentence for probation violation — was national officer of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the 1960s, was involved in the 1968 riots in Chicago, then left SDS. A follower of Mao Zedong, Kissinger has been affiliated for more than 20 years with the Maoist RCP. Last year, Kissinger offered this bit of analysis: "The problem in this country is the oppressive system of capitalism that exploits people all over the world, that destroys our planet, that oppresses minority people, that sends people to the death chambers in droves. That is a problem that has to be done away with. Is there a solution? Yes. Revolution is the solution." Advocating Maoist revolution — and promoting the ubiquitous hero of the left, Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia-Abu Jamal — has won R&R and RCP the support of rockers like Rage Against the Machine and Chumbawamba.
The communist influence on Saturday's protest extends far beyond the participation of avowed Marxists, Trotskyists and Maoists. Among the scheduled speakers are members of the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank which during the Cold War consistently trumpeted the Soviet position, "supporting the goals and causes of virtually every revolutionary terrorist movement backed by Havana, Hanoi, and Moscow," according to one historian.
Want more? Should any protesters manage to get themselves arrested Saturday, they will call on the attorneys of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), organized by lawyers for the Communist Party in 1936. The NLG is affiliated with the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, described by the CIA in 1978 as "one of the most useful Communist front organizations at the service of the Soviet Communist Party."
Being old enough to remember the Cold War and to have cheered the collapse of the Soviet empire, I have to scratch my head at the crowds of young people — most of them rich, white college kids – who flock to these protests organized by communists. Did America endure a four-decade nuclear standoff with the Evil Empire, so that its children could grow up to be commies?
I suppose many young people are victims of their Baby Boomer teachers, who taught them that the "peace" movement of the 1960s was all sunshine and light. Guess nobody bothered to tell the kids about the bombings perpetrated by the Weather Underground and the murders committed by the Black Panthers, to say nothing of the millions enslaved and slaughtered in Vietnam and Cambodia because of the "peace" resulting from communist victory.
So hundreds of young people will be out in front of the White House, supporting the communist attack on "American imperialism."
It doesn't really matter what they're protesting, of course. Saturday's demonstrations were originally organized to protest against "globalization" during the the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund meetings. Those meetings were canceled after the Sept. 11 bombings, so suddenly the focus was shifted to opposing U.S. efforts to strike back against terrorism. It makes no difference to the commies, you see. Whatever the cause, the enemies are the same: America and capitalism.
Some may ask why the "anti-globalization" movement doesn't purge all these communists. The simple answer is that, if all the communists were purged, there wouldn't be any movement left. Behind all the rhetoric about protecting the environment and relieving poverty in the developing world, this movement is unadulterated Marxism — anti-capitalist, anti-freedom, anti-American. A better question is this: Why are we sending aircraft carriers halfway around the world to look for enemies, when our nation's worst enemies — communists proclaiming an anti-American jihad — will be right there in front of the Washington Monument on Saturday?
Robert Stacy McCain is an assistant national editor for The Washington Times.
Email: smccain@washingtontimes.com
Unless you're not white then you'd be "profiling" your own race because people from the Middle East are Caucasian or "white", so the idea this is racist is absurd. I think it's just being aware that there are foreigners in our country who intend to kill as many of us as they can and you aren't comfortable when you see foreigners you don't know and couldn't possibly predict their intentions.
Ask them again what we SHOULD do. If any of their answers indicate that they would rather American servicemen die than Afghani civilians (because they're volunteers, you know) remark rather thoughtfully, "oh, yes, that's right... lots of inner-city blacks and rural whites who can't afford college and can't find a job end up volunteering in the military."
If you make it look as though they are sacrificing inner-city blacks (for ANY reason) they are going to have a liberal reaction that's bound to be fun to watch. (-:
Today on the news they were interviewing people getting off of planes that were of middle eastern descent and asking them if they had been harrassed or made to feel uncomfortable. None of them had experienced anything very unpleasant and one of them said, he had found himself looking very suspiciously at other middle easterners. It isn't "profiling", it is common sense.
Absolutely right!
We have heard a lot lately from the "root-causes" crowd, who keep telling us we must try to understand the grievances that motivate the terrorist, and we must make allowances. Yet they never seem to get around to telling us what those grievances are, why we are responsible, or how we could have made things better.
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