From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Tue Jul 30 2002 - 13:16:25 MDT
[Joe Dees]
Rationality is most typically found at the mean between two extremes. When people are as irrationally extremist as this woman, just on the other extreme, their stance is equally deplorable.
[rhinoceros]
I admit I never understood the concept of the "mean between two extremes" as anything more than a non-destructive code of conduct. Usually, extremist views are closely related to oversimplification, i.e. not taking into account all the significant issues. Only in this sense I can accept that this article is in the opposite direction from other "extremist" views posted here, which were taking into account much more.
Clearly, the person who wrote that article didn't even think (or pretends she didn't think) about the practical consequences of what she is saying, to realize that the results would be an even greater disturbance of her life.
[Joe Dees]
Like in Bosnia-Herzegovina and kosove, where we libnerated a Muslim people being butchered by a neonazi thugocracy? Like in Somalia where we were killed for attempting to feed a people and defend food supplies against warlords who seized them in order to use hunger as a terror weapon? Like in East Timor, where we applied the pivotal pressure on Malaysia to halt the religious pograms and allow secession and free elections? Like in kuwait, where we repelled a foreign invader and restored a country to its inhabitants (although not to democracy - that will, I hope, come in time)? Like in Afghanistan, where we have wrested a country from a fundamentalist theocracy allied with an international terrorist conspiracy and made representative government possible once again? The US has restabilized much more than we have destabilized, but they receive no credit and copious blame. This is hardly balance.
[rhinoceros]
All those and some more. I won't get into restating any of that as the local people would see it, because that would ruin my already poor style. The only argument I can offer is that I wouldn't be sympathetic to someone who may bomb me in my armchair because they don't like the president or the dictator of my country, and call me a collateral damage of all thing.
PS: I said that extremist views are closely related to oversimplification, i.e. not taking into account all the significant issues. There is also "justified" extremism", when there aren't really any other significant issues for someone.
---- This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25860>
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