Really sounds ridiculous to think that a group of men would think they could attack a world leader with a knife. It must be some Obama plot to get himself more press coverage.

I don’t know. The abject stupidity of it lends an air of believability, people are stupid and stupid plans do sometimes work. But I do see this asinine plot being played up.

Keep telling yourself that. You may actually convince you.

high civilization confronts the cave dwellers…we have all been here before….and remember history students, the Germanic hordes (Vandals, Goths) did in the end sack Rome as the famed Roman Legions were neutered by craven Roman politicians.

FAST FACT: The last Roman Emperors were Ethiopian…costumed shells of the late great Roman Empire. The years that followed this collapse are known as the Dark Ages.

feeling a tingle up your leg?

Damn. Me and Poke on the same side of an issue. Scary.

I don’t like Obama or his Socialist agendas. BUT I certainly don’t want to see him killed by some radical crazed mental case.

I don’t any of us want to see him killed, I want to see him gone in 3 years 9 months from now.

the middle easterners that hate us now hate us for what we did in the 20th century especially around the time after world war II

Partially true. They also hate us because many of them are ignorant religious nutbags who have been told to hate us all their lives. We control our religious nutbags, at least to some degree. They dont.

Muslims consider themselves morally superior to everyone else, and they’ll kill you to prove it.

My hero the Turks! They are good for something!

So, res, 1400 years ago America made Muslims hate America. What a fucking moron.

Carlene? You are going to have to present me with examples of Muslim “moral” superiority.

Till then, you are just spewing fucking bullshit.

Muslims routinely murder their own children and women. And you claim that makes them “morally superior”. Muslims practice slavery, and you claim that makes them “morally superior”. Muslims refuse to hunt down and kill the terrorists in their midsts, and you claim that makes them morally superior.

In short, fuck you.

Or exercising our right to worship as we see fit.

This is BS to some degree. A knife? He’s going to attempt an assination of the President of the United States with a knife?

Puh. Leeze.

Suicide bombers are popping off all over the world like cheap firecrackers on Chinese New Year and this dude is going to attempt an assasination with a knife?

No.

At best this was some idiot with delusions of grandeur. And most likely not even that.

Wow. Even the Turkish Communist Party doesn’t like him. That’s epic.

Everyone considers themselves morally superior to everyone else. It’s a natural consequence of humans being unconnected to each other by anything other than interpretative interaction. They aren’t telepaths or even empaths. They only know what they think they know. What they choose to believe their eyes said or their ears said someone else did or said. Combined with being animals in a system or predators and prey, the obvious first choice of belief is in the self and not the other. Take you own gut instincts over the other’s.

Like minded people interact, differences are lessened through social realpolitik (it’s better to change one’s mind than be killed by being obstinate), and excessive extremities are more often reached by large like minded groups encouraged to them by the apparent power of numbers and to a lesser extent individuals in societies sufficiently open to allow it or with sufficient provocations to drive one or more to lengths. The 47 ronin come to mind.

If you think that only Muslims have extremity in belief, then you know nothing of or have a severely deluded idea about other religions such as the rivalry between Sadducees, Essenes and Pharisees. Or the internecine strife during the early spread of Christianity.

Every religion has imperatives which flow from the psychological imperatives of the individuals. Some are not pretty and tend towards absolutism and extremism, towards supremacy, largely in order to eliminate conscience which the unattainable level of perfect righteousness invites them to. These things are often incompatible with realities such as community, nation, society, just getting along and not killing each other, peace and prosperity.

Going around killing idolaters is not workable. It will result in conflict that risks eliminating oneself in which case, who will hold the religion then?

The conflict between those imperatives and the drive to uphold contradictory things leads to some level of cognitive dissonance, but because the desires are so strong for both, a stalemate of doublethink is reached in a sort of passive transcendence. People agree to disagree with themselves.

Islam is young, it doesn’t have the same history, it’s been sorely abused by tyrants without external world forces sufficiently acting on it to oppose them, and without sufficient enticements to guilt to quiet the masses. That is, you’ll note many Arab playboys from oil money whored around through the 70s and 80s, but still identified publicly with strict Sunni Islam. If large enough numbers of the population had sufficient contradictory enticements, there would be more of a silent balance. Right now, the Muslim dominated lands are overwhelmingly poor at the street level and overwhelmingly controlled by autocrats and dictators. Another reason I say the free world’s attention should be on technological progress, expansion to space, and spreading of opportunity and prosperity as far and wide as possible constantly.

To tar all of Islam across the board as inherently bad is to ignore the ugly things in Jewish and Christian history and scripture.