From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Oct 25 2001 - 21:47:25 MDT
>From: Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com>
>Zero Powers wrote:
> >
> > >From: "Alex F. Bokov" <alexboko@umich.edu>
> >
> > >Okay, here is a rephrased an simplified version of my question:
> > >
> > >Given that intolerant and absolutist memes can by definition exist
> > >within a tolerant and relativist society, but not vice versa, what
> > >strategies can the tolerant and relativist society use to survive?
> > >Will these strategies require it to relinquish some of its tolerance
> > >and relativism?
> >
> > Here's an even simpler version of the trick question you are asking:
> >
> > Can a tolerant person/society not tolerate intolerance and still be
> > considered tolerant? I think the obvious answer is "yes."
> >
> > What strategies will it take? I think that's a simple one too. You
>simply
> > live and let live, until the intolerant person/society uses their
>liberty to
> > try to relieve you of yours. At that point you respond with something
>like,
> > oh say, operation "Enduring Freedom."
>]
>
>You must be joking. This "war" is not about freedom, enduring
>or otherwise. It is about vengeance, incredible hypocrisy and
>dishonesty about our own "terrorism" and grabbing more power in
>a region where we have been attempting to get rights to pipe oil
>across to growing Southeast Asian market for sometime. Our
>response has nothing to do with being tolerant or even remotely
>rational. At the current rate millions of Afghanis will die
>this winter from hunger. Do we honestly belief that is the
>result of our tolerance and fair action and that it is
>justified? If so then I submit that we have become so monstrous
>we do not even comprehend what we are any longer or what our
>ideals are or what we wish they are. We will have become only a
>self-justifying blind King of Tyrants.
>
> >
> > I think our aim is to wipe out intolerance, but only by means that will
>not
> > unnecessarily agitate the intolerant. Think Chinese handcuffs again.
> >
>
>Millions more deaths damn well should agitate any caring
>people. Being kept in the dark by our own government and having
>our civil liberties auctioned off wholesale to the the very
>instrument of so much that is wrong in the world, the CIA,
>should agitate us. But we munch away happily on the McNews fed
>to us by media largely controlled by the same corporations that
>made our President and VP rich men and that have manipulate the
>region into its current mess over decades. But go on as you
>are. Go on wrapping the tattered rags of your
>self-rigtheousness about your threadbare true lack support for
>freedom, sovereignity, human rights and justice in much of the
>world. Enjoy your pretense but don't imagine for a second that
>your hatred for those who do not share this game of pretend is
>the just behavior of the "tolerant".
I guess the best way to say it is ... "plonk."
-Zero
"I'm a seeker too. But my dreams aren't like yours. I can't help thinking
that somewhere in the universe there has to be something better than man.
Has to be." -- George Taylor _Planet of the Apes_ (1968)
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