Still think we shouldn't accept refugees?

I appreciate the concern, I do, but I'm not melting down. I guess I'm getting tired of seeing the same old prejudices play out over and over again, just new targets each time. Black, Mexican, homeless, immigrants, there's always someone to hate; always someone to distrust. I used to have a great deal of patience for people who were like that, who had Dinner's stance on such things. I learned, the hard way as usual, that there are no facts or figures that combat those ideas, because those ideas aren't built upon facts of figures, they're built upon fear, and fear is a powerful thing.

I wasn't kidding when I said that image devastated me. I may not be a Christian anymore, but I still believe in loving my neighbor, and taking care of "the least of these." Seeing a dead child on the beach, and finding out later it wasn't the first, or the last in this crisis, it just affected me deep down. Seeing the crass, hateful statements even with that picture in the header just brought on sadness. You know me, Dicky, I'm an optimist, always have been, and usually I've shooed away your good natured pessimism, but sometimes I wonder if maybe you're right, and humans really have fucked things up beyond repair. I sincerely hope not.

If that is the case I would welcome clarification by you. Are 80% of muslims in the EU on welfare? I have posted three links including one from Egypt which saythey are. Is the high school drop put rate for muslims 70% as reported by the EU? I am perfectly willing to have a factual debate but let us ground it in fact and not ignore facts which do not fit our ideology.

Thank you. I hesitated in using it, because I didn't want it to be seen as nothing more than a tactic, when it means so much more to me than that. It is an appeal to emotion, because sometimes we have to appeal to emotions, or we can rationalize ourselves out of anything.

I am going back to edit the post in order to spoiler it, so people don't have to see it. It's a lot to take in.

I have always been a big beliver on facts and reality as well as fac baser policy. I hope my long posting history here is evidnc of that. What I don't like, what I will not tolerate, is ideology substituting for facts. Never, ever. Each position must be justified based upon the factual evidence.

So far we have had a lot of emotional appeals and a comete, and I do mean complrte, avoidance of facts and reality by the facts be damned emotions are all that matters crowd. I am looking at you, John, and you 14thd.

Maybe because what think is racism is really just reality? You shouldn't rage against reality and instead come up with the best policy which fits reality.

My points stand on their own. You are the one who refuses to acknowledge a single one of them if they do not conform with your ideology.

I see nothing in the definition of racism, that precludes racist thought from being 100% factual or accurate. It doesn't matter why you're bigoted; bigotry is bigotry, regardless of its motivation, reasons, or origins.

Empathy is fine. We can empathize with the and yet keep then in the middle east. you are a liar claiming they have to come here and get signed for welfare.

His inability to address a single point is a sure sign that he is full of shit.

He's been doing the same thing for years. Before it was Southerners, though.

I see the third-grade girls in the schoolyard are whispering about others in the third person behind their hands.

Tell me, @Dinner, how do you feel about the death penalty?

Remain an optimist, but try to curb outrage in your diet as best as possible, it'll do awful things to your stomach lining.

On a hunch, because he considers himself a liberal, I'm guessing @Dinner is against the death penalty for the natural born and "legals" but doesn't care if "illegals" - particularly children - just plain die so as not to inconvenience him.

How exactly they do inconvenience him is not something he can articulate.

They steal all the jobs, while also mooching off welfare. And they refuse to leave their host countries, while also refusing to assimilate into the fabric of those places where they shouldn't allowed to remain. And also not everyone is helping them, which means no one else has help either.

There was also something about the people fleeing ISIS actually being ISIS-loving terrorist wannabes, but that might have been gturner. :Shrug:

Yeah, with @Dinner it's always that "veneer of civilization."

Well, you had a country, Syria, that was a pretty popular place in the Arab world. People move there to enjoy a better life, a secular life, which was guarded by having an oppressive government keep a close watch over the Sunni radicals who wanted to slaughter all the Druze, Shia, and Alawites as heretics who should die in fire. So then Syrians got caught up in the Arab spring and America's apparent encouragement of it as a liberating force in the Arab world, and the place exploded. All the Syrians got caught up in it and they absolutely destroyed their country and all their own possessions while killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Somehow that means they can just go to Europe and claim other people's stuff for themselves, since they've blown up all the stuff they used to have. And of course too many Europeans are going along with it.

Tens of thousands of children have died in the conflict, some from poison gas, some from bombs, and some beheaded in the streets. Part of the reason is that Obama and Kerry adamantly and stupidly view Assad's regime as the bad guys who have to go, while not doing anything to stand up a viable opposing force, and maintaining their stance long after ISIS had dominated and enslaved a vast region in two countries. They have made things so much more intolerable that millions of people have fled. All those Sunni refugees heading to Europe mean Assad might win by forever changing his country's demographics. All the Sunni radicals and troublemakers will be in Europe instead of Syria, and unlike staying in nearby refugee camps, there's almost no risk that any significant number of them will return from Germany or Sweden to reclaim their lives.

And cause trouble they do. They generally start rioting within a couple of days of landing in Greece. In Italy a bunch rioted because they didn't like spaghetti with tomato sauce, and demanded that authorities give them food they're used to eating. They're never going to stop rioting because obviously it works.

You're still reliably full of shit for the most part, but I actually agree with this. Bush fucked Iraq initially by invading, but Obama fucked Iraq again by pulling out regardless of the consequences, and he fucked Syria by not acting decisively. He just let both situations fester, and now we're here.

Dinner's sorta in the ballpark...a lot of Hispanic families place a lot of emphasis on sticking around the same area one grew up in and a good number don't live far from family. And the Southern California state schools are highly competative, meaning anyone without a 3.0 GPA is gonna be traveling up north to Sacramento State or Chico to state in the CSU system.

So it's not so much "anti education" as "anti moving away from the Mexican culture." It sounds similar to what blacks go through when they decide they've had enough of the hood and move to Whitesville.

No Anna, it's not because of family bonds or cultural ties. It's because the Hispanics hate learning.

But that's a valid stance. Did the Spanish encourage their Native American underclass to learn to read, other than the Bible? Not all cultures are the same, despite the lofty and vacuous multi-cultural nonsense. Jews and many Asians put enormous academic pressure on their children, who grow up in an environment rich with books. Shelves and shelves of them. In other cultures you could search a whole village to find one. The same applies to the household of a Harvard professor versus a diesel mechanic. In many Muslim countries the women are largely illiterate, so the children grow up without much exposure to anything but the Koran.

Jesus Christ, I can't keep up with these shit throwing monkeys! I go out to eat for a burger and fries and there are 38 alerts when I come back.

I'm definitely quoting this so you can't retract it later.

Don't worry. They just called you a racist bigot homophobe without refuting any of your arguments. That is what leftist argumentation has become in far too many cases. All it does is polarize people without providing any additional illumination, understanding, strategy, or solutions.

Why would they?

The only thing Natives needed to know were things that kept them down in their servitude.

No one said they are, dipshit.

What John and Doc object to is the broad paintstrokes that Dinner and Archangel want to pain entire groups with. There are better ways to point out the economical impracticality of hosting too many poor immigrants without saying "Fuck them, they and their children are all losers that never amount to shit."

Yanno how many times I've come across that mentality towards black kids? A lot. It's gotten to the point that many kids younger than I was when I found this place believe that. It saddens me.

Yeah, about that:

http://thesocietypages.org/papers/asian-american-exceptionalism-and-stereotype-promise/

There was another, shorter article I was trying to find, but I'll use small words for you: the idea that the stereotype of kids can greatly influence success or failure in life. Skimming this article, there is mentions about Asians being tracked into higher classes just on the assumption that all Asians perform hard and many times even outperform the white kids.

Luckily, Western culture has a shit ton of books and, in America at least, they'll have more exposure to secular culture and many, just maybe--some of them will break the cycle.

Are you sure it wasn't filet mignon and pommes frites, Snob?

You know, I don't care who you are - using a picture of a dead kid to try to win an argument on the internet is fucking classless. As Diacanu pointed out, this is the kind of shit the anti-abortionists do. It's classless when they do it, and it's classless when you do it, too. I've come to expect better of you, John.

Fuck class. When a problem has gotten so bad that dead kids are washing up on the beach, making people face that reality by confronting them with pics of dead kids washed up on beaches is pretty much called for, and "class" be fucking damned. Sorry that reality makes you feel icky and uncomfortable, but, well, fuck you.

So for the record, if the anti abortion side decides to post dead fetuses as part of their argument from here on out, then that's handy dandy?