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The comments on my last post have helped me better understand my reaction to the mosque protests, so I thought I'd promote some of that to a followup post. (But this will be the last one, really!)
First, an important point that I hadn't thought about when writing my last post: whatever their ultimate cause, some people have very real feelings of pain and anger at the thought of a mosque anywhere near Ground Zero. Sure, the basis for those feelings is probably an irrational but very human generalization of negative feelings toward "Muslim terrorists" to "all Muslims" (much as I described before), but we all find emotions clouding our logic at times. Looking at it that way, some of my earlier comments were harsher than they ought to have been.
And in fact, I'd be more sympathetic to the folks objecting to this mosque if their emphasis were on their own feelings and their own limitations rather than on the "offensive" actions of the Muslims involved. I'd feel much more comfortable if everyone who objected simply said, "I'm sorry, I hate to admit this, but in this place I still have strong negative associations with the Muslim terrorists who caused me such pain. I know it's unfair, but I'm not ready to cope with a Muslim community center so close just yet." But that's not the majority of what I've heard.
What I've heard (as previously quoted) is that building a mosque there would be "offensive", as if the Muslims planning it were the ones responsible for the pain. They're not! It might be more sensitive of them to refrain from building there (particularly if the objections had mostly been made in the way I described above), but the underlying problem is not of their making. Holding rallies to tell the Muslims they're not wanted (to the extent of driving away fellow Christian protesters if they happen to be Arabs) isn't a way of saying, "This is about my feelings." And it certainly isn't a way of saying, "...and I know those feelings aren't fair and I'm working to get over them."
That is why all these protests and objections bother me so much (and, I think, why I don't accept the word "offensive" as remotely appropriate in this context). If there is a valid reason to ask that the mosque not be built near Ground Zero, it must be made clear by everyone that even making such a request is an imposition on the innocent Muslims who are entirely within their legal and moral rights planning the project. But I don't think that's the spirit behind these protests. (And backing that up, the NY Times just published an article about opposition to new mosques all over the nation, most in "far less hallowed locations" than the general vicinity of Ground Zero.)
As a final thought, it's important to remember that the unfair mistreatment of Muslims in our society causes pain and humiliation and harm, too. We have to balance two types of undeniably real pain: the feelings of those for whom Muslims evoke the specter of terror, and the feelings of those innocents who face daily suspicion because of it. I don't know the best way to handle that. It may or may not be right, but I tend to have more sympathy with those who are being unjustly vilified than with those whose (real!) feelings are based on a flawed generalization.
False associations like "the terrorists were Muslim, so all Muslims are terrorists" are responsible for some of the darkest aspects of human nature. I think it's healthiest for everyone if we as a society work to recognize and reject them. And that's why I find it so upsetting when public figures who make these statements are taken seriously by society and the media rather than being condemned.
First, an important point that I hadn't thought about when writing my last post: whatever their ultimate cause, some people have very real feelings of pain and anger at the thought of a mosque anywhere near Ground Zero. Sure, the basis for those feelings is probably an irrational but very human generalization of negative feelings toward "Muslim terrorists" to "all Muslims" (much as I described before), but we all find emotions clouding our logic at times. Looking at it that way, some of my earlier comments were harsher than they ought to have been.
And in fact, I'd be more sympathetic to the folks objecting to this mosque if their emphasis were on their own feelings and their own limitations rather than on the "offensive" actions of the Muslims involved. I'd feel much more comfortable if everyone who objected simply said, "I'm sorry, I hate to admit this, but in this place I still have strong negative associations with the Muslim terrorists who caused me such pain. I know it's unfair, but I'm not ready to cope with a Muslim community center so close just yet." But that's not the majority of what I've heard.
What I've heard (as previously quoted) is that building a mosque there would be "offensive", as if the Muslims planning it were the ones responsible for the pain. They're not! It might be more sensitive of them to refrain from building there (particularly if the objections had mostly been made in the way I described above), but the underlying problem is not of their making. Holding rallies to tell the Muslims they're not wanted (to the extent of driving away fellow Christian protesters if they happen to be Arabs) isn't a way of saying, "This is about my feelings." And it certainly isn't a way of saying, "...and I know those feelings aren't fair and I'm working to get over them."
That is why all these protests and objections bother me so much (and, I think, why I don't accept the word "offensive" as remotely appropriate in this context). If there is a valid reason to ask that the mosque not be built near Ground Zero, it must be made clear by everyone that even making such a request is an imposition on the innocent Muslims who are entirely within their legal and moral rights planning the project. But I don't think that's the spirit behind these protests. (And backing that up, the NY Times just published an article about opposition to new mosques all over the nation, most in "far less hallowed locations" than the general vicinity of Ground Zero.)
As a final thought, it's important to remember that the unfair mistreatment of Muslims in our society causes pain and humiliation and harm, too. We have to balance two types of undeniably real pain: the feelings of those for whom Muslims evoke the specter of terror, and the feelings of those innocents who face daily suspicion because of it. I don't know the best way to handle that. It may or may not be right, but I tend to have more sympathy with those who are being unjustly vilified than with those whose (real!) feelings are based on a flawed generalization.
False associations like "the terrorists were Muslim, so all Muslims are terrorists" are responsible for some of the darkest aspects of human nature. I think it's healthiest for everyone if we as a society work to recognize and reject them. And that's why I find it so upsetting when public figures who make these statements are taken seriously by society and the media rather than being condemned.
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You mean politeness? Who has lost their non-political job simply because they expressed "politically incorrect" positions? Mel Gibson doesn't count, as his job is essentially a grandiose form of public relations and being likable. Larry Summers doesn't count, because he lost the job of President of Harvard - a political job that involved asking people for money. Had he been a professor who lost tenure, things would be different. Different jobs have different protection levels. Everyone I can think of who has lost their job in this way has had a political or PR job, and they got caught saying something offensive or impolitic. That's a sign of incompetence, which is a firing offense.
"Political correctness" is a phrase created by right-wingers in response to lefties advocating for understanding and tolerance and awareness. Speech has consequences and no man is an island. Talk careful and don't piss people off without meaning to. Those on the right assumed (or simply disingenuously took the rhetorical position) that the lefties were advocating for speech codes, rather than advocating that people be aware when their speech was causing others pain, and not do it unnecessarily. Now it has morphed into this boogieman/strawman. Fighting against "political correctness" is stupid. You are fighting a strawman created solely to be torn down. Fight against misinformation of all kinds.
With respect to the muslim/terrorist correlation, you are asserting a true mathematical fact. But that model, when applied to the world, needs some error bars for peoples' perception filters and ability to usefully process information. I claim that in this instance the error bars are bigger than the received info (an empirical claim, but I think a true one). It's not that I want more terrorism, it's that I don't think that telling people to watch out for muslims will materially help prevent more incidents, while I think such a "watch out for muslims!" message would provide aid and comfort to our current enemies, as it would increase the number of muslim terrorists. So maybe it is true and useful, but only as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we decide to radicalize US muslims, I bet more of them will become terrorists!
If we decided to hunt and kill all red-haired people, I think that seeing red hair on a person would be a good sign that they were a terrorist. That's not the right way to deal with 1 billion muslims, however. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeMvUlxXyz8
no subject
And "tolerance" is a phrase created by left-wingers to give positive connotations to the policies they advocate. And I think that some kinds of "tolerance" and "awareness" are harmful.
Speech has consequences
And I believe that weasel-wording and ignoring unpleasant truths has deep negative consequences for individuals and society, poisoning their minds against truth-seeking and preventing genuine authentic conversations about how to deal with unpleasant truths. That is a consequence of politically correct speech. Another consequence is that it doesn't hurt people as much. Maybe I'm wrong about the balance. But it is disingenuous to pretend that unpleasant truths - truths that potentially can lead to intolerant - don't exist and that this pretending has no consequences. What ever happened to being a "reality based community"?
I claim that in this instance the error bars are bigger than the received info (an empirical claim, but I think a true one). It's not that I want more terrorism, it's that I don't think that telling people to watch out for muslims will materially help prevent more incidents, while I think such a "watch out for muslims!" message would provide aid and comfort to our current enemies, as it would increase the number of muslim terrorists.
Again, I admit to this being a push button issue for me, but I am very wary of arguments that we should deny, shut our mouths on, or restrict truths because we think they will get misinterpreted and used poorly due to bias. There is bias in deciding which truths to restrict, and I would much rather that we were just open about the truth and then had good dialogue about how to use it than that we shut down the truth. And I never suggested or would suggest telling people to watch out for Muslims. I simply object to Stu saying that there was no association between Muslim & terrorist, and I object to people who respond to my pointing out there is a real, strong association by saying I may be right but we shouldn't talk about it. Objecting to a statement based on perceptions of how it might be used rather than arguments about whether it is true - essentially, giving normative value to factual statements, and letting beliefs about normative implications contaminate factual statements - makes my blood boil. We all have our issues.
no subject
As for ignoring unpleasant truths? Quoi? You are using "truth" here in a weird way which keeps flipping back and forth between mathematical truth, and the standard of truth we deal with in every day life. It is much like the word "correlated" that comes up in this conversation. Lots of things are correlated with lots of other things. And mathematical correlation is a distinct flavor from the more general term used in most conversation. I agree with you that the statistics are mathematically correlated. The question is are they correlated in the sense in which we use the word in every day life? You will find nothing in this world which is mathematically correlated at 0 (I am serious here). So when we use the word "correlated" in a non-mathematical conversation you are stating not just a mathematical statement (the correlation coefficient is nonzero), but also a value judgement that this correlation is large enough and useful enough and important enough to bring up. I disagree with the value judgement that you seem unwilling to recognize is occurring.