Quote Originally Posted by El Kabong View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Beanz View Post
That is just you twisting things using your own incredibly negative and frankly mentally ill world view. I'm an optimist and realist. I am not like you and Lyle, ranking cultures and declaring some as better than others, so please stop with the lies and engage with debate. If not please don't post in this thread. Lyles polemic and your constant insistence on doing a 180 on all the issues you previously would have agreed, just to further divisions here on the board, is not helpful.You are living in a country run by a Christian that you are now pretending is running with milk and honey when your own words said quite the opposite not long ago.
Some cultures ARE better than others, did ya not watch those videos? Did you NOT see women being beaten with sticks/canes? SPOILER ALERT that doesn't happen in the United States, it doesn't happen in the United Kingdom, it doesn't happen in Mexico, it doesn't happen in Canada, it doesn't happen in Sweden or Finland, or Russia or Denmark or France or Belgium or Italy or Switzerland or Austria or Japan or Australia.....it happens in Sudan and Indonesia and Saudi Arabia and YES those cultures are worse than the previously mentioned ones if only for THAT.

Nobody is saying America is perfect....nobody is saying "it's run by a Christian and that makes it perfect"....nobody Beanz, NOBODY is making those arguments.

Those lashings, floggings, whatever you want to call them...that's government, that's religion, that's culture and I disagree with those beatings, I find them vile and beneath thinking, feeling, rational human beings, that is why I rate those cultures lower. I do not understand how you see that and you see America and you think the cultures are equal or you cannot tell the difference if one is better than the other....list pros and cons for fucks sakes, it's a fucking simple thing and you're fighting the very idea, why? I know you could say something like 'Well there is good and bad in every culture, but every culture we can learn something from'....yeah, agreed, BUT I'm saying specifically that shit, the beatings, the floggings, the tossing gays off of rooftops, that's wrong it's wrong that their cultures do that and that's across the board for me....a little tiny bit of humanism, a little bit of that in every culture and then we can agree that you can't tell if one culture is better than another.
Why would you think that I would agree with such things?


Seriously Lyle. How many years have I posted here and yet that is how little you think of me? In the UK election thread you went on about me teaching little ones when I used to support disabled adults etc so it's like being in a room talking to someone and realising they have not listened to a word you have said.


Only we have been in that room for years.

So many posters have left and yet we are still here, so why waste time being so belligerent ?

I am just as much to blame. I think that @brocktonblockbuster was right when he called me a contrarian. I am quite proud to be so, but that does not mean for me that I am jumping form one side to another. I just try and be a realist, and that means that i am very wary of easy answers. I try to look at an argument from all sides and not just accept what people say without questioning the narrative and their motivations and influences that will shape the way they tell it.


So while I have always been highly critical of extremist muslims and started numerous "no more excuses" type threads to rant at those on the left trying to make excuses for them, that seems to have been completely ignored by you in an attempt to pigeon hole me into a convenient apologist opponent which is why you could not wait to call me a communist.


It is quite a laughable situation to be called both a little Englander and a SWJ on the same forum but the truth is of course that neither are very accurate. I am as a self employed person at the sharp end of Capitalism but as a carer for a disabled partner also at the soft end of Social responsibility, so i can see both sides of many arguments. Being the grandson of a Romany/Irish Gypsy and A Polish Jew also means that I try not to just use logic and the written word as an arbiter of life when experience may have taught me something different.


That is why I can not agree to use extreme examples of barbarism carried out in the name of religion as evidence of one culture being superior to another. You will note that Hitchens never excused the bastards that carried out these acts by allowing them the easy excuse of using their religion which mostly does not condone their actions. I will not provide the scum that do this such a veneer to hide behind either.


Yes their are elements of cultures when seen through our eyes that are truly reprehensible and are clearly inferior to elements within our own but that is not your argument.

Your argument is that some cultures are inherently superior to others.

The fact that I, along with 5 other people, would suggest that is not something that is possible to answer conclusively, should not leave you with the impression that I in any way condone or excuse these acts. Some on your side of the argument have actually started threads to excuse them and yet your ire is reserved for me?


Life is too short and I apologise if I have offended you