danpascooch said:
Starke said:
danpascooch said:
They're human, how could they not understand the difference between being executed for saying something the government doesn't like, and being allowed to say things the government doesn't like?
Who's being executed? The American hikers? Because they aren't being arrested over freedom of speech. The Iranian people? Because that
isn't what's happening there either.
You can have a cookie for completely missing the point on that whole post though. Congrats, that takes true dedication.
danpascooch said:
That's hardly fair, judge him on what he says and does, not from your preconceived notions of the group (hardly even a group really) that he comes from
Even what he's saying is incoherent and inconsistent, combining it with reality completely tanks his credibility into the range of a little kid spouting off "let's say that..." repeatedly to change the rules with no regard to what came before.
I see you just said his posts are incoherent and inconsistent, good, see, THAT is a valid reason to disapprove of him. I was just saying your earlier post saying "what's more likely, that an Anon member knows what he's talking about or an Anon member that makes shit up" wasn't exactly fair. It's fine to hate that guy, just make sure you do it for the right reasons is all I meant.
I don't "hate" him he is getting on my nerves, but that's different. As a personal position, I don't have a problem espousing an idea I don't agree with. And I enjoy a good spirited debate. The catch is when someone
isn't thinking, and instead are simply responding in rote. Now, from what The-artist-formerly-known-as-H2whatever is posting, he really does seem to be falling more into the not thinking, and vomiting up whatever comes from the releases of the hive mind. Some of this would make sense, but most of it is simply badly written over wrought attempts at sounding high minded. I've read far too much legitimate political philosophy over the years to fall for that, and I can recognize ill-conceived attempts at it almost instantly (or ill-conceived genuine examples).
So where all this is going is, from what AnonOps is writing, he doesn't appear to have really digested (or thought about) the information he is relaying. It is at best schizophrenic, and at worst incoherent, regardless it is self-contradicting.
Now, pushing him to think about what he's saying has so far failed, but I don't hate him, he's just on my nerves at the moment.
danpascooch said:
Are you saying the Iranian people aren't being arrested over free speech? I point you to the Blasphemy Law in Iran. Google it if you don't know what it is, basically you can be imprisoned or worse for criticizing the Quran.
Frankly your hostility toward me is uncalled for, I have never been hostile toward you, and I just provided a clear example of the people of Iran being denied the right to free speech.
If you don't think that right is worth fighting for that's fine, but don't act like they already have free speech.
It isn't that Iran's free speech is unlimited. And it isn't that free speech isn't worth fighting for. It's the
methods.
Okay, Richard Weaver was a political philosopher in the mid 20th century. In
Ideas Have Consequences he argues that the height of man was the southern aristocrat. He's arguing that this man of leisure was the best suited individual to deal with the world.
Now, when I read this my immediate response is that the man is insane, he wants to revert to a kind of Platonic society that preys upon slave labor, while promoting an individual who has no particular or specific skill set, but rather a holistic view of the world. Reading this is (or at least for me was), quite frankly disgusting. Until you realize that the context of what he is using as an example distracts you from the underlying philosophy.
The philosophy is that by specialization of skills we lose the capacity to make great leaders. But the example it's couched in conceals this under 150 years of American history.
The same thing is true with Iran. Iran needs free speech, more than they have at any rate. But what Iran does not need is a group of westerners arguing for free speech, calling their government illegal, while pointing at a government that was backed by the United States and was far more oppressive than their own.
Like my reading of Weaver, the Iranians lose the actual philosophy behind historical context.
In Iranian historical context, the United States backed the Shah's oppressive regime, which was far more harsh it it's suppression of dissent while using rhetoric almost identical to what Anon is now using. To ask them to filter through that is a waste of time. It won't happen. Because, to an Iranian citizen, Anon's message isn't recognized as a call for free speech. It is recognized as a call to colonial enslavement.
So again, Anon may have noble goals, but the don't have the slightest fucking clue what they're
actually doing. And in the end can
at best achieve nothing, and at worst piss them off more and get the remaining hikers killed as spies.
That is something I
cannot support.
