[LaineyBugsDaddy]

Funny, I didn't mention relics or saints. That said, I find it most odd that in the Ten Commandments pamphlets handed out by people trying to get folks to come to a Catholic service, they leave out the one about graven images and split the last one, about coveting, into two. The version of the bible they use doesn't do that, but their 10 Commandments tract does. I'm not saying they're not Christians. I am not the Judge of them. That job belongs to Almightly God. There are things I find to be of concern, though. Like the aforementioned tract, or the claim, despite biblical evidence to the contrary, that Peter was the first pope. (Hard to be a celibate supreme pontiff when you're married. Peter's wife is never mentioned, but early in Luke, they are at the house of the mother of his wife. Yes, the Bible documents that Peter had a mother-in-law, and a man would have to be a fool to have a mother-in-law without having a wife.) So I am wary of Catholic doctrine. If it matches scripture read in straightforward manner, fine. But it's definitely an "eat the meat and spit out the bones" situation.

Last I checked, my catholic bible approved by the C.E.I. ("Conferenza Episcopale Italiana", the Italian Council of Bishops) has everything.

Neither protestant nor catholic doctrine are straightforward, for the simple reason that if you take the bible literally things have a tendency to get quite horrific, nonsensical or both.

The relics and saints are the major argument of the protestant bigots that accuse catholics of idolatry.

Popes and the catholic clergy in general could marry for the first few centuries (after all Paul himself he said celibacy was preferable rather than a full obligation), they decided to go full celibate because bishops started to create dinasties and the secular authorities didn't like that so it was either let the kings and emperors nominate the bishops or renounce the right to have families to maintain a minimum of authonomy from secular authority, which was later dressed up with theological justifications as it usually happesn with religion: see slavery in the US.


Regarding the pamphlet: I have no idea about US catholics, I live in a 90% catholic country so I cannot say anything sure about pamphlets (it's usually Geova's witnesses who hand them here, they are considered supremely annoying by essentially everyone), but I kinda get that in a pamphlet they might give only the main bullet points instead of the literal excerpt from the bible since it's quite long-winded and in Sunday school the part about graven images was considered part of the first commandment.

Actually, I didn't say literally. I said in a straightforward manner. That is to say, read history as history, poetry as poetry, prophecy as prophecy, wisdom (proverbs and the like) as wisdom.

There are some arguments, apparently for the graven image text being part of the first commandment and the covet text being split into separate commands against lust and greed, but the wording does not appear to me to support this. I am not an expert, of course, just someone trying to read the text in a straightforward manner and understand it. And if it requires a guru of some kind to explain some meaning that is not consistent with a plain reading, then how can it be trusted? I do not and cannot believe that a plain reading of any of the THREE incidences of the Ten Commandments in scripture supports splitting the covet text into two and lumping the graven image text in with the first commandment. Even leaving out the verse numbers, which are well known to be later additions and not present in the oldest and most reliable texts (which, by the way do NOT in anywise include anything used by Wescott and Hort), a plain reading makes it obvious to me that the graven image section is its very own "Thou shalt not" independent of the first commandment.

As for "Geova's Witnesses," I believe you mean Jehovah's (false) Witnesses, a.k.a. the followers of Charles Taze Russel, or Russelites--though they will vehemently deny this, even though there is ample evidence to show that all JW and Watchtower Bible and Tract Society doctrine comes from the teachings of Russel (see the section on them in Walter Martin's The Kingdom of the Cults)?

Sorry for bouncing around your stuff, as I'm only now addressing the comment about slavery. I think you will find that any support of slavery from the pulpit came from cherry picking, that is, highly selective reading of specific portions of scripture without context. Also, newer versions of the Bible seem to invariably render the term "bondservant" as "slave," which are two entirely different terms. A bondservant is someone who has bound himself (and often his family) to the service of another for a period of time. In ancient Israel, this would have been for, at longest, about 50 years, as all such were to be freed in the Year of Jubilee and their familial property returned to them. Nobody could permanently sell off family lands under the Deuteronomic code. They could only lease them out for a period lasting until the next Year of Jubilee. If someone was particularly bad at managing their finances and wasted everything inside the first year, they could cost their family their lands for nearly 50 years at most, and, as I said above, also bond themselves to another's service for the same period. The closest they came to slavery within the nation of Israel was a way to permanently bind ones family to the service of another if the master had been particularly gracious and the bondservant wished to not leave service, said method involving a ceremony where an awl was pierced through the bondservant's ear into the doorpost of the house of his master (permanently binding your household to the service of another was serious business in ancient Israel). A proper straightforward reading of all the scripture about this in nowise supports slavery.

[666maslo666]

^ Ways I know you don't have a clue about geopolitical security and history.  ISIS is a goddamned sideshow; they're trivial in the grand scheme and don't pose even a remotely existential threat to any Western country (of course, do what the far right wants, see their recruitment expand, and that factor will change).  The current major threat to global stability's name beings with R and ends with ussia.  Putin is expansionist, unpopular at home, and happy to go adventuring to spread influence and bring in money.  Syria landing back in the hands of Assad is a major coup for the Russians, and a major blow to Western interests.  Islamic militants are bred from regional oppression and insecurity, and guess what Assad represents.  It's no coincidence that both Afghanistan and Iraq have seen sizeable reductions of Islamic radicalism in their democratically-controlled areas which are continuing to expand.

ISIS is a sideshow, but not for the reasons you think it is. ISIS is a sideshow primarily because it is far away. Open border policies are a great way to change that and export the ideology that created ISIS all over the world.

ISIS is not a sideshow in middle east, tough. It is the biggest threat in middle east, and if it wasnt for western and Russian backing of anti-ISIS forces, it would likely have conquered Baghdad by now. It will rear its ugly head again, the moment you forget that islamic extremism (which is not bred from oppression but also ideologically driven, see Saudi Arabia) is the main threat in middle east. Heck, it will rear its ugly head no matter what we do, but we can prevent it from conquering territory at least.

Also, lol @ Russia being the biggest threat. Russia is a minor threat, there are no terrorist attacks happening in the name of Russia in Europe, and there will not be any direct conflict between Russia and NATO because Russia has no chance at all to win such conflict, nor is it in their interests to attack us. If Russia is the biggest threat to the West, then we are completely safe indeed.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

Also, lol @ Russia being the biggest threat. Russia is a minor threat, there are no terrorist attacks happening in the name of Russia in Europe, and there will not be any direct conflict between Russia and NATO because Russia has no chance at all to win such conflict. If Russia is the biggest threat to the West, then we are completely safe indeed.

You're missing the point. Yeah, Russia is unlikely to directly attack a NATO country, but everybody else is fair game. As long as the World doesn't give a ****, Russia doesn't really have a reason not to expand its influence. They can veto any UN attempts to resolve a crisis in a way that doesn't benefit them, and NATO probably doesn't want to meddle in the affairs of nations that aren't part of the organisation.

Daesh is gonna fade away and join Al Qaeda in the "terrorist organisation that used to scare the western world" club within a few years. Russia is here to stay, doesn't really give a **** about anybody but itself, and has proven that it can be scary if it wants to.


In short :
The Islamic State is likely to be dead for intents and purposes within a few years, so whatever its long term plans were, they're irrelevant.
Russia won't be collapsing anytime soon, and while we can't really be sure of its long term plans, it has been increasingly expansionist in recent years.

[zookeeper]

Instead, the right-leaning elements in several NATO countries are proposing a completely reactionary set of policies that are guaranteed to play into the recruiters hands.

I've said before and I'll repeat that I have absolutely no problem with enforcement of immigration law or national borders; I have a major problem with policies (e.g. Trump's proposed "Muslim ban" during the election) that are guaranteed to repress existing minorities, reinforce stigma, breed resentment, increase radicalization, and ultimately act as a recruitment mechanism.  De-radicalization programs work; clamping down on innocent refugees and legitimate immigrants doesn't.  NATO countries *have not* been hit by a major *homegrown* attack by radical Islamists yet.  So far its been single actors with limited organization and fairly low casualty counts.  It's really easy to make that change.

I can't see any reason why you're telling me these things.

Because while the right-leaning politicians of the West have been busy foolishly hand-wringing about ISIS, they have entirely abdicated their much more rational actual policies concerning geopolitical stability and civilian protection, and Syria is the first real example of the consequences of that particular idiocy we've seen.  Unless NATO pulls its collective heads from its collective asses, it won't be the last.  You think Syria created a refugee crisis in Europe?  Watch its neighbours.  For that matter, watch Iran and watch Turkey.  Syria just taught every would-be authoritarian that, as of 2016 and for the first time in more than 30 years, you can slaughter opposition and civilians alike by the tens of thousands with the entire world watching it happen on live TV without consequences.

I have no idea where you're going with all this on a meta level.

Now you're saying that you only have a problem with particular right-wing policies, citing one of the most radical and dumbest ones proposed as an example, whereas all I've been arguing for all along is that not all policies [that would restrict immigration, be called right-wing, add increased scrutiny of refugees, etc] would necessarily increase radicalization and play into terrorists' hands. So, it sounds like you kind of sort of agree with that after all? What do you think we do disagree on, then?


Actually, I find this whole meta thing more interesting, so if you don't mind, I'll forget the actual topic just for a moment and wager a guess:

You approach things more from the angle of grand historical-political analysis and can look at what, for example in this case, actual implemented right-wing immigration policy tends to be like and what it is likely to result in, and are mostly handling things as categories instead of descriptors. You look at what the category is on average and where it's moving as a whole, and then you're comfortable making a somewhat generalized statement about the category even if it doesn't necessarily match everything or everyone that's actually in that category. However, someone like me treats labels as descriptors and not as categories, so a statement about a category that doesn't actually match everything in that category instantly registers as a logical fallacy, and there is also usually simply less interest in talking about categories in the first place.

Now, point being, different approaches are all fine and dandy and neither is right or wrong, but in practise they are also usually hard to tell apart, causing people to talk past each other. Where one person sees the other making a logical fallacy, the other person sees the other being ignorant of the grand scheme of things. A statement like "right-wing immigration policy is counterproductive" can be read either as saying that all/most immigration policy that's right-wing will be counterproductive, or as saying that based on this and that data, right-wing immigration policy is counterproductive on average. And, while one can try to bundle one's statements with some explanation of which way they should be interpreted, those tend to get easily ignored or misunderstood because we just don't have enough of a tradition of clearly distinguishing between those two modes of thought/speech.

Does that sound about right? That is, generally in context of political discussion/debate, not just specifically in this case?

[Det. Bullock]

Funny, I didn't mention relics or saints. That said, I find it most odd that in the Ten Commandments pamphlets handed out by people trying to get folks to come to a Catholic service, they leave out the one about graven images and split the last one, about coveting, into two. The version of the bible they use doesn't do that, but their 10 Commandments tract does. I'm not saying they're not Christians. I am not the Judge of them. That job belongs to Almightly God. There are things I find to be of concern, though. Like the aforementioned tract, or the claim, despite biblical evidence to the contrary, that Peter was the first pope. (Hard to be a celibate supreme pontiff when you're married. Peter's wife is never mentioned, but early in Luke, they are at the house of the mother of his wife. Yes, the Bible documents that Peter had a mother-in-law, and a man would have to be a fool to have a mother-in-law without having a wife.) So I am wary of Catholic doctrine. If it matches scripture read in straightforward manner, fine. But it's definitely an "eat the meat and spit out the bones" situation.

Last I checked, my catholic bible approved by the C.E.I. ("Conferenza Episcopale Italiana", the Italian Council of Bishops) has everything.

Neither protestant nor catholic doctrine are straightforward, for the simple reason that if you take the bible literally things have a tendency to get quite horrific, nonsensical or both.

The relics and saints are the major argument of the protestant bigots that accuse catholics of idolatry.

Popes and the catholic clergy in general could marry for the first few centuries (after all Paul himself he said celibacy was preferable rather than a full obligation), they decided to go full celibate because bishops started to create dinasties and the secular authorities didn't like that so it was either let the kings and emperors nominate the bishops or renounce the right to have families to maintain a minimum of authonomy from secular authority, which was later dressed up with theological justifications as it usually happesn with religion: see slavery in the US.


Regarding the pamphlet: I have no idea about US catholics, I live in a 90% catholic country so I cannot say anything sure about pamphlets (it's usually Geova's witnesses who hand them here, they are considered supremely annoying by essentially everyone), but I kinda get that in a pamphlet they might give only the main bullet points instead of the literal excerpt from the bible since it's quite long-winded and in Sunday school the part about graven images was considered part of the first commandment.

Actually, I didn't say literally. I said in a straightforward manner. That is to say, read history as history, poetry as poetry, prophecy as prophecy, wisdom (proverbs and the like) as wisdom.

There are some arguments, apparently for the graven image text being part of the first commandment and the covet text being split into separate commands against lust and greed, but the wording does not appear to me to support this. I am not an expert, of course, just someone trying to read the text in a straightforward manner and understand it. And if it requires a guru of some kind to explain some meaning that is not consistent with a plain reading, then how can it be trusted? I do not and cannot believe that a plain reading of any of the THREE incidences of the Ten Commandments in scripture supports splitting the covet text into two and lumping the graven image text in with the first commandment. Even leaving out the verse numbers, which are well known to be later additions and not present in the oldest and most reliable texts (which, by the way do NOT in anywise include anything used by Wescott and Hort), a plain reading makes it obvious to me that the graven image section is its very own "Thou shalt not" independent of the first commandment.

As for "Geova's Witnesses," I believe you mean Jehovah's (false) Witnesses, a.k.a. the followers of Charles Taze Russel, or Russelites--though they will vehemently deny this, even though there is ample evidence to show that all JW and Watchtower Bible and Tract Society doctrine comes from the teachings of Russel (see the section on them in Walter Martin's The Kingdom of the Cults)?

Sorry for bouncing around your stuff, as I'm only now addressing the comment about slavery. I think you will find that any support of slavery from the pulpit came from cherry picking, that is, highly selective reading of specific portions of scripture without context. Also, newer versions of the Bible seem to invariably render the term "bondservant" as "slave," which are two entirely different terms. A bondservant is someone who has bound himself (and often his family) to the service of another for a period of time. In ancient Israel, this would have been for, at longest, about 50 years, as all such were to be freed in the Year of Jubilee and their familial property returned to them. Nobody could permanently sell off family lands under the Deuteronomic code. They could only lease them out for a period lasting until the next Year of Jubilee. If someone was particularly bad at managing their finances and wasted everything inside the first year, they could cost their family their lands for nearly 50 years at most, and, as I said above, also bond themselves to another's service for the same period. The closest they came to slavery within the nation of Israel was a way to permanently bind ones family to the service of another if the master had been particularly gracious and the bondservant wished to not leave service, said method involving a ceremony where an awl was pierced through the bondservant's ear into the doorpost of the house of his master (permanently binding your household to the service of another was serious business in ancient Israel). A proper straightforward reading of all the scripture about this in nowise supports slavery.

Yeah, "cherrypicking" nobody called them out for unless they were those crazy abolitionists. 

"Some arguments" the graven images thing seems really connected to the worship of idols to me.

Yep, that's them, I used the Italian spelling of Jehovah without noticing, there are quite a few here to the point that we talked about ther theology in Sunday school sometimes.
If you think Catholics aren't straightforward you'll love their own theology. 
I got woken up on Sunday morning once by one of them, "Do you know the end of the world is coming?" "Yeah, don't care" *closes door*

[LaineyBugsDaddy]

Worse still, by the mid-1800s, after Darwin's book had become fairly widespread, there was a vast increase of supposedly genetic arguments about slavery and "lesser" vs "favored" races, despite the clear teaching of scripture that we are all "one blood and one kindred." It's amazing how often humans will ignore that which is inconvenient and/or contrary to current popular opinion.

[Dragon]

@Dragon - It should be noted that translations were only introduced into christianity with protestantism due to the catholic church using the Vulgate, which was in Latin, a language nobody spoke at the time: The courts had switched to french as their lingua franca, and thus Latin and knowledge thereoff was exclusive to people who could get into university and/or the church (eg nobody could take the priests to account). Although muslims generally recommend that people read the Quran in Arabic, translations are not prohibited and perhaps more importantly: Arabic actually is a language that is spoken by a lot of people.

You do realize that Vulgate was also a translation? Mostly translated from Septaugint (Greek version), too. That's the problem. The Old Testament was written in multiple languages, some of them dead and none of them widely spoken anymore. New Testament is less problematic, being largely in Greek (not modern Greek, but IIRC it's still intelligible). Both Vulgate and Septaugint introduced their own language quirks and translation errors, also losing a number of subtleties that were in the original text. Protestants made it worse with their multitude of translations of varying quality, but the damage was done much earlier. Translations from original text have only started to appear recently, too recently to fix some common misconceptions. Not to mention they also drop some subtleties, which is kind of inevitable if you don't want to end up with a scholarly edition that has more footnotes than actual text.

While Quran translations are not halal (prohibited), as far as I know they're also not "real Quran", either. They don't have any special status, are not used during rituals and are no longer considered the canonical, infallible word of God. Not sure what's the common stance on the Quran copy you're supposed to always carry around, but it probably has to be the Arabic version as well, because any translation is just a book like any other. Christian scholars have used Vulgate for centuries, but you probably won't be taken seriously if you pull up quote from a translation in a serious debate with an Islamic scholar. Classical Arabic is so widely spoken because of that, actually (Arabic has many dialects, but the classical variant is widely understood and is what they use in mosques).

This is also very logical from a theological point of view. Only God is infallible, which means that though His word is perfect, it cannot be translated into something equally perfect by a human translator. Therefore, any translation, not matter how good, will be imperfect (saying that God was guiding the hand of a monk doing the translation would cause more problems than it solves, given the discrepancies between versions). It follows that it only the literal word of God should have any religious meaning, translations (if not considered sacrilege) might be useful to, say, give a general gist of things to nonbelievers (presumably to properly introduce them to the real text once they convert and start learning the language), but should not be used for actual practice or resolving theological dilemmas.

[MP-Ryan]

Also, lol @ Russia being the biggest threat. Russia is a minor threat, there are no terrorist attacks happening in the name of Russia in Europe, and there will not be any direct conflict between Russia and NATO because Russia has no chance at all to win such conflict. If Russia is the biggest threat to the West, then we are completely safe indeed.

In short :
The Islamic State is likely to be dead for intents and purposes within a few years, so whatever its long term plans were, they're irrelevant.
Russia won't be collapsing anytime soon, and while we can't really be sure of its long term plans, it has been increasingly expansionist in recent years.

Precisely.  ISIS never had a shot at meaningful changes in the Middle East; they only manage to [barely] hold control in the more remote areas of Syria/Iraq where the governments of those nations were unable to field sufficient force to squash them.  They never had a remote shot at Baghdad, nor even a remote shot of holding what they took because they were so busy dodging drone strikes and losing their leadership that their ground game was always going to be crushed the minute anyone bothered to field a sizeable trained force.  Al Qaeda / Taliban they weren't/aren't; they're largely the last relatively untrained vestiges of the more "professional" Islamic militant organizations who hadn't already been offed.  Maslo is so busy fretting about ISIS militants posing as refugees under every bed that he doesn't apparently see the country that's gone marauding in the borders of his eastern neighbours already.

Now, point being, different approaches are all fine and dandy and neither is right or wrong, but in practise they are also usually hard to tell apart, causing people to talk past each other. Where one person sees the other making a logical fallacy, the other person sees the other being ignorant of the grand scheme of things. A statement like "right-wing immigration policy is counterproductive" can be read either as saying that all/most immigration policy that's right-wing will be counterproductive, or as saying that based on this and that data, right-wing immigration policy is counterproductive on average. And, while one can try to bundle one's statements with some explanation of which way they should be interpreted, those tend to get easily ignored or misunderstood because we just don't have enough of a tradition of clearly distinguishing between those two modes of thought/speech.

Does that sound about right? That is, generally in context of political discussion/debate, not just specifically in this case?

That's not a bad way of summing things up, actually.  I'm not necessarily arguing with you, either.  You're right in the sense that my points are analysis, rather than description, and perhaps I'm guilty of forgetting that not everyone is operating from the same level of context or background information that I am.

In the context of the current discussion, it's not that *all* specific right-wing policies are extraordinarily bad for the immediate future, but rather that the trajectory of that particular area of the political spectrum appears to have gone completely off the map, which is a rather startling departure from the precedent of the last several decades where, if not always ideal, it at least made sense and was driven by data rather than fear-mongering stupidity.

[666maslo666]

In short :
The Islamic State is likely to be dead for intents and purposes within a few years, so whatever its long term plans were, they're irrelevant.
Russia won't be collapsing anytime soon, and while we can't really be sure of its long term plans, it has been increasingly expansionist in recent years.

Islamic State will not be dead, it will just hopefully lose territory, but then it will become decentralized. More importantly, islamic extremism as a whole will not die even if ISIS dies. So this whole reasoning of yours is just wrong. Islamic extremism is not going anywhere, just like Russia.

Maslo is so busy fretting about ISIS militants posing as refugees under every bed that he doesn't apparently see the country that's gone marauding in the borders of his eastern neighbours already.

I see it very well and I also understand why Russia is doing what it is doing and why it does not make Russia a big threat to the West.

Those parts of Ukraine were mostly Russian already. They were conquered because Putin knew very well they will be easy to hold on to.

Russian expansionism is very much self-limiting. It is a threat to a few small territories directly adjacent to Russia, but not a threat to the rest of the West at all.

Islamic extremism is a threat to the whole of western civilization. It knows no borders and is attempting to go global, seed sympathisants even in the heart of Europe and US.

Correction, islamic extremism knows borders as long as they are protected by a well guarded border barriers and strict immigration policy. Thats the surest way to combat this threat, IMHO.

[MP-Ryan]

maslo, we get it, you're a broken record, and it doesn't matter how many times, how thoroughly, or how completely anyone around here demonstrates how ludicrous your stance is, you're going to continue with the same tune.  Let us know if you come up with a new song and dance routine.

[Ghostavo]

I think we can all remember this exchange...

[Dragon]

This is because he's got a few bloody good points you refuse to acknowledge. His derivation You're not attacking him at the point he's going off tracks with his reasoning, you're talking like his whole train of thought was bunk, which it isn't.

Russian expansionism is very much self-limiting. It is a threat to a few small territories directly adjacent to Russia, but not a threat to the rest of the West at all.

Quite the contrary. You're correct only in a sense that Germany probably won't get annexed by Russia. Neither was Poland after WWII. Direct annexation is only a threat to small territories, that's right. However, that doesn't mean Russia's influence can't spread by other means. That's what threatens the West and is a legitimate long-term concern.

Islamic extremism is a threat to the whole of western civilization. It knows no borders and is attempting to go global, seed sympathisants even in the heart of Europe and US.

It's only a threat to Western domination, really. It's kind of like Spanish Influenza virus. The virus itself did its share of damage, but what made it so lethal was so called "cytokine storm", essentially an overreaction by the immune system (if you remember something about it, it killed mostly young men - that is, ones with strongest immune system). Here, the situation is analogous. The greatest threat aren't extremists themselves (though they are a real threat that must be dealt with), it's those who go too far fighting it. If anyone will destroy Western civilization, it'll be the nationalists. The most the extremists can do is incite a state of panic and political instability leading to rise of such nationalists, after which they'd probably be the first (not the last, always remember that!) to be exterminated.

Closing up borders would be squandering an opportunity to get lots of cheap labor into European countries (not to mention you'll still get terrorists sneaking through). Fix the benefit system, increase security and force the immigrants to work their backs off to earn their living and their place. Just remember to make them think they're not second-class citizens being exploited for the benefit of the natives, and they'll work for you and be grateful for letting them do so. Only that nobody will ever think of that solution in egalitarian, free and democratic countries of the West.

[Mikes]

This is because he's got a few bloody good points you refuse to acknowledge. His derivation You're not attacking him at the point he's going off tracks with his reasoning, you're talking like his whole train of thought was bunk, which it isn't.

Russian expansionism is very much self-limiting. It is a threat to a few small territories directly adjacent to Russia, but not a threat to the rest of the West at all.

Quite the contrary. You're correct only in a sense that Germany probably won't get annexed by Russia. Neither was Poland after WWII. Direct annexation is only a threat to small territories, that's right. However, that doesn't mean Russia's influence can't spread by other means. That's what threatens the West and is a legitimate long-term concern.

Islamic extremism is a threat to the whole of western civilization. It knows no borders and is attempting to go global, seed sympathisants even in the heart of Europe and US.

It's only a threat to Western domination, really. It's kind of like Spanish Influenza virus. The virus itself did its share of damage, but what made it so lethal was so called "cytokine storm", essentially an overreaction by the immune system (if you remember something about it, it killed mostly young men - that is, ones with strongest immune system). Here, the situation is analogous. The greatest threat aren't extremists themselves (though they are a real threat that must be dealt with), it's those who go too far fighting it. If anyone will destroy Western civilization, it'll be the nationalists.

Arguably, laws not being enforced and certain religious groups having "special rights" because they would otherwise be "offended" has nothing to do with the nationalists suddenly finding so many new disgruntled followers. I mean it's kinda hard not to get disgruntled when politicians are talking about condoning things like child marriage, no matter how many German laws it violates, isn't it? Or what about legal proceedings against comedians? Yes we had our first case of that in Germany last year too! Politics have become such a huge cluster**** the last couple of years over here and the number of times current policy is kinda in violation of the constitution (or "Grundgesetz") in order not to "offend people who aren't used to it" just keep piling up.

The greatest threat I would say is ineffective/complacent government that is more interested in manipulating public opinion than it is in solving actual problems and honoring the basic laws that are the foundation of a free society... that first makes the rise of nationalists possible.

Current policies just cause a lot of people to be rightfully disgruntled/disgusted. It's a given that a percentage of them wants something "else" after the next election and will vote for "something else" without looking too close as long as it's not the same old that they are angry with. (The US should know how that works by now too lol.)

The rise of nationalism is an effect, not the cause. And if you don't address the cause then it won't matter who will finally take over and ruin the country, be it nationalists, religious extremists or whoever else manages to mobilize the disgruntled masses for personal gain.

[Dragon]

Yes, the root cause is an ineffective and complacent government that puts popular opinion first and foremost. It also makes very few long-term considerations that extend beyond the next four or five years. Now, I wonder how such government could ever end up running a country...

You might be tired of my railings against democracy, but this is where I'm coming from. If who runs the government is decided by popular opinion, then the government will be made of those good at manipulating popular opinion. This is what representative democracy selects for, not for actual competence or suitability to rule. Today, large democracies seem to be suffering from this more than ever before. All the ways of solving the current crisis in a effective and sensible way would require unpopular decisions, which a popularity-oriented government is extremely unlikely to take (or at least not without someone growing balls and sacrificing his career for the greater good. Which is just as unlikely in the modern Western culture).

[jr2]

Yes, the root cause is an ineffective and complacent government that puts popular opinion first and foremost. It also makes very few long-term considerations that extend beyond the next four or five years. Now, I wonder how such government could ever end up running a country...

You might be tired of my railings against democracy, but this is where I'm coming from. If who runs the government is decided by popular opinion, then the government will be made of those good at manipulating popular opinion. This is what representative democracy selects for, not for actual competence or suitability to rule. Today, large democracies seem to be suffering from this more than ever before. All the ways of solving the current crisis in a effective and sensible way would require unpopular decisions, which a popularity-oriented government is extremely unlikely to take (or at least not without someone growing balls and sacrificing his career for the greater good. Which is just as unlikely in the modern Western culture).

That's not so much a problem with that form of government as it is with the entire populous no longer having the time and / or inclination to actually be concerned with matters of state, exacerbated by clickbait media - not literally *click*bait for MSM, but still all they want is the $$$$ and sensationalism, not in-depth reporting generates that.  Although that also directly feeds back to the populace wanting and rewarding that type of media, because they no longer know any better.

[Mika]

Been away for the Christmas, making sure there was no internet connection to play with.

Finland is a secular country, our cold climate is excellent in getting rid of the religions, as nothing else will help you than yourself along these latitudes. So having a religion or believing to something is, I find, a possibility that those living on warmer places can afford to do.

Does the finnish constitution take precedence over religious dictates? Even in cases where said dictates do not conflict with the state's primary interests (For example, honor killings are such an area, as they conflict with the state's monopoly on violence and law enforcement).

Yes. As far as I understand it, the Finnish constitution overrides the religious dictates - in a sense that everybody is free to uphold their religion as long as no other person's rights are violated. Some of our own Christian sects have been skirting around the women rights issue for a long time, effectively enforcing ban for abortions or condoms. The average muslims we have are about the same. It is pitiful to see women forced to wear far too thin clothing at -25C (yes they cover their heads but those robes are not enough to actually keep the heat), that's the power of religion for you. Luckily, this stupidity is constricted mostly to the capital region as in the northern parts of the country there's no public transportation to effectively keep you warm while you wait for the bus or train at the stop. The Christian sects have women giving births to something like 16 children during their life time, and recently we have been seeing some woman break outs from the sect saying that it's effectively brainwashing right from the childhood. Community pressure is one of the tools to enforce adults to stay in the sect. Both of these are seen as very clear violations of the women rights by the majority, but the Christian sects get less flak because these people do contribute to the society.

Be careful going down that road. Next thing you know, and you'll be outraged at people on unemployment for not spending your money correctly.

The difference is, those who are currently unemployed are mostly people who have been paying taxes and their unemployment funds, so I see they have been upholding their part of the deal. While our muslims have really no chance of getting work (significant fraction of them are illiterate) and contributing to the society. Those who came around 1990s (Iraq, Somalia) have unemployment rates around 80 - 90 %. These are numbers from Finnish official statistics. How does importing poverty help if we already have half a million unemployed (~ 8 % of population)?

I do have a question for MP-Ryan though:

Because while the right-leaning politicians of the West have been busy foolishly hand-wringing about ISIS, they have entirely abdicated their much more rational actual policies concerning geopolitical stability and civilian protection, and Syria is the first real example of the consequences of that particular idiocy we've seen.  Unless NATO pulls its collective heads from its collective asses, it won't be the last.  You think Syria created a refugee crisis in Europe?  Watch its neighbours.  For that matter, watch Iran and watch Turkey.  Syria just taught every would-be authoritarian that, as of 2016 and for the first time in more than 30 years, you can slaughter opposition and civilians alike by the tens of thousands with the entire world watching it happen on live TV without consequences.

Because it is not clear to me, are you saying the right wing politicians caused this mess or that they are using the results of the said policies to trump up their agenda?

I've been under the impression that at least in the EU, it is the social technocrats decision making. On the surface they are mostly left leaning, but I think they are mostly working for those who lobby hardest. The green left lean is because the EU has been downplaying member nation nationalism for years to integrate the members better. Unfortunately, the technocrats at the helm of the EU are also utterly clueless of the average working population life quality, as being a politician is a career choice for the majority. The second problem is the power structure of the EU itself - there is not enough executive power in the EU level compared to the national levels. The Central European countries do not want to get vetoed by the outer members and so on.

While of the US, I think Obama's legal education background is at play here. He has hesitated to use the military force when it should have been done, leaving several power vacuums around. So while Obama did wonders to improve the US world wide relations to other nations (except Russia), he failed to utilize the US military. I'm seeing comments from the US military personnel (albeit this is coming from an internet forum) that Russians have managed to hit the US and NATO positions in Syria, and when told to stop, they stopped and then did it again.

It remains to be seen what Trump does next. I maybe looking at a potential conflict between Russia and Finland as Sweden and Finland are not part of the NATO. I personally think this is unlikely, but it still remains a possibility. For those wondering why Finland is not already part of the NATO, see Obama's and Trump's comments about NATO members military expenditure. A significant fraction of us thought that with the conscription army and a potential power base of 1.5 million soldiers (600 000 is the standard, but it can be expanded to ages up to +55 years old IIRC), the majority of the European ground forces in the NATO would come from the Finnish soldiers. Given that this is a conscription army and we have referendums, a significant fraction of Finns thought this would be a Bad Deal. I can't speak for the reasons why Sweden is not in the NATO.

[666maslo666]

Closing up borders would be squandering an opportunity to get lots of cheap labor into European countries (not to mention you'll still get terrorists sneaking through).

I wouldnt call that an opportunity. Cheap labor is not needed much nowadays and with the rise of automation and AI cheap labor will increasingly become a burden, not an asset, over the next decades.

As I said many times, the point of "closing up borders" is to prevent the creation of terrorist recruiting grounds inside Europe. Not to prevent every terrorist attack ever. Even with closed borders, there may be sporadic attacks by a foreign terrorist who managed to slip through. But nothing worse than that would be possible. On the other hand, without tight immigration policy, you will have increasing number of attacks and conflict by domestic terrorists/extremists (recruited from children of immigrants), and over the long term the situation can get worse without limit, possibly approaching (but not quite reaching hopefully) a low level ethnic civil war, similar to situation in many MENA countries today. That is a risk I am not willing to take, especially when the benefits of taking this risk are questionable at best (nonexistent at worst).

[Dragon]

Automation alone will never make cheap labor completely irrelevant. This is basic economics. In absence of external regulations, automation and job streamlining effectively increase supply of labor, causing its value to drop. As long as price of human labor can freely decrease, it'll simply drop to a point where hiring a human is cheaper than buying and maintaining a machine. This is exactly why cheap t-shirts, for example, are made in Chinese sweatshops and not on robotic assembly lines. Remember, industrial machinery cost a lot of money up front and requires maintenance as well. Upfront costs of hiring unskilled laborers are near zero and maintenance is entirely dependent on how much money you're willing to pay them (and government regulations).

Does it really matter where terrorists recruit? In modern times, the physical location of terrorist training and recruiting grounds doesn't seem to matter much. If you look at recent ISIS-related terrorist attacks, the perpetrators generally traveled to the location of the attack. Closing the borders won't decrease the overall number of terrorists (might increase it, as a matter of fact) and will not put a significant damper on ISIS-style terrorism. It might change their focus, but I don't believe it would hinder them. It's important to note that international religious terrorism is a new phenomenon, only tangentially related to earlier terrorism cases like IRA.

Generally terrorists that fight "close to home" are of a different kind, fighting for a well-defined goal of independence or rights for a particular location. You don't see Hamas blowing stuff up in France or Britain, because their beef is with Israel, neither did IRA ever struck outside UK (to my knowledge). This is a different kind of problem, different kind of terrorism and its always regional. Concerns about Arab communes coalescing into mini-nations that could then try to establish legitimacy are far-fetched and could be prevented by dispersing immigrants to prevent such communes from forming (not that democratic countries would ever do that, either).

That's not so much a problem with that form of government as it is with the entire populous no longer having the time and / or inclination to actually be concerned with matters of state, exacerbated by clickbait media - not literally *click*bait for MSM, but still all they want is the $$$$ and sensationalism, not in-depth reporting generates that.  Although that also directly feeds back to the populace wanting and rewarding that type of media, because they no longer know any better.

Did they even know any better, though? Sensationalism isn't exactly a new concept. I think that the problem is that misleading or even outright fake news were made easier by internet lowering the financial barrier to entry for news providers. To run a newspaper you need, apart from news themselves, to pay for a printing press (big ones are expensive), paper, ink and delivery people to get it to the stands. If you want a lot of people (like an entire state, nevermind the nation) to read your newspaper, those costs can be very large. For large-scale radio broadcasts you need to buy a decent-sized transmitter (also expensive), power for it and have a channel allocated. TV is similar, except you also need a fully-equipped studio. Running a news site on the internet, though? Just buy a web address, download a premade "news site" template and you've got yourself a news page that the entire world can read. You can write anything short of outright libel and quickly make up your investment with on-site ads, so there are no regulations, no reputation to uphold and no consequences to presenting outright lies as "news". These days, stories of that sort come faster than Politifact can debunk them and what's worse, anyone can write and put them up.

Common people were never particularly involved in affairs of state. They read the news and voted based on what they read. However, in the old days, they only had a handful of newspapers to choose from, which were big and had a reputation to uphold, so their articles were competently edited and verified. A candidate could make long-winded speeches all he liked, but if the newspaper printed it side by side with an article debunking every single statement, it wouldn't get him very far. The media used to serve as a filter between politicians and the general public, which probably helped limit attempts to game the system and kept the US democracy working for about 200 years. Now the filter is effectively gone and it seems that politics, both in EU and in the US are rapidly deteriorating.