Non-IT News Thread
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@art_of_shred said:
@coliver That's really funny, given your background.
Yep, never was a sports fan... just don't enjoy watching it.
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@art_of_shred said:
This whole "refugee" ball of wax is a slippery slope / hot potato. Of course, one wants to help refugees. Of course, America is a land of immigrants. On the other hand, we're up against an enemy today (Islamic extremism) that doesn't identify itself by standing and attacking. It hides and waits and then employs cowardly acts to attack its enemies. Obviously, the only way to completely stop some (you know they're in there, but you just can't prove it before it's too late) arsenic-laced m&m's from getting in the bowl is to stop eating m&m's. We don't want to do that, so therein lies the dilemma. You can have a valid opinion on either side of the issue, but no matter which side of the fence you're on, you know you're sacrificing something sacred to be there. Either you're a racist bigot for wanting to protect your country, or you're a lib-tard for being willing to throw security to the wind in the attempt to preserve freedom and equality.
That's where I don't agree, nor do any studies that I know. Yes, there is a risk to any immigrant OR existing American. Yes there is a risk to refugees. But that risk has, over time, proven to be incredible small.
What is left out are two big factors. One is that to call them M&Ms leads us to think of ourselves as humans needing to be protected from poison and refugees as disposable candy that we can ignore if we don't want to risk it. But that's not what it is. It is humans on both sides, humans whose lives are equal and who need protecting (unless you take the Christian hardline then the refugees being primarily non-Christian far more important to save because the chance to witness to them is critical.) But assuming equal value, it's the overall risk, not the risk only to one side, that has to be considered.
But even treating them as M&Ms, there is, it is generally accepted, far greater risk to not eating them than eating them. So if the goal is humanitarian, we take them. If the goal is risk mitigation, we take them. If the goal is to expose them to Christianity, we take them. Three agendas, who of them fully supported by conservatives, all point to taking them.
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@art_of_shred said:
Either you're a racist bigot for wanting to protect your country, or you're a lib-tard for being willing to throw security to the wind in the attempt to preserve freedom and equality.
That's the thing, I believe being on the racist side is also throwing security to the wind. The idea that refugees is a security risk is part of the racist argument. What facts support the idea that refugees pose any significant risk (when screened through the processes that we have?)
We know for a fact that supporting terrorist agendas elsewhere, providing them with M&Ms of their own will create more terrorists and that doing so provokes attacks on American soil, right? We've done this before. So why repeat a pattern shown to create risk AND hurt individuals when we could do the best thing for everyone?
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So let's make the whole planet "America" and then all the problems will be solved, and they won't hate us anymore. Cause it's the conservative thing to do.
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@art_of_shred said:
Personally, I'm taking the stance that freedom and equality for Americans, while we're discussing American security, trumps the "freedom and equality" of the non-American whom we're looking at here.
While I don't agree and believe that all life is equally important, I appreciate the value of the point. However, I don't agree that supporting that point is best done by turning away refugees. I believe that the best way to secure America is to take refugees, lots of them. Tons of them. Get them jobs, get them educations, get them futures.
The alternative is to send them to ISIS. Who do you fear more, school kids or ISIS recruits? Yes, one is local and one is far away, but even so a kid in an American school (even one making clocks) is less scary than one building bombs and beheading Americans.
Those are, effectively, your choices. Make refugees love America, or make them hate it. From the most conservative, selfish, America-first agenda I can imagine, you still accept refugees.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Who do you fear more, school kids or ISIS recruits?
A: ISIS recruits, hiding amongst school kids.
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@art_of_shred said:
It would be nice, but I'm not sacrificing security for the sake of "fair", and I'm going to be very unhappy when 1 random refugee blows something up and kills a bunch of American citizens; and I will be completely justified in my anger when it happens.
No one is going to be happy. The question is....
- What if instead of blowing up a car bomb, they fly a plane into a high rise from outside of the country?
- What if instead of blowing up a building, they are organizing militias?
- What if instead of ten Americans it ends up being thousands of Syrians, Kurds, Yazidis?
- What if instead of a few American Christians dead, it is many mass graves for Christians overseas?
How many American lives are worth foreign lives? One to two? One to ten? One to unlimited?
And how many American lives killed by "people we let in" weigh against those killed by "those we didn't let in?"
Sure, you'll feel terrible that a refugee that we let in killed someone. But if that same refugee kills people without being let in, which is far more likely to happen based on what we know so far, wouldn't we feel worse because not only did we not protect Americans, we didn't protect the innocent refugees either?
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@art_of_shred said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Who do you fear more, school kids or ISIS recruits?
A: ISIS recruits, hiding amongst school kids.
And you actually think that that is a risk? How many times has this been accomplished that you feel it is a reasonable fear?
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And remember, Texas has ISIS cells. How do we react when ISIS is already here?
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@scottalanmiller said:
And remember, Texas has ISIS cells. How do we react when ISIS is already here?
Upstate NY supposedly has ISIS cells as well, just for reference.
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#Earthquake: 4.7-Magnitude Strikes Northwest Oklahoma Thursday Morning
The US Geological Survey reported the earthquake hit at a depth of 6.2 kilometers, 13 kilometers outside the town of Cherokee. The region had rain, snow and tornadoes in the previous 48 hours.
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- unlikely
- already happening
- not my problem
- coming to America sooner than you may think
One point here, that is foundational. I am an American citizen. I am NOT a global citizen. I am not killing anyone, and I don't take responsibility for those who do. I grieve for their victims, regardless of race, creed, religion, but I am only responsible for what I allow to happen in my own country. As long as I maintain that I am not a global citizen, and you maintain that you are, we're standing on opposing foundations, and will not find common ground. It's not conservativism vs. liberalism on a national scale. What we're representing is conservativism vs. liberalism on a global scale. I'm not sure where you get the idea that you're conservative. All of your views are diametrically opposed to conservatism.
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@scottalanmiller said:
And you actually think that that is a risk? How many times has this been accomplished that you feel it is a reasonable fear?
@scottalanmiller said:
- What if instead of blowing up a car bomb, they fly a plane into a high rise from outside of the country?
How many times does it take before we say enough is enough? How many times is too many?
I personally think that if they come over here, then they should be offered the help they need to secure a future for themselves. I believe that they should be integrated into our society. However, they should integrate with OUR society and not try to force us to adopt their theocracy. In that same retrospect, we should not be trying to force them to become Christian, or Buddhist or Catholic or whatever other religions are established in the areas where we allow them to locate.
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@coliver said:
@scottalanmiller said:
And remember, Texas has ISIS cells. How do we react when ISIS is already here?
Upstate NY supposedly has ISIS cells as well, just for reference.
It's the ones that we don't know about that we should worry about.
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@art_of_shred said:
One point here, that is foundational. I am an American citizen. I am NOT a global citizen.
Huh? How is that? You are a citizen of NY, that does not make you less American. How does being American make you less of an Earthling?
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So, I hear there's a Super-Bowl gonna happen, or something. I've got my money on Buffalo! ...not to be there.
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@dafyre said:
I personally think that if they come over here, then they should be offered the help they need to secure a future for themselves. I believe that they should be integrated into our society. However, they should integrate with OUR society and not try to force us to adopt their theocracy.
Sure, but our society is religion neutral. How many come over and try to force their religion on us? Any? One or two? More than we've done to them? I totally agree, they should want to integrate - but they have been. There hasn't been any issue with this yet.
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@dafyre said:
How many times does it take before we say enough is enough? How many times is too many?
Depends, enough that it is not us causing the problems, that's one way to look at it.
But more importantly it is, from a safety perspective alone, is when the risk of taking them is greater than the risk of not taking them. Which from what we've seen so far, is a huge number. The risk of turning them away to Americans is dramatically higher than the risk of taking them in. The safest move is to accept them. As long as that fact is true, no number is too many. It's like asking "how safe do you want to be?" The answer is, "As safe as possible."
From both a "how do we protect Americans" and "how do we protect people" perspectives, I believe that the answer is the same: accepting, helping and integrating protects the most Americans AND the most refugees. It is a win/win.
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One important point is that we are talking about Syrian refugees here and Syria is not, say, China. Even if the US took the entire country it would be a drop in the population bucket. So even taking all Syrians, not just refugees, the number would not be something the US could not rapidly absorb and Europe, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Canada have been taking them too. So the "Max" number is still small, even if we talked about taking them all.
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I'm honestly surprised that, other than Delaware, rust bucket states are not clamoring to get the refugees, NY especially. Educated, thankful workforce ready to accept federal aid dollars and fill empty houses. Many northeastern states could benefit greatly from the influx, especially NY which has the "refugee city" already in it ready with a pipeline to get people from refugee status into the workforce with a huge success rate. NY knows what it is doing, although Syrians are far more educated than the normal refugees that are taken in so that presents a challenge to some degree, but a small one.
