Lego,

Your racist rant totally contradicts a few thousand years of western philosophical thought, writing and development. You need to read more broadly but I doubt you'd have the comprehension ability.

You are an amateur in analysis of human behaviour. You deal in generalities and your conclusions are simply wrong for our western liberal democratic times.

David Singer

Are you happy that your diatribes against Palestinians has produced (flushed) this sort of irrational follower and comrade.

That is where Hitler started. We western liberal democrat's fought a war against those attitudes.

You should be revolted and ashamed! Why aren't you?

Hi ImaJuliannutter

At least I can submit a 350 word reasoned argument which can cross connect concepts, instead of like you, submitting posts which consist of a few insults and sneery one liners. Is that the best you can do? Your pathetic posts are indicative of a person who's worldview has been totally inculcated into their unquestioning minds, instead of being the result of personel conviction resulting from the considered analysis of competing ideas.

Your childish attitude reinforces my presumption that people with your leftist convictions are not very intelligent at all. You grasp at liberal attitudes like a drowning man because you think that they are the attitudes of intelligent people, and you have a compulsive need to think that you are just that. But your intellect is unable to sort out the disjointed slogans that have been conditioned into your head that make up your attitudes, into anything resembling a cohesive argument.

But if you are intelligent, then you had better start thinking intelligently. Instead of accepting everything the ABC, the Sydney Morning Heraldd, Noam Chomsky, or The Green Left Weekly tells you is more infallable than the proclomations of the Pope, start reading a few books by people who's views you think are wrong.

Because if you don't I am going to run rings around you, boy. I love reading my ideological opponents books. They tend to think that they are preaching to the converted, so they can get very indiscreet. One I read recently was "The War on Children" by an American anti racist like you. In it, he bragged about how he and the NAACP had sucessfully lobbied Congress to deny government funds for any scientist researching the effects of DNA on Human behaviour.

Any impartial and intelligent person would agree that any ideology that needs to shut up the scientists is intellectually bankrupt.

Lego

Don't get so high and mighty mate, you are playing the man, not the ball, which isn't supposed to be what OLO is all about. There is often a great deal of thought behing one liners, so don't dismiss them so lightly. A 300 word essay can be just full of BS and mean nothing.

David

Dear Lego,

While almost everyone is racist to some extent, the degree varies.

I love your conclusion: "The only way that you can prevent racism is to stop being human" - this is indeed what we should strive for!
I am acquainted with the human condition, but it is our duty to rise above it as best we can, and as we do so despite the weight of our hosting human, we can acquire new habits that eventually turn into second-nature. The desire to survive no doubt exists, but it is a weakness, not a virtue.

Racism is NOT the cause of every problem in the world. Racism is but a symptom: the malady is our identification with our bodies along with the instincts that come with it. Besides racism, this can take the form of prejudice in favour of one's own body; one's family; one's sports-team; one's town; one's gender; or the human race in general; etc.

I do not condemn racism because I do accept that different people are at different stages in their spiritual evolution. We come here to learn, so sooner or later we need to experience racism (on both the aggressor and the receiving sides) before we can finally discard it and leave it behind. You are a warrior, so take your time and learn the lesson well.

I am a bit ancient for "today’s education system" to condition me: at the time, the schools I attended in fact encouraged racism, including by chance a couple of years in South-Africa under Apartheid. My views have absolutely nothing to do with humanistic/socialistic/western philosophy, but are based on eastern spiritual principles.

Personally, I'm rather low on racism and species-ism, but I do care about and am loyal to my family. When the interests of a race/nation (such as the Jews) conflicts with the essential interests of my family, I side with my family.

Orthodox Jews are not one group. The ultra-orthodox can be a nuisance and economic burden, but are not threatening my family like the settlers who are still orthodox, but fully active in state-affairs.

Dear Imajulianutter,

This is a bit off topic, but I couldn't avoid commenting about some expressions that you used in your reply to Lego:

"Your racist rant totally contradicts a few thousand years of western philosophical thought, writing and development."

- Does this include scenes from the bible, the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the 100-year war between France and England, the slavery of Negroes, Spanish slaughter of American Indians, South-African Apartheid, Antisemitism, English attitude towards Indian Kafirs, and of course towards our own Aboriginals? You can safely remove two zeroes.

"our western liberal democratic times"

- Perhaps a wishful thinking: most of the planet today is not western, not liberal and not democratic. Even in Australia, liberalism is very partial and democracy is but a ritualistic semblance (allowing you to choose every 3 years between Tweedledum and Tweedledee).

Hi Yuyutsu

I am not religious in any way, and I am hardly qualified to talk philosophy. But I do know a thing or two about psychology and group psychology, and I would advise you against adopting any ideology, regardless of whether it is religious or political, which depends upon its implementation on the belief that human beings can stop being human.

It was Freud who discovered that some of his patients exhibited bizarre behaviour because they were trying to repress their natural instincts to commit behaviour which was socially proscribed (often homosexuality) which even the patients themselves convinced was wrong behaviour. Freud coined the word “neurosis” to describe the bizarre behaviour resulting from repressing natural feelings.

Your own stated intention to put your family first above even your country is perfectly natural, and can be considered a form of racism. The definition of racism has expanded by the demand of the anti racists themselves to mean almost any group at all. Human Rights organizations are now formulating policies where racism and discrimination encompasses not just races, but ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and even non belief in any belief system.

However, I suppose we are getting off topic.

The war between Israel and the Arabs is a race war, it is also a religious war. Two competing tribes who both have reasonable grounds for thinking that this tiny bit of real estate is their particular tribal land, are fighting each other for the territory, and may the best tribe win. All of the UN declarations, legal mumbo jumbo, or political declarations will not change that.

I hope it is the Israelis, because I respect the Israelis a lot more than the Arabs. The Arabs are to my mind are backward, barbarous, economically inept, totally intolerant, and cruel. And Arabs have basically declared war on the west with their support of terrorism, or their support for Muslim immigrant colonization of European lands with the intention of making us all eventually bow to Allah.