Dear Jayb,

Who gets to decide who is a Kshatriyas? Everyone can decide for themselves - that's the whole beauty!

You don't need to have money or land or title, you don't need to belong to the right family or clan or race or party: all you need is to want to vote strongly enough to make some moderate sacrifice that is not extraordinary or beyond your ability. Kshatriyas BY NATURE are more interested in politics and public affairs than others, so they are more likely to be willing to make that sacrifice.

Neither Britain nor India (nor any other country I know) ever had such a system.

Currently in Australia, many people only vote because they have to, then they cast donkey or random votes; vote as a favour for whoever their friend tells them; vote based on shallow slogans without studying the actual agendas; or vote for whichever party promises to leave them with a few more $$'s ASAP.

<<Expel those immigrants who are bereft of morals. Eg; Followers of islam & criminals>>

I think we were there already, back in page 5. If we take the minimalist definition of "Followers of islam" then I agree - but that would not include such people as our Grateful or the Young-Australian-of-the-Year candidate, Arman Abrahimzadeh.

<<
Is Australia under threat from these people. I'll say it is.

Something has been missing from this debate. Our Potential Terrorist friends have been strangely silent on this one.
>>

This should not become an ideological debate, but rather a highly technical one, among security experts, based on rational and informed risk-assessment and considering all options and solutions, including their side-effects.

Would your ideal System allow women as equals? Those that don't qualify for your ideal, would they just be slaves to your Kshatriyas? of no real worth & not share equally in the spoils of the realm?

Yutsie: Everyone can decide for themselves - that's the whole beauty!

So bogan, without a clue because they are stoned out of their head on drugs, pissed as farts or just brain damaged from banging their heads on a brick to Heavy Metal Music or maybe they are sitting in Lygon Street sipping on their Latte waving the pinky & looking down on common folk decide they are Kshatriyas & they can be one.

Yutsie: Currently in Australia, many people only vote because they have to, then they cast donkey or random votes; vote as a favour for whoever their friend tells them; vote based on shallow slogans without studying the actual agendas; or vote for whichever party promises to leave them with a few more $$'s ASAP.

I find your opinion of everyday Australians isn't very PC in fact it down right arrogant. Not appropriate & so on & so forth & I'm quite offended by your opinion of everyday Aussies. Especially as it's coming from a religious base that most Australians regard as just plain silly.

We who suffer from “Islamophobia” are often referred to as “haters”. I would like to set the record straight. While there may be many amongst us who do hate Islam, as I do, and perhaps many who also hate Muslims, that is not our main concern.

The majority of Muslims seeking a new life in the West are fleeing war torn countries in the Middle East, or famine in North Africa, and we may sympathize with their desire to find a better life in a Western democracy. Unfortunately they are, perhaps unknowingly, carriers just as dangerous as carriers of a deadly disease, such as smallpox or ebola, and their immigration should be strongly resisted.

In France and Sweden, and in Australia, Islamic terrorists are mainly second or third generation. The first generation, mainly not speaking the local language, understandably find assimilation hard going. They hardly know which way is up, tend to stay in Muslim communities, attend the local Mosque, and raise their kids as devout Muslims. The local Imam, the Koran, and in fact the whole community argues against assimilation. The second generation know that they are despised in the wider community, find solace in the Koran, and rebel.

Islam is perhaps the world's fastest growing religion. Historically, however, it grew through the application of terror, as ordered by Mohammed himself. We can only guess how many hundreds of millions died, as Islam spread across North Africa, and eastward through India and Indonesia. People converted, rather than having their throats cut, their children enslaved and their wives raped.

Most of us sympathize with the desperate people seeking a new life in Europe – how could we not, but we should not let them in. It's not even because we have a better way of life, but that our systems are incompatible, and any attempt at assimilation can only lead, eventually, to disaster.

Dear Jayb,

Where did I ever suggest that anyone be slave to *my* Kshatriyas?

May I remind you that the very first thing I wrote on this topic was:

"The caste system was misunderstood and highly abused in India.
It was meant to DESCRIBE an existing and natural situation, not to enforce it."

All I do is to observe human nature: one is either a Kshatriya or one isn't, just as one could have have blue eyes and the other has green eyes. Left-handed people would naturally write with their left hand, but I would never ever suggest to forbid them to write with their right hand if they so wish. One could "decide" that they have blue eyes, but that wouldn't change their eye-colour...

Nature isn't PC, never been. I just observe the way things are.

---

Dear Bob,

Understandably,

<<The second generation know that they are despised in the wider community, find solace in the Koran, and rebel>>

But why should they be despised in the first place?

I might be afraid of them - it's natural to be afraid of being blown up.
I might want to see them dead so that I don't have to die prematurely and/or lose my freedom - that's also understandable.
Yet none of this makes me despise any of them.

Yes, the problem requires a solution.
But despising others only aggravates the situation and is not a part of a sensible solution.

"Islamocritica" is perhaps a better description of the position of many of us on OLO. "Islamophobia" is far too misleading: we don't fear Islam, but like any other ideology or religion in the modern world, it should be analysed - deconstructed - and criticised.

As an Islamocritic, I'm as ready to assess or analyse Islam as any other ideology, such as, for example, Marxism, to which I adhered for many years, in its various forms.

Post-Enlightenment, we try to understand the world around us, we do not simply take it for granted or take the word of priests or imams. The search for understanding has been a long and painful struggle in the West, ever since many great and courageous thinkers like Leonardo or Machiavelli or Erasmus started questioning the Old Order five hundred year ago. We know now that blood flows around the body, pumped by the heart, that the earth orbits around the sun, and a multitude of similar momentous notions. We don't now believe in natural social hierarchies, but most of us do believe that all people should have equal rights and the power to change governments by peaceful means.

As long as any group of people still believe that all knowledge has been laid down in a book put together by other people hundreds or thousands of years ago, never to be questioned, then those people are out of step with the phenomenal intricacies of modern knowledge and the constant elaboration of that knowledge - as it always will be elaborated, built on, 'improved'. And the key to that expansion of knowledge in every field is the ability to question, analyse, re-assess, pose alternatives, 'deconstruct' - and to 'deconstruct' everything, to assess and re-assess all received knowledge.

So people have the choice between accepting what they are told, and questioning everything that passes for knowledge. Medical knowledge, for example, is supposed to be doubling every twenty years or so. So, I hope, it will be every twenty years, or less. The world is not standing still -it never has stood still, and never will.

Joe

Yutsie: Where did I ever suggest that anyone be slave to *my* Kshatriyas?

True, but that hasn't stopped the real life situation in India, has it? Babies making bricks & hauling steel through mud for starvation wages & living in hovels or on the street.

Yutsie: "The caste system was misunderstood and highly abused in India. It was meant to DESCRIBE an existing and natural situation, not to enforce it."

If you say so, but never-the-less that's what has happened. That's why you are here & not there in your Idealist Society.

Loudmouth: "Islamocritica" is perhaps a better description of the position of many of us on OLO. "Islamophobia" is far too misleading:

Yes, you are right. I don't & never have hated the people (moslims) but I do intensely dislike their Religious Dogma. I dislike other Religious Dogma also. However ones that calls for the elimination of all people except those that do not believe & uphold their particular Dogma need to be greatly feared.