\ No, I'm not related to Trader Jorge (if that's who you mean). To me, there is not much difference between you or him. You both root for your "team" regardless of who's right or wrong.
If you had surveyed 20 different possibile actions by the government, and only 10% of the people responded yes for each, you could maybe get up to 80% or more of Americans opting to restrict civil liberties of Muslims ... or whoever (the ol' venn diagram). And I doubt the wording was clear to all. Did the survey mention that these were all considered restrictions on civil liberties? And I for one would not want to outright exclude any organizations from undercover investigations ... in case circumstances arose that required it. Whatever...I wouldn't read too much into it. If people start losing civil liberties it would be time to act.
You would only curtail the rights of the religious group if the ideology of the religious group as a whole would promote fighting against the law and your country, or if the religious group as a whole provided infrastructure to those who promote or pursue terror. Can one say that this is the case (yet)? Probably not.
So you are implying that whatever a Muslim does against America must have been provoked? So how crappy were the 20 or so guys treated who flew planes into the World Trade Center?
That is not what I was implying. I am implying that treating Muslims poorly may be a self fulfilling prophecy. IOW treat Musilim poorly since they are "bad" and they may become bad.
Its not a very good movie, but The Siege suddenly becomes a much more interesting movie after the events of the past 3+ years.
The survey is sad. It is a problem, and our leaders need to step forward to set a different tone. Those numbers point to a horrible environment, where people give away the rights our Constitution has granted us.
It's amazing to me that 44% of people feel this way. However, how many of you would be showing as much alarm if there were a survey saying that 44% of Americans agreed that Christians should not be allowed to say a private prayer in school? I'm not saying Christians are persecuted but neither are Muslims, IMHO. Even if this article were true (715 people?!) it could be written a totally different way: 56% of Americans say don't curtail rights of Muslims. (That's a majority folks.) Be careful of being taken for a ride. While 44% is a big number lets realize that its a smaller piece of the pie than 56%.
i fail to see how restriction of public prayer in that context is a curtailment of civil rights. organized prayer in public schools is not allowed...not private prayer conducted on an individual basis. i prayed before getting my grades back many times
When an issue speaks to the very foundation of this nation, a slim majority of people who understand the spirit of America not only just doesn't cut it, it is utmost embarrassing. Whatever happened to home of the <i>brave</i>? I guess with that out the window, land of the <i>free</i> must not be far behind.
The more I think about this the more depressing it is. It only took 3,000 lives in the WTC to make 44% of Americans give up on its ideals. I thought our country and its freedoms was more dear than that.
Count me among those who think infiltrating Muslim organizations is a good idea. The money that goesa to al-Queso comes from somewhere, and it would be nice to know who in this country is supporting our enemies. Don't federal agents have just as much right to go to a mosque as anyone else?
You're mentioning the status quo. Federal agents do go into mosques and government officials audit and scrutinize Muslim organizations. That's how the government found out that the Holy Land Foundation supposedly funds Hamas.
Yet, now that puts me into the group that "Opposes Muslim civil liberties". Sometimes people confuse tyranny and oppression with common sense.
That was only 29% of the folks. It depends on how it is done. If it is just random infiltration of random mosques, or Islamic civic groups, then I am dead set against it. If they have a reasonable suspicion of a particular mosque or group, then by all means they should infiltrate it, and find out what is going on.
That's just it, though. How was the question worded? Since when is a viable investigation a clear restriction of civil liberties? If you only consider the other two issues to be CL restrictions, the % is much lower.
I think a lot does depend on how it was worded. I agree on that. I thought that meant at random. I don't consider investigations with probable cause to be a restriction on civil liberties. So I thought it meant expanding to random investigations on the sole reason that the places were muslim.
Yeah, but I still think that's an unfair conclusion of the poll. The media makes a big deal about reporting how a lot of funds from some Muslim charities goes to feed terrorism, yet never provides perspective on how many (hopefully the extreme majority) don't. Then someone comes along and asks you whether Muslim charities should be investigated.
