To that questions of yours “If God made you choose between three cultures to live in, after he’s told you about all those three cultures, which one would you choose?” - the answer to that question does not in itself pinpoint a position - that’s just a too simple of an argumentative strategy (if at all it’s a strategy) - why do you equal “differentiatedness” with “childishness”, “complex thinking” with “generalization”, why do you think that a “black-and-white” response would suggest the ability to “analyze”.

I’m seeing a couple of different words being thrown around as if they were interchangeable when they might not be:

- Middle Eastern
- Arabic
- Muslim

One is religious, one is racial, and one is geographic. Steve made a particular point of choosing the geographic descriptor as the starting point of his condemnation, so it isn’t fair to characterize him as a bigot in terms of religions such as Islam.

Steve -

Regarding “Cultures that are all about lethally enforcing homogeneity”
I think this is at least a bit of an exaggerated account of the culture of individuals residing within the middle east. There are certainly other components of the culture, so the ‘all’ is inappropriate. Or did you mean, “cultures that on occasion lethally enforce homogeneity”… probably not, since this would include Western culture (I read a news story a while ago about a person in the U.S. who was murdered for being transgendered). How about “cultures that have a greater tendency towards the lethal enforcement of homogeneity than other cultures which I have arbitrarily selected to serve as a point of comparison”?

I ask you: “is it wrong to kill a man?” It seems like a trivial question, but can you provide a simple yes or no answer to it, devoid of particulars, circumstances, context, and all that wussy liberal stuff you accuse us of resorting to? Such broad questions require analysis and often defy yes-or-no answers.

Steve would ask “Why are so many Muslims terrorists?”
I would ask “Why are so many terrorists Muslims?” Subtle, but crucial difference, here. Finally got it?

bigot - One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.

racist - a person with a prejudiced belief that one race is superior to others.

simpleminded - devoid of subtlety

Your claims in your last post regarding middle eastern culture suggest all of these things. It shows partiality to your own group. A belief that one way of thought is superior to another and is competely devoid of subtleties such as the fact that belonging to a religion does not make one bad. It is indeed orthagonal to action. People of all races and religions can be bad. You choose to ignore this. You also choose to ignore that much of the world is muslim and good, choosing instead to equate muslin with bad. You have no numbers or evidence to back this up, yet you choose to believe it. Which is fine since you long ago stopped caring about evidence.

Finally, through all of your complaining/crying about how experts shouldn’t be the only people that have a forum to share their thoughts and influence people, you have a paragraph stating that people that have “no merit to their thoughts” shouldn’t be given a forum. I believe we should now contact your ISP and ask them to take away your blog. You have no merit, but yet you have a forum. Congrats.