Big article in Time re: militias

[Partsproduction]

The tenants of Communist ideology are irrelevant

Yeah, there's probably no connection between 100 million murders and a philosophy that teaches that there is no judgment day.

You can love your '55 Chevy to the point that if anybody keys it you'll kill them on sight, but that's passion, not religion.

I think that if you investigate the accepted broader definition of what idolatry is it goes well beyond bowing before a stone idol.

A large majority self-define as Christian

You can self define yourself as a squash, doesn't make you one. If you don't show the fruits of a Christian life there is plenty of reason to doubt it's depth.

We're just at a point where Islam is more readily accepting these rash interpretations than Christianity, which has in the past.

Much as I respect you Charles I need to point out again that the source documents of Christianity do not command murder, while the source documents of islam do. It's not radical muslims who murder, it is obedient muslims. It is not obedient Christians (Or Jews) who murder, it is the ones who don't take the original commandments to heart.

This distinction is very clear, and while it's easy to look up, for some reason people continue to compare the two belief systems in the same light, and I just don't get it.

From the standpoint of those murdered over the centuries by "Christians" your point is relevant, but only if you fail to investigate what familiarity the murderers had with the source documents. It wasn't until the 1450's that many had access to the printed documents, and most couldn't read. They were spoon fed what they should believe by corrupt leaders who used the faith for their own purposes.
Along comes Luther, and he teaches that the Jews are evil! Some reformation! The point is that anyone today can find out what the book actually says, and it doesn't say to murder your neighbor or hate Jews.

An analysis of muslim teaching however shows that later statements trump earlier statements, so to deceive someone all they have to do is point to the time when Mohammad was trying to convert Christians and Jews with kindness, and muddy the waters thereby.

Once you accept that later statements trump earlier statements it's clear that muslims aren't just accepting "Rash interpretations", they are accepting later writings and commandments in the quran and hadiths, which is considered (by them!) correct interpretation!

 

[spengo]

Black card, Lister. I'm holding up a black card. Conversation over.

 

[Buddhalux]

Well, I'd like to hear what someone who follows islam has to say to that before passing judgment. It is true that most islamic nations are socially in the past compared to the first world. Regardless, there are still christian extremists who will kill in the name of god. I think everyone can agree they are grossly misinterpreting what their religion is really about and it would definitely be a bad idea to join up with a militia like the Hutaree group.

What most people don't get is that it's not a misinterpretation at all. The Quran isn't lke the Bible.

The Quran verses are read front to back, however things written and put in later superceed what comes before. So yes, religion of peace in the front of the book is overwritten by passages that come after it. That's done to eliminate any confusion. Kind of like how it's ok to side with infidals if you're out numbered. How it's ok to lie to infidals as long as you hold true to your faith in Allah. How the real tennet behind Islam is to convert the world or kill all the non-believers. Christianity is nothing like that, not even the dark days of Catholicism.

 

[spengo]

Oh, Buddhalux, you've forgotten the colour code. White. The white
card is to continue the discussion, but this is a black card situation.
Discussion over.

 

[Partsproduction]

Religion was inserted by those who made ridiculous statements and expect people to accept them without analysis. My response was to show how idiotic that is.

In the history of mankind......religion has caused more death than anything.

People don't really think through things before they say them. Because not even islam has killed anywhere near as many people as godless communism has.

Anyway, I'm done with the discussion.

 

[spengo]

Religion was inserted by those who made ridiculous statements and expect people to accept them without analysis. My response was to show how idiotic that is.

People don't really think through things before they say them. Because not even islam has killed anywhere near as many people as godless communism has.

Anyway, I'm done with the discussion.

Da da da, black card, black card, black card, da da da, black
card--

go talk about how atheism = communism = dead people in the other thread

 

[Partsproduction]

Da da da, black card, black card, black card, da da da, black
card--

go talk about how atheism = communism = dead people in the other thread

In view of my statement that I was done with the discussion don't you think the above was a bit late? And what's with the black card white card stuff?

I did respond to you in the other thread, but just now I explained why my discussion here was germane to this thread because of the first mentions of religion (Brought in by someone else) being the largest cause of death.

To mention it in "your" thread in another forum wouldn't make any sense since the assertion that religion had caused more deaths than anything else wasn't even in the new thread you just started.

 

[C&H]

Thanks for the opportunity spengo.

The source documents of Christianity say clearly that murder is wrong, and murder is not once commanded for those of that faith, so, if someone murders it is correct to assume that they are not true believers, at the very least, that they need to repent.

The source documents of islam command their faithful to murder! So, if a muslim does not murder infidels, or at least require them to pay the Jizyah, which is a tax that the Dhimmi (Infidels, basically slaves because they are not muslims) uniquely have to pay. A good muslim either kills or taxes infidels.

Do you see the difference? That difference is huge!

An interesting read: The old testament. There's a good bit of murder called for in that part of the Christian source documents. Of course, killing people for shaving is generally dismissed these days. It's all about the cultural perspective from which certain writings ate interpreted or considered obsolete. Fred Phelps and his lot of crazies call themselves Christians, but likely have a very different interpretation of many things than most Christians I know. Most Muslims o know are laid back about it, like most Christians I know. Crazies are everywhere and the sooner we deal with it, the better.

Also, there's a difference between atheists who've chosen their path and those who've had it chosen by their government, just like there's a difference between someone who converted to religion as an adult, versus someone who grew up with their particular faith.

 

[Riot]

Interesting read...some excerpts I found noteworthy:

Investigators are keeping a wary eye on a related trend, which has yet to progress beyond words, in which law officers and military service members vow to refuse or resist orders they deem unconstitutional.

So it's probably safe to say that they have OathKeepers.org on their radar.

None of these movements are entirely new, but most were in sharp decline by the late 1990s. Their resurgence now is widely seen among government and academic experts as a reaction to the tectonic shifts in American politics that allowed a black man with a foreign-sounding name and a Muslim-born father to reach the White House.

Yes, that must be it entirely...it must have nothing to do with the fact that our country is in a recession, inflation is due to hit any time now and unemployment is at its worse in over 20 years. But since we brought up our President (and the Race Card), let's go with the fact that he has deliberately been secretive about his religious beliefs and birth nationality. This is the same man that has more ties to terrorism (referring to the Weather Underground / Bill Ayers ties) and attended a bigoted preacher for approximately 20 years.

Yeah, if I was a writer I'd sum all that up to "a black guy with a funny name" too...

Obama's ascendancy unhinged the radical right, offering a unified target to competing camps of racial, nativist and religious animus. Even Patriots who had no truck with white supremacy found that they could amplify their antigovernment message by "constructing Obama as an alien, not of this country, insufficiently American,"...

I love how I'm automatically a racist-extremist for simply demanding to see a copy of Obama's original birth certificate.

And yet there are exceptions, and law-enforcement officials say domestic terrorists are equally the products of their movements. Those most inclined toward violence sometimes call themselves three percenters, a small vanguard that dares to match deeds to words. Brian Banning, who led local and interagency intelligence units that tracked radical-right-wing violence in Sacramento County, California, says, "The person who's interested in violent revolution may be attracted to a racist group or to a militia or to the Tea Party because he's antigovernment and so are they, but he's looking on the fringe of the crowd for the people who want to take action."

One of the first things you need to do to control the people is disarm them. Secondly, is to demoralize and dehumanize the dissidents of control. Anyone who speaks ill of the government is automatically a "terrorist" and, therefore, any force or action against them is justified.

If you can't make the sheeple scared of you, then at least make them scared to join the opposition.

Members of militias around the country say, like Goldsmith, that they resent comparison with white supremacists like Cummings and Von Brunn. They complain of being tarred as members of hate groups by watchdogs at the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. "I can't tell you how much I enjoy being lumped in with sociopathic organizations like neo-Nazis, antiabortion extremists and Holocaust-denial groups," says Darren Wilburn, a private detective in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., who trains with a hard-core militia he preferred not to name. He cites his motto, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of anyone who threatens it," as evidence that he is not looking for trouble as long as trouble keeps clear of him.

Koodos to TIME for at least putting a paragraph of an oppossing viewpoint that doesn't lump all militia members with racist facism.

Why, then, the paramilitary training that takes up nearly all the militia's time? That question bothers Sheriff Matt Lutz of Muskingum County, where the militia is headquartered. "There is no correlation with them saying they're there to help us in any way and them running around with assault rifles in the woods," he says. "That's what scares people. That just tells me they're preparing for the worst."

If you know that they are preparing for the worse...then maybe you should join them.

Bob Schulz, a leading exponent of the view that the IRS and much of the government it funds are operating illegally, has reached the brink of calling for war. The moment is significant because he is an influential voice among militia groups.

There's an overstatement...Schulz, to most militia members, is a nutbag. That's like saying the Republicans listen to Ross Perot.

Federal law-enforcement agencies want no part of a conversation about angry antigovernment extremists and refused in virtually every case to speak on the record. A few injudicious passages from career analysts at the DHS in an April 2009 report titled "Rightwing Extremism" - which could be misread to suggest danger from ordinary antigovernment opinions or military veterans in general - brought a ferocious backlash. DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano distanced herself from the report and forbade further public discussion of the subject. Shortly afterward, the National Security Council staff canceled plans for a working-group meeting on the surge of violent threats against members of Congress.

Could be misread? Wow, that's an understatement...that report specifically targets white, Tea Party Members and Ron Paul supporting veterans as possible "domestic terrorists". That's right...not KKK, Neo-Nazi, Swastika sporting people (the real "extremists"); but people that are simply critical of the government. This " <broken link removed> " that our government is referring to, openly stereotyped and racially profiled white, American citizens. I'd be more concerned if there wasn't a backlash.

The rest of the article is just jabber about how militia groups can be attributted to "Lone Wolf" terrorist attacks.

Well sorry TIME, but you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either all Muslims are responsible for the actions of their extremist counterparts or they are not...if all Militia groups are responsible for the actions of a few nuts, then all Muslims are responsible for the actions of 9/11/01.

PERIOD