Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

You have made a common mistake of conflating 'democracy' with 'intolerance.'

The fundamental issue is that you've got people in place A who have different moral values and rules than people in place B, The folks in place B worry their values will be destroyed by access to the media from place A.

In this example the folks in strict Islamic nations are upset over a film which mocks the key figure in their religion. In the US devout Christians had much the same sort of anger over films that portrayed inter-racial marriage (and the implied intimacy). A few of the radical Christian clerics exhort their followers to violence in defense of their Christian beliefs under fire by their perception of an increasingly amoral society.

Has nothing to do with democracy, middle ages, or religion and everything to do with what are, and what are not, those so called inalienable rights that the insurgents talked about their independence manifesto. Driving a consensus on this issue is Hard Problem(tm) which the UN and others have been working on pretty much from the start.

"A few of the radical Christian clerics exhort their followers to violence in defense of their Christian beliefs..."

The big difference being that this is always followed by official condemnation.

Where are the muslim moderates at times like these? The community leaders to come out and say, "calm down everybody, this is not what our religion is about". Absent as ever. As much as the moderate muslims may deny it, their silence speaks pages at times like these.

I even see it in westernized muslim friends of mine, who just sheepishly grin and say "but it's mohammed, our religion says we shouldn't disrespect him".

> Where are the muslim moderates at times like these?

Here you go: http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/09/12/arab-world-outrage-...

There is a rather large gulf between "absent" and "absent in the Western media."

Where are moderate muslims at times like these? Probably busy not killing people and making a living. If moderate muslims had anything to say about this topic, how would you know about it? Honestly, is there a TV channel for moderates that I could look up?

> You have made a common mistake of conflating 'democracy' with 'intolerance.'

The reason why I've conflated them is because democracy is almost always a prerequisite for tolerance. Sure, it's possible for a non-democratic country to be tolerant, but that is a rare abnormality.

Moreover, the reason why I put the word "democratization" in scare quotes in my previous post is because I was also using it with the underlying meaning that exists in America - "to transplant our culture/values into another country".

Not sure if I can agree with 'democracy' (which I believe you're using equating to the US style of representation) is a prerequisite for tolerance. The Dutch have had a monarchy that was pretty tolerant on a lot of things for a while (just as an example of it not being required). I'd be Ok with saying that democratically formed governments are more likely to be tolerant because tolerance works toward enhancing the number of votes they can get.

But your second comment is scary indeed. "transplanting our culture/values", especially when it comes to US culture and values, is an offensive thing to a lot of people in the world. The US State department pushes exactly one 'value' (and no 'culture') which is that the people who are governed have the right of electing the government they want. Period. There aren't any constraints put on the kind of government the people pick, be it heavily church influenced, strict representation, constitutional representation, etc.

> The US State department pushes exactly one 'value' (and no 'culture') which is that the people who are governed have the right of electing the government they want.

This is the official policy, but everyone knows it's bullshit. Using post WW2 changes as an example, we quickly forgive countries that Americanize (such as Japan), while we quickly forget allies who veer off on their path (such as Russia). We overthrow democratic governments who oppose us and bring back monarchs who are on our side (such as in Iran), while we prop up oppressive monarchs who support us (such as in Saudi Arabia).

And I recognize the fact that it's offensive to transplant our culture/values, which is why I think it's best to just try to bring those people who already agree with our culture and values to America. Let the extremists kill one another - we just need to get the bystanders out of the way.

The Soviet Union did not 'veer off their path' they continued it until Reagan and their policies ran them out of money. Stalin killed more Soviets than the Germans.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com