Comment by mozumder

9 years ago

If you didn't want to be arrested, then you shouldn't be a member of a group that has waged war against the US?

It's a good idea to arrest violent people. Don't be the libertarian theory nerd that thinks of people as academic concepts only. In the real world, people are violent and dangerous, and they get to be arrested.

Government limits rights and freedoms of individuals to deal with the real world.

Person A is nazi and killed someone during a protest. Person B is also nazi Therefore person B potentially killed someone during a protest. Therefore we should arrest all nazis

How hard is this to understand the following

GROUPS != INDIVIDUALS

You're advocating to punish individuals by what group they belong to instead of what they did.

Sounds familar?

Person A is a jew and lends money and is rich by "stealing" money from the borrowers via interest Person B is also a jew Therefore person b "stole" money Therefore we should arrest all jews

  • This is a false equivalence. I think it's much more like, Person A is a nazi and killed someone after being indoctrinated by violent nazi rhetoric, therefore we should stop allowing violent nazi rhetoric to be spread.

    And even then it's not actually that, because a private company has decided to stop hosting the content, the government/law enforcement was never involved.

Only if they are actually being violent, there is no reason to arrest people because they might be violent. Now let's apply your statement more broadly. Islamists successfully destroyed the World Trade Center. They have actually caused more death than those 'neo nazis' in recent times. If you were to apply what you are advocating for fairly, then every Muslims would be arrested in the US. After all it's members have waged war against the US, and some of its members still do. It would be more appropriate. Now I don't agree with arresting every Muslim as I don't agree with arresting every stupid neo nazi. If someone espouses arresting those protesters but not Muslims, then surely they are a hypocrite, who only applies what they preach very selectively.

  • > If you were to apply what you are advocating for fairly, then every Muslims would be arrested in the US.

    No. Just no.

    Islamists =/= Muslims

    The honest comparison would be to ask if anyone who professes to be a member of Al Qaeda or ISIS, is considered a criminal by simple association.

    And if they provide "material support or resources" (like organising/publishing/translating, at the lower end of terrorist criminality) they would be so.

    • Did you realise the point of my comment was not to criticize Muslims at all, just showing where the 'Just arrest them' mentality would actually lead to. There is a reason why I put both Islamist and Muslim in my comment, which was to separate them, because I know the difference. You somehow didn't understand that. So what you are replying to is not what I meant or wrote.

      2 replies →

  • What part of "the Nazi party has already waged war against the US" do you not understand?

    We literally declared war against them, and killed them wholesale. Are you saying we should stop declaring war against Nazis?

    • > We literally declared war against them, and killed them wholesale.

      Except we didn't kill them wholesale. The United States pardoned or looked the other way for lesser Nazis and Imperialists in Japan to run their respective postwar governments. How do you think these countries functioned after the war? It's not like they systematically shot every remaining Nazi.

    • I don't think comparing state actions against other states is very useful or instructive when you're talking about non-state actors. We don't "wage war" against domestic political groups. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything, but I hope you realize that military action is an extreme response to what amounts to a relatively small (but worrying) group.

    • Whbat part of Islamists have waged terror that you did not understand. I am not advocating arresting Muslims for simply being Muslim, just as I am not advocating arresting neo nazis for being neo nazis. We don't want laws that are different for certain groups, or how rich someone is. That the law applies equally to everyone is something that is valuable to preserve. We don't want to go back to the old days where blacks were treated by the law as inferior. Suggesting you do this to any groups because you don't like them is a travesty of justice.

    • Actually, the US granted amnesty and asylum to a shit load of Nazis and brought them to the US.

      Look up Operation Paperclip.