Open carry discussion - Muslims

[ZERO THEORY]

I honestly don't believe our country was founded on some principle that was put in place to protect you from having your feelings hurt.

It certainly wasn't. However, it was founded on the idea that a man should never have his rights or abilities restricted by a ruling class. Guilt by association goes two ways. So unless you're alright with having your gun rights taken away because of Lanza and Holmes, your freedom to practice Christ-based religions because of McVeigh, or ability to speak freely because of national separatists, that's a strong double standard, my friend. Tensions may very well be high because of the actions of raving fucking lunatics, I agree. However, the last time we restricted the rights of people for sharing an ethnicity or nationality, thousands of Japanese Americans (successful business owners, patriots, and family men, no less) were locked away in camps. You know, kinda like the Nazis did (minus the gas and firing squads, thankfully). As I remember it, German Americans were also blacklisted, robbed of their property, and often assaulted not long beforehand.

I'm certainly not in any position to tell you what to think or believe. I would just like to give you something to chew on. Corporal punishment for citizens leads down a very dark road, the likes of which you often don't find your way back on.

[ZERO THEORY]

By no means am I sanctioning the Japanese internment. However in recent years I've seen factual perversion of it.

We did not intern all japanese. They were basically told A) move to the east cost area or b) refuse and be interred or c) refuse and join the military. COTUS japenese on the east side of the Country were wholly unaffected. It wasn't to punish them for being Japanese.

There was a massive number of Japanese intelligence on the COTUS. They didn't know who what who. We don't have a crystal ball to say what would have happened if history was different, but one thing is a guarantee, there would have been a massive flow of intelligence going to the japanese mainland.

That said, for every japanese intellegent agent, there was 999 innocents. But they had (some limited choice) in the matter. Like I said, I'm not endorsing this by any means, but this isn't comparable to the Nazis. War is hell. If we had a brain now, we'd subject every arab speaker to more detailed searches on a plane for instance. It's an inconvenience, but it has a purpose. Old white disabled English speaking grandmas don't have a statistical probability of blowing airplanes out of the sky. I'd argue that our common-sense has been murdered in todays day in age in favor of pure political correctness.

E.G. if Cuba were to sponsor nuclear missles for russia again, and there was credible intelligence that they were sending over cuban military on rafts under the gyst of them being refugees.....

Would you think it inappropriate to treat Cuban refugees in Florida with special gloves? Or would that "violate rights" under the myth of political correctness?

Fair play; my post is a highly-condensed version of the series of events effecting Pacific Coast and Southwestern Japanese Americans. But let's focus on your question.

I wouldn't think it inappropriate, speaking strictly on the terms. Objectively speaking, there's truth value in the reason behind the profiling, and it serves to adjust for statistics. I would note however, your example is apples to oranges, at best. Illegal immigrants being screened upon entering a sovereign nation is very different from telling a citizen that he can't exercise his rights because foreign nationals look like him. Where you and I differ is that I take the Constitution as not having a lot of room for interpretation. I don't have hash marks for violating rights. When it comes to suspending them, I see it as black and white. Binary. I'm not a proponent of political correctness either, so please don't try to frame me as such.

As far as I'm concerned it's very simple: are we willing to violate rights based on statistical analysis or guilt by association? Personally, I would gladly trade my life to a Muslim extremist or any other ne'er do well, if it meant that we dismantled the Patriot Act, NDAA, wire tapping programs, email scans, et. al. I prefer dangerous liberty over peaceful slavery. The sheepdogs on this board may assume that this assertion is naive or uninformed, but I can live with that.

I'm of the frame of mind that as soon as we let the actions of a few justify our mistrust and judgement on our countrymen, we've lost. To make us suspicious and combative to our own people based on nothing more than arbitrary identifiers that the terrorists have exploited, is the very definition of successful terrorism. I'm not saying that we shouldn't maintain suspicious alertness. I profile every person I see based on any multitude of inputs. What I'm saying is that when we systematically pigeon-hole people, it hurts the solidarity of this great nation.