US Presidential Hopeful wants to bomb Mecca

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"odd witch" was certainly callous, and I apologize for offense caused by using that particular turn of phrase.

What concerns me about the situation is the execution of effective innocents during a barbaric and ill informed era. I imagine that most of those executors were working under the steadfast beilef, propagated by the authority at the time that these people WERE actually servants of satan. The inquisitors and witchfinders and baying crowds were sure in their belief that they were doing gods work. At that point in history, satan was apparently a very real threat, an enemy to society and the church, as believed by every level of that society, because they had virtually no recourse to any other viewpoint. Given the poor (by our standards) levels of communication and education, and a general lack of understanding about science, herbology, mental health etc, it is unsurprising that people bought into the idea of witchcraft, and saw it as evil. Bear in mind that things we now know to be proven fact were often considered heresy and apostasy, and the very sciences that allow us to continue this conversation would be considered as both.

By comparison.. the activities of islamic groups like the Taliban, or even by recognised governments like Iran. They continue to apply religious doctrines to their behaviour despite living in a world of global communication, rife with scientific marvels, and still kill people using the same mindset as those medieval inquisitors of half a millenia ago, without even the excuse of ignorance to hide behind. Doing this in their own countries is disturbing enough. Wishing to apply such a medieval mindset in MY home country i find horrifying.

An Islamic UK (assuming a worst case taliban-style government) would be reduced to state-sanctioned chauvinism, meaning that many of my aquaintances, family, and my partner would be reduced to second-class citizens. Beards would be mandatory (and I know at least one guy who is incapable of growing a beard at age 26.) Works of art and reams of books would be destroyed. A reasonably enlightened society would be reduced to a level not far about the stone age, and given that i have mental health issues, i would be looking at a long drop and a sharp stop. This concept does not please me. The west has spent 500 years dragging itself out of this barbaric and ignorant state, and it should not be dragged back there, especially by a religion which over the same period of time has gone from being advanced and civilised into a state of religion-fuelled paranoia and oppression.

Yet ANOTHER ignorant capitalist

Who? the nuke-happy guy ?

To be perfectly fair, Tancredo never said anything about "bombing Mecca." That was implied by the OP. To put this in perspective, Tancredo was responding to Barak Obama's statement that he would never, under any circumstances, use nuclear weapons.

To our enemies, this makes us look weak. Even though everyone knows we really never intend to use them, the threat of nukes is what has kept a lot of belligerent foreign powers from being too nutty. Because they don't think like us. They think "if I had them, I'd use them... the US has them, therefore..."

Tancredo was merely stating that it was irresponsible for someone aspiring to the Presidency to uncategorically take nuclear deterrent off the table. And I agree with him. Now is not the time to let our pants down.

Whoever wants to nuke mecca...

Oh... and there aren't ignorant socialists?

Won't work on today's enemy. Today's enemy isn't sane. MAD requires your foe to care if they die.

Point granted. But at least it keeps the sane ones in check while we deal with the insane ones.

True.

Uh oh, a conservative and liberal just agreed on something. What next... cats and dogs living together?

There's fewer socialist's nowadays,the USSR is dead ya know...

They both phail.

Same reason we didn't nuke the Vatican when the IRA were blowing people up. Because it would involve huge loss of innocent life, would antagonise millions and most importantly, it's a cretinously stupid idea.

I am no liberal, I am libertarian.

Big difference.

Same on social issues as a liberal but a conservative when it comes to government and how it interacts with the people.

Yes, it's much less common now to see Christians going 'to war' against other Christians since the Albigensian Crusade. It's hardly unheard of, however. The 30 Years War comes to mind. If you just want to talk about current events, ask a Ugandan about it. They have been dealing with fundamentalist Christians at war with the government in order to create a state based on the 10 commandments. Surely that counts?

Heh, Islam isn't alone in its idiocy and inability to pay attention to scripture. The paradox of "thou shalt not kill" vs "lets have a war." Fundamentalists of any nature are usually bad news for everyone (stress on the mentalist part i think) but Christian crusade-style warfare is much less prevalent in general.

Well, the West has happened to reach a point where killing is done for other reasons. I can't honestly see why killing people over idiotic notions of Aryan supremacy or whatnot is different from killing people for religious reasons. Wow. We in the west tend to anihilate other people for reasons other than religion. We're so advanced. Yay for us.

Seriously though, my view is that ideology itself is the root cause of the problem. It can manifest as religion, or it can manifest as political belief, or racial ideology, etc etc etc. There really isn't much to choose between these forms of ideology. Religion is a subset of the general problem The general problem is represented by the True Believer of any stripe.