ESR's Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by hermit22

So not only do you use a term of a high perjorative nature; you continuously use it incorrectly. That's all I'm concerned about.

I'd send *you* to the dictionary to read the definition of fascism again, but it's a message you don't want to hear. Of *course* it''s perjorative; and deservedly so.

Quit trying to read everything from a normative sense. Don't pass judgement on it before going in; rather, analyze the content of it. You'll find that Qutb, bin Laden, Marx, etc. make some good observations about society. It is in their prescriptions that they fail; it is the prescriptions that the media sees; and the prescriptions that temper our bias.

Actually, I don't particularly give a rat's fuzzy behind about bin Laden's philosophy, or that of any of his kindred, pe se. There's no shortage of "good observations about society" from Mencken to Orwell, Twain to Ghandi, from Jesus to Heinlein to your-favorite-pundit-here; their names are legion.

It's what you call the "prescriptions" that threaten us. It's the "prescriptions" that are indeed fascism, dress it up as you will. (Nationalism? Go ahead and try to tell me that "nation of Islam" is only metaphor and rhetoric.)

Starry Sky above us, if "fascism" an unfair perjorative for coercive establishment of sharia law as a part of a global state religion, what shall we call it when you dess up cold-blooded mass murder of innocents as a "prescription"? "Euphemism" is too weak by far, and "meiosis" doesn't cut it either.

It's the "prescriptions" that have already killed thousands of innocent people in our country, on which they have declared war multiple times. You'll just have to pardon my "normativeness" in judging it:. I judge it to be a direct threat to me personally.

For me this has absolute priority over how "good their observations about society" may be. All their "good observations" can take their proper place in the marketplace of ideas among everybody else's; when the likes of these people walk in my door with a bomb strapped to their waist, I'm simply not interested in how keen their social commentary is, nor am I inclined to grant their ideas priority simply because they're willing to kill me.