Sigh....

It is hard to discuss anything with you rationally, Eric.

First off, yes, I am from Texas, and the last time I checked, you don't own it and you don't speak for all of us.



You are a funny person.  I never brought up any comparisons of America to foreign countries, [u][b]you did[/b][/u].  Our conversation went something like this:
You drew this wonderful picture of America the Beautiful, a rose without any flaws.
I pointed out a small blemish (internment of Japanese Americans) in what I otherwise agreed with you was a beautiful picture.
Your response was to say:  We could have tortured, raped and murdered them, like the Japanese government did, but we only detained them in a benign way, so we are still flawless.
I pointed out that the barbaric behaviour of the Japanese government should not serve as a standard for our own behavior, and does not render us blameless.
You said that these inconvenient facts were "politically correct" history.

I actually would be fascinated to discuss history with you, since I think you clearly have an interest and knowledge in that field.  Equally clearly, you cannot tolerate anybody who does not share your views and dares to suggest otherwise.

Good luck with everything.  I hope that you are more tolerant of a diversity of opinions in your real life than you are on this board.  And a dose of skepticism, not amounting to cynicism, is a healthy thing for every citizen to have.  "My country can make no mistakes" is eventually a recipe for your country to make lots of them.

My main beef about these discussions is the inevitable spiral into virulent racist comments by some. That in itself is fine, I'm a Vietnamese that's been here for 26 years - and grateful to all the men and women responsible for that - and I've got no problem with Billy Del Joe Bob telling I'm less than human. He's got his right to an opinion. However, it's stupid. Even the Klan was smart enough to put David Duke in a suit and sent him to the legislature. If y'all are so paranoid about Feds and antis monitoring these boards, some of you gotta STFU. We as gun owners are restricted and unfairly represented enough without some of you spouting racist rhetoric. Doing that only gives the antis more ammunition(pun intended) to their cause. Be racist, be a segregationist. Blacks are savages, Jews are greedy, Asians are shifty, and Mexicans are lazy, and all of them are trying to f**k your virginal white daughters. As abhorrent as I think some of you are, as a gunowner I can't stand the fact that your dumbasses with your dumbass public comments are messing up my cause. Think about it, follow your Klan, put on a suit and STFU. Sorry this degenerated into a rant, especially when this thread is actually civilized, but some of you just don't get it. I can't put it any simpler than this: THERE'S ROOM FOR EVERYBODY. Well, only if you own an AR - you hear that Imbroglio?

Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think Eric The Hun is saying that atrocities happen in every extraordinary circumstance, but the U.S. is generally less extreme. We're not rosy, we just don't institutionalize (for the most part) dicrimination and extermination as policies.

Post from ckapsl -

You are correct about that and I apologize profusely for doubting your Texas origins, but I usually use my (parenthetical) remarks to make facetious comments, or to stress certain points I've not made in the main body, or to create a 'tone' for the whole post.

But I am from Old Texas, and I simply have never heard any Old Texans doubt the essential moral virtue the conduct of our wars, and most particularly the latest wars, with any sort of a [b]moral equivalency[/b] attitude, such as I thought you exhibited in your posts. IMHO, of course.

Maybe I should get me a new set of Old Texans to listen to, but the ones I talked to growing up, including my father, told hideous stories of barbaric atrocities committed by Hun and Jap alike.  

To compare the 'atrocities' of what happened to the Japanese Americans, with the attrocities which occurred contemporaneously elsewhere in the world is, again IMHO, the most eggregious of all possible moral equivalencies, and post-war revisionism!

Yes, but to continue your metephor, when we are speaking of horrible disfigurements, even [u]mentioning[/u] that there is a blemish is to either unjustly reduce the disfigurements to the significance of a mere blemish (we simply must forgive the Germans/Japanese), or to unjustly raise the mere blemish to the significance of the horrible disfigurements (we are [u]just[/u] as guilty as the Germans/Japanese).

Nonsense, I simply think that whatever injustice the Americans may have committed in their conduct of the war, either abroad or at home, pales into sheer insignificance when viewed against the horrors that marked WWII.

That this 'sheer insignificance' of America's wrongs would be brought up as an opposing point strikes me as simple anti-Americanism, and a relic of the mentality that pervades our nation's campuses.

Surely. But I think 'cynicism' is precisely what motivates the 'America had its problems too' crowd.

Certainly is, but a 'My country makes the same mistakes as others, and to the same degree' is yet another bad recipe!

With which of these quotes do you most identify:

OR


Eric The(Jes'Checking)Hun[>]:)]

Post from budda -

You are indeed the Enlightened One, Gautama Siddhartha![>]:)]

Good Lord!  Have you heard of shades of gray, Eric?  [b][u]You brought up the foreign atrocities, not me![/u][/b]  No one can have intelligent discussions with you if you place every human action in the context of the holocaust, or accuse other people of not differentiating between degrees of atrocity.

Example of your black and white thinking:
Countries like Japan horribly suppress gun ownership.  It is, for all intents and purposes, unlawful to own any gun.
New York City, by comparison, has no flaws!  You can own almost any gun you want, and getting a handgun license to keep a handgun in  your own home takes only a year!  New York City's constitutional infringements are insignificant.  Your criticism of New York City is un-American and a relic of the mentality that pervades our nation's campuses.

Feel free to have the last word, as you probably often do.

ckap (The guy who equates a slap on the cheek with mass murder) sl

Post by ckapsl -

I'm sorry that I cannot accommodate you, but I think that I am correct in holding that the whole Manzanar and other Japanese-American Detention Camps issue is not simply a matter of difference in 'degrees of atrocity.'

I simply do not consider the Japanese-American detentions, as authorized by FDR and Congress assembled in the War Relocation Act of April, 1942, as an 'atrocity.'

It's just that simple. If you want to get closer to my definition of an 'atrocity' I think you should shift focus to Dresden or to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those areas have a more likely promise of true 'atrocities' when compared to [b]internment[/b], which was a regrettable, but, unfortunately or not, lawful exercise of its sovereignty, by a country at war in a desperate time, under extreme circumstances. BTW I don't think that Dresden, etc., were 'atrocities' either. No surprise.

That we, fifty years and a whole lotta rethinking later, would have chosen a less egregious manner in handling the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans, does not cast what our leaders did then, as an atrocity.

Were there good military reasons for our acts?
Yes, in the event of an actual invasion of the West Coast, the Imperial Japanese Army would have been derelect in its duties NOT to have its soldiers infiltrate American defensive lines masquerading as civilian refugees.

Remember the confusion the German soldiers dressed as American 'werewolves' caused behind the lines at the Battle of the Bulge?

Well, you can just imagine the utter confusion among fleeing West Coast civilians when told that invading Japanese soldiers or spies 'may' be disguised as ordinary Japanese American civilians! That's when some real atrocities, such as you fear, may have occurred!

Eric The(Now[u]That's[/u]Realism,NotCynicism)Hun[>]:)]

On a desert island in the middle of the ocean, the following groups of beautiful people are stranded:

2 Italian men and 1 Italian woman
2 French men and 1 French woman
2 German men and 1 German woman
2 Greek men and 1 Greek woman
2 English men and 1 English woman
2 Bulgarian men and 1 Bulgarian woman
2 Japanese men and 1 Japanese woman
2 American men and 1 American woman
2 Australian men and 1 Australian woman
2 New Zealand men 1 New Zealand woman
2 Irish men and 1 Irish woman

One month later on these absolutely stunning deserted islands in the middle of nowhere, the following things have occurred:

One Italian man killed the other Italian man for the Italian woman.

The two French men and the French woman are living happily together having loads of sex.

The German woman has a strict weekly schedule when she alternates with the two German men.

The two Greek men are sleeping with each other and the Greek woman is cleaning and cooking for them.

The two English men are waiting for someone to introduce them to the English woman.

The Bulgarian men took a long look at the endless ocean and one look at the Bulgarian woman and they started swimming.

The two American men are contemplating the virtues of suicide, while the American woman keeps on bitching about the necessity of 'fulfillment, the equal division of household chores, how her last 'boyfriend treated her much nicer and how her relationship with her mother is improving. But at least the taxes are low and it is not raining.

The two Japanese men have faxed Tokyo and are waiting for instructions.

The two Australian men beat each other senseless for the Australian woman, who is checking out all the men on the other islands, after calling them "bloody wankers".

One New Zealand man is having sex with the New Zealand woman, the other Kiwi is searching the island for sheep.

The Irish began by dividing the island into North and South to make them feel more at home, and by setting up a distillery. They do not remember if sex is in the picture because it gets sort of foggy after the first few litres of coconut whiskey, but they are satisfied that at least "those English bastards" are not getting any."

Hey, lighten up. Everybody, regardless of race, should just open some beers and get together for a day of shooting defenseless paper targets.[<]:)]

At least part of the problem in Africa is lingering tribalism, combined with a resentment of the European colonialism that led to natives being disenfranchised.  I have to admit though, that I am not cogniscant enough of the details of the situations in the various countries there to talk about it at length.