I am about to get into a pissing contest with Eric, who can never concede a point, or tolerate any commentary about America which is not rah-rah, but here goes...
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[b]Hundreds[/b] have been harassed or injured? The last I heard the FBI was investigating 40 incidents of so-called hate crimes!
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Fortunately, the number of injuries and homicides is relatively low. However, verbal and other harassment of foreign looking people is [u][b]no longer uncommon[/b][/u]. You will need to take off your rose-colored glasses to recognize it:
* I live in Austin, Texas. We have a good friend who is from India and looks it. She is a US citizen, married to a white American, and very assimilated. Last week, she had a rock thrown at her house and found empty shotgun shells on her doorstep.
* My wife works in Student Services at UT, and attended a student forum yesterday, at which dozens of students (many of whom were US citizens) talked about the level of yelling and racial slurs that they have encountered since last week, where previously they had never felt any hostility. My wife said that the fear and stories of these "so-called people" came across as very genuine.
While these actions may seem like "restrained responses" to you, they are very unsettling to the people who receive them. They create a feeling of uncertainty and insecurity. You can never know if the person who is calling out "fuckin Arab, go home", will then cross the street and beat you to pulp.
Listen to our leaders and see if you can detect any direction from them to kill, injure or harass foreign nationals, arabs, or moslems!
What did you hear?
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To their great credit, President Bush and everyone downward have called for calm and tolerance. Their words and actions will go only so far. All of us have to do our part. Of course, it is much easier to sit here and post about the damn Muslims.
I would like to draw an analogy to defending freedom of religion for everyone. I am Catholic. I will vigorously defend the free and unhindered practice of religion for [b]everyone[/b], be they Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, Church of Christ, Branch Davidian, Moslem, Bahai, Hindu or agnostic. We have unity in strength, and by speaking up for some people today, I know that I will preserve my own freedom tomorrow. In other parts of the world, people do not do this. The result is that the Protestants can oppress the Catholics (Northern Ireland), the Catholics can oppress the Protestants (South America), the Muslims can oppress several religions (many countries), the Hindus can oppress the Muslims (India) and the atheists can oppress the religious (China).
All of you are [b]absolutely correct[/b] about the level of intolerance in other countries. And I ask you, why should we become like them??? [b][u]Why should we even compare ourselves to them?[/u][/b] In your own mind, how much harassment is too much harassment?