and?
David Buchanan wrote:
>SAM SAID:
>According to one biography I have read of Fortuyn, "He wanted to halt
>immigration from Muslim countries because he feared that Muslims would erode
>the country's tolerance of homosexuals."
>
>DMB SAYS:
>Typical right winger. Irrational, illogical and hypocritical. Think about
>it. Fortuyn's "idea" here is that intolerance is justifed to protect
>tolerance. He merely advocates one form of bigotry over another. And the
>so-called animal rights activist who killed that Dutch skinhead isn't any
>better.
>
>Sam wrote recently (in the MoQ and the Middle East thread):
>"If you see that there is a higher value than the nation, the doctrine of
>human rights, then you will accept that there are times when it is necessary
>to go against your own nation in pursuit of that higher value. It also means
>that you need to work to reconstruct your own nation so that it is geared
>around support of those rights, that it is criticised when it breaches those
>rights, but also that it is defended from other nations that may be less
>likely to respect those rights themselves."
>
>DMB says:
>Totally ageee. Rights protect intellectual values from social control. But
>we can't rightly expect to protect rights by violating rights, as Fortuyn
>apparently believed. (or as John Ashcroft seems to think.)
>
>SAM:
>So, if you accept that tolerance for homosexuality is part of a more general
>respect for human rights (as seems to be the settled will of Dutch society)
>then acting against a potential threat to that (immigration of people
>opposed to that settled will) seems reasonable, and "high quality" in MoQ
>terms - it is the defence of an intellectual level value against a social
>level value.
>
>DMB:
>If anyone violates the rights of gays they can be prosecuted under the law,
>whether they're religious or immigrants or not. But its wrong to ban whole
>classes of people because some of them MIGHT do something illegal. Again,
>its reasonable to defend rights and intellectual values from social codes,
>but NOT in such a way that contradicts those higher values. That would
>pretty much be the definition of hypocracy.
>
>SAM:
>[Of course, it doesn't have to be a ban on immigration per se that achieves
>that result. A system such as operates in the United States, where all
>immigrants must swear allegiance to the US constitution, would seem to
>accomplish the same thing.]
>
>DMB:
>Exactly. Now you're talking. We are protected by the rule of law. Fighting
>bigotry with bigotry is quite hopeless.
>
>
>
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