The Enlightenment was largely driven by values endorsed and reinforced by Christianity. Simply put, the West would not have evolved beyond tribalism and territorial wars were it not for the influence of Christianity.
Christianity as a religion has never been a threat to civilization. At worst, the ambitions of nations attempt to bolster support for a territorial acquisition by espousing an evangelical cause - but no religion, or even philosophy, is exempt from this as evidenced by the Taoist influences that are strong throughout East Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Further, it is logically impossible for Islam to reform. The very premise of Islam is that all of Judaism and Christianity's key figures were Muslims and that it was through the distortion of scholars and clerics that Jews and Christians came to be. Islam is the 'final word' - the revelation of wisdom that has existed in heaven with god/allah for all eternity. The Qu'ran is allah's final say in what laws humans are to follow and how people are to go about their lives.
Completely false. Thirty Years' War? Eighty Years' War? French Wars? The Crusades(Albeit being against Islam)? Those are times when we should have realized religion is for the weak. They need something to follow to keep them in line and thinking the same way. Anyone who doesn't think the same is seen as a radical. Their unanimous leader being the Pope receiving his 'powers' from 'God'. The Pope's (half)miracles being broken down to simply trickery.
Black slaves were not uncivilized, at all. In fact, entering into the 1950s, Blacks had the lowest out-of-wedlock birth rates, the highest marriage rates, and some of the most stable and religious of families.
How long after slavery is the 1950s? Read my timeline again.
Then the "civil rights act" hit as a result of Blacks moving into the northern "free" states and under-bidding White unions. This is where "prevailing wage" laws came from. Black laborers would come into town from the Southern states and bid 30% less than what a White union worker would - the Blacks would get the job. "Free" states didn't like this idea, and soon started lobbying to try and force Blacks out of the market and 'back where they came from.'
This is also where a lot of construction permit concepts come from. By having the government adopt a set of codes that only your unions know and have agreed upon, you can keep rival unions from being able to obtain licenses in your domains.
You'll hear a lot of fuss over Jim Crow and other such issues - but these were a very minor thing compared to what was the real driving factor behind racism in the 60s. Simply put - "Equality" and "Freedom" are very nice slogans to club someone else over the head with, but a real ***** when it means you have to deal with your trade's market value deflating.
Then, when the Federal government got into play - things got all kinds of crazy. State and Federal policies essentially set up "black" and "white" districts that were in effect into the 70s and even 80s at the federal level (yes, the same institution that was supposed to be the hero in the civil rights movement). This compounded upon targeted benefit programs that made it more cost-effective to be a single mother than to be a married couple.
The remarkably strong Black Family core was destroyed by these policies and led to a feedback system of decay. Because these programs were so heavily geared toward 'benefiting' blacks and they had also been more or less relegated to 'black' districts within many densely populated areas - maintenance in these areas declined as did property values and quality of life.
This meant that values of inheritance declined for families that remained composed and that it became more difficult to establish an enduring 'legacy' for black families to assist in education and the like.
To the people who voted for these policies - these amount to unintended consequences from the best of intentions. Many of them look at the state of blacks, these days, and say: "Oh wow, good thing we have these policies in place or these people wouldn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of."
Because, you know, blacks are somehow lesser of a human species than the rest of us are. They can't survive without someone else paying their way.... (yes, I'm deliberately extrapolating from that perspective the racist logic inherent to liberals).
As for the people who championed these policies before the people to vote upon - they wrote essays in college or, in some cases, wrote books describing why these policies were necessary as forms of controlling various undesirable population segments. They described how these policies would effectively destroy these population groups and make them subservient.
A similar situation would be like slavery. A once barbaric and uncivilized group becomes civilized and enslaves a group of uncivilized people. The civilized free their slaves and expect the uncivilized former-slaves to simply assimilate to their civilization, whilst segregating them from that very civilization. The segregation soon stops and the civilized realize to atone for their past mistakes, they will now throw money at the very newly civilized former-slaves and expect them to assimilate faster and better to their civilized culture.
The first civilized group now claims that since they were able to become civilized, why can't these civilized former-slaves be equally civilized? Why can't they be more like them?
All you did was outline my timeline with more facts. Thanks.
What frustrates me most about 'my fellow conservatives' is that they often times fail to understand that the Democratic party figures are not stupid - they know exactly what they are doing... that's just how evil they are. Conservatives, contrary to what is being taught in school these days, are actually very trusting and caring people. They like to believe that there is goodness in every human being and are more inclined to grant people the benefit of the doubt - to assume something was in error or a mistake.
Which conservatives? You mean the ones that saw someone with a different skin color than them and instantly assumed they were lesser beings? How about the ones that saw people from Ireland and assumed because they talked differently they were a different and lesser species?
How does this same argument not hold true for you though? Any time a conservative politician makes a bone headed mistake, they are given a chance by conservatives. Anytime a liberal makes an equally boneheaded mistake, they are seen as the anti-christ and the, "
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" are coming. If you think the end of times are coming in your life-time you should not be allowed to vote or run for political office. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Islam had invaded sections of Eastern Europe for centuries, was destroying churches and converting them to Mosques, and was executing both Jews and Christians who attempted to travel through conquered lands to visit Jerusalem.
The primary goal of the Crusades was to open up a path for travel to Jerusalem and to provide a hedge against further invasions. Those who went on the Crusades gave up life, wealth, and property, in many cases.
Those are times when we should have realized religion is for the weak. They need something to follow to keep them in line and thinking the same way. Anyone who doesn't think the same is seen as a radical.
The Pope is a hold-over from the Roman state authority. There is a reason why, following the invention of the printing press and the spread of common literacy, the Protestant Reformation swept through Europe.
How long after slavery is the 1950s? Read my timeline again.
Roughly two reproductive generations. IE - many slaves' children were the ones who were doing just fine and sporting stronger core families than their white counterparts who had been here for generations.
All you did was outline my timeline with more facts. Thanks.
Which conservatives? You mean the ones that saw someone with a different skin color than them and instantly assumed they were lesser beings? How about the ones that saw people from Ireland and assumed because they talked differently they were a different and lesser species?
There is often a disconnect between how liberals interpret a statement and how conservatives interpret a statement. This gets down to the concept of the Constrained versus Unconstrained view of humanity. Those who hold the unconstrained view (liberals) see the individual as being at the extent of their existence - they are who they were born to be and can't change this or alter their place in life. While liberals are often the first to shout to children that they can be anything - it is very rare for those afflicted with liberalism to apply this to their thinking.
If, therefor, a conservative gives and evaluation of a new culture as being uncivil and/or otherwise substantially critical - the liberal interprets this to be an evaluation of the extent and place of this culture. IE - I say that the Chinese are making cheap knock-offs of products and have poor industrial control standards, and a liberal assumes that I believe the Chinese are incompetent and incapable of innovation and therefor a racist.
Some of our founders were quite critical of the German migrants - or the Irish (who were first introduced to America as slaves long before the blacks), but argued strongly to preserve strict interpretations of the law and its authorities. Germans were entitled to the same legal rights and protections as those who had been here for generations. The law wasn't something to interpret in the cause of personal moral virtue.
In short - Conservatives are more apt to follow and enforce laws they may not particularly like at the time - including ones that conflict with whatever opinions they may have of an individual or corresponding demographic.
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"No doubt, such accusations stick to conservatives more than to liberals. It was then-Sen. Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat, after all, who described presidential candidate Obama as "the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." If a conservative politician had offered such an opinion, his or her career might have ended; Biden was rewarded with a spot on Obama's ticket. Liberal missteps on race and ethnicity are explained away, forgiven and often forgotten; conservative ones are cast as part of a sinister, decades-long story of intolerance and political calculation, in which conservative ideology and strategy are conflated with bigotry. "
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"Voegeli goes on to discuss, not how wrong this hugely mistaken and antagonistic view of conservatism is, but why liberalism fails; why government “kindness” is never enough to achieve its ends; why it is self-defeating.
He finds the root cause of its failure in a contradiction: that while the politician of kindness claims to be altruistic, his real motivation is self-gratification.
He recalls the words of a man who was a chief inspirer of the French Revolution:
As Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in Emile, “When the strength of an expansive soul makes me identify myself with my fellow, and I feel that I am, so to speak, in him, it is in order not to suffer that I do not want him to suffer. I am interested in him for love of myself.” …
We can see the problem. The whole point of compassion is for empathizers to feel better when awareness of another’s suffering provokes unease. But this ultimate purpose does not guarantee that empathizees will fare better. Barbara Oakley, co-editor of the volume Pathological Altruism, defines its subject as “altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm.” Surprises and accidents happen, of course. The pathology of pathological altruism is not the failure to salve every wound. It is, rather, the indifference — blithe, heedless, smug, or solipsistic — to the fact and consequences of those failures, just as long as the empathizer is accruing compassion points that he and others will admire. As philosophy professor David Schmidtz has said, “If you’re trying to prove your heart is in the right place, it isn’t.” "
In short - conservatism is rooted in what is demonstrated to produce outcomes; liberalism is about foisting self-righteous musings in the form of policies and insisting that failure results from a lack of virtue/sincerity.
At the end of the day - Conservatives care about a system that can produce viable results for the people within it. Liberals are just concerned about a system that simply claims good things must happen.
Which is why liberalism is correctly identified as a mental disorder.
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"In 2005, Michael Savage famously wrote a book titled, Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, the subject of which is self-explanatory. And more recently, Dr. Lyle Rossiter, a board-certified clinical psychologist, wrote a book in which he diagnosed the ideology of the left as a tangible mental illness. Perhaps though, liberalism is not so much a novel mental disorder, but a more cleverly disguised form of illness already widely studied since the late ‘60s – narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
The Mayo Clinic defines NPD as “a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration.” This seems in tune with the fact that liberals, along with their degenerate offspring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, believe their policies and platforms fall in the majority - or the 99% if you will - despite being outnumbered by conservatives at a 2-1 clip. "
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"For more than 35 years he has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago.
Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by both Barack Obama and his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton can only be understood as a psychological disorder.
...
Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:
creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
“The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind,” he says. “When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious.” "
Of course, the condition affects simple reasoning ability.
You just interpreted that to mean that Conservatives believe you are incurably defective - an invalid who is undeserving of a place as a human being.
But, like I said - conservatives don't typically see the world that way. You are capable of healing - of overcoming obstacles in your way and of adapting to the situations life hands you. Evaluating you is not the same as condemning you.
How does this same argument not hold true for you though? Any time a conservative politician makes a bone headed mistake, they are given a chance by conservatives. Anytime a liberal makes an equally boneheaded mistake, they are seen as the anti-christ and the, "
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" are coming. If you think the end of times are coming in your life-time you should not be allowed to vote or run for political office. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"18). Gabrielle Giffords Shooting: From the moment that the crime against Representative Gabrielle Giffords became national news, members of the media began to blame her attack on the “violent rhetoric” of conservatives in general and the Tea Party movement in particular. A “climate of violence” perpetrated by the right was at fault, said the media. This line of attack on the right was unleashed by the media before the name of the attacker was even known. It later turned out that shooter Jared Lee Loughner had no discernible political beliefs at all and, in fact, had been targeting Giffords before the Tea Party movement was even started.
30). Herman Cain: We’ve all just gone through the end of Herman Cain’s bid for the GOP nomination for the Republican Party. And while Herman came up against a lot of media bias — Cain was often called an Uncle Tom, for one — the biggest example of anti-conservative bias in his campaign was the story of his alleged (and still unproven) infidelities. Just compare the favorable media treatment that Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and other Democrats got for their bimbo eruptions to how the media covered Cain. Clinton, Edwards, even JFK and his brother’s infidelities were either entirely ignored or their stories were avoided for many long months before the media finally deigned to cover it all. Yet Cain’s accusations ht the news immediately. Cain was not given the benefit of the doubt that Democrats almost always get from the media.
33). George Soros/The Koch Brothers: A recent Fox News story asked the trenchant question, “Why Don’t We Hear About Soros’ Ties to Over 30 Major News Organizations?” It is a good question. While the media constantly slams conservative/libertarian donors David and Charles Koch, George Soros is consistently ignored by that same media seemingly so interested in exposing the influence of big money in politics.
34). Dan Quayle Vs. Joe Biden: In the early 1990s the media targeted Vice President Dan Quayle for total destruction. His silly little missteps were ginned up into examples of his utter stupidity and incompetence, one in particular. When Quayle misspelled potato (he added an “e” at the end) at a school visit the media went into a feeding frenzy of attacks on the veep. These attacks destroyed any further political efforts attempted by Quayle. On the other hand, Vice President Joe Biden has exhibited a similar penchant for stupid missteps — many arguably worse than Quayle’s — yet the Old Media slaps Biden on the back with an endearing refrain that “that’s just Joe.” Biden is given a pass and has not been driven from the public sphere portrayed by the Old Media as a clown. "
You'll find that Soros funded the riots in Ferguson and Balt-no-more.
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Yes, the rioters were paid.
You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet; can't throw a revolution with silk gloves; virtue without tyranny is impotent - you get the picture.
This is a failure to understand how the economy works.
Oil from these fields is produced by a company. This company pays ISIS not to kill its workers. Or, ISIS does kill their workers and sets up its own market. Either way is the same. The oil is not actually bought directly by any nation at this point. Another company - usually a regional distributor, purchases the oil before delivering it to a global distributor - such as BP, Exxon, etc. There may be multiple intermediaries in the mix, and it can be difficult to track just how much oil in a tanker truck or ship came from where.
Why is it impossible to say these regional distributor have affiliation with the United States? Do you want to explain to me how the US, the biggest consumer of oil, is now capable of producing nearly as much as Saudi Arabia?
Yes. The sooner we can get that minor complication over with, the sooner I can get down to my true purpose for being here.
Isis doesn't support the Saudis; they hate the Saudi royal family, like Osama Bin Laden did. They want to overthrow them. The Saudis don't support Isis either.
A man paid by the Saudi Royal Family who originally supported the Sunni militants in Syria before it became painfully obvious that the motives of those rebels would have them toppling the Saudis, as well.
Not quite. They assumed the Syrian militants were freedom fighters and financed and armed them to overthrow Assad. The Syrian free fighters were supported by the United States, Europe, and Arab Gulf States. Obviously they never expected a group like Isis to come out of nowhere and preach a Caliphate.
And what did you exactly mean by ''paid by the Saudi Royal Family''? Sounds more like you're deeming as somewhat hypocrite...
Read the article carefully before you copy and paste it.
''While only 5 percent of Saudis support IS, an even smaller percentage of Kuwaitis and Emiratis uphold the views of the organisation which has declared an Islamic caliphate after seizing swathes of Iraq and Syria.''
There is a vast difference between IS and Muslim Brotherhood. Former is preaching an illegal Caliphate (under Islamic rules) through use of violence and latter is preaching a constitutional Islam using the Quran and Sunnah.
My point was above Muslims condemning Isis. Only 5% of Saudi population condemn it and even smaller percentage of Kuwait and Emirate.
Part of the problem with polling countries like Saudi Arabia is that they have roughly 18 million citizens and 8 million foreign workers with 51% of the population being under the age of 25.
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Saudi Arabia is a troubled nation that is trying to balance Islamic fundamentalism against the draw of Western wealth and economics. We know it. The Saudis know it. The people in Saudi Arabia know it.
Not quite. Saudi has roughly anywhere from 25-30 million population, with 90% being citizens and 10% being foreign. And what's exactly those links for? An Iranian propaganda trying to blame Saudi for the mosque bombing?
And, yes, I will tell you what your religion believes. Or, rather, all I have to do is point to the sections in the Qu'ran that tell us what a Muslim is supposed to do and the sections of the Qu'ran that explain why the Qu'ran was 'revealed' - to make it clear how the deity that created the universe would have people live. If you have a problem with that, might I suggest you consider that you find a different religion that supports your values?
But, you see, I don't have to listen to what you tell me. You are not Muslim, and you are not Arabic. You have not learned Islam like I have. So I don't quite need you to tell me what my religion believes.
Islam is not a religion for spiritual enlightenment. It was preached by a warlord possibly under the advisement of the devil. It is built upon the raw expression of the power to subjugate. Those who have the power to bend and break others to their will are those who are most factually able to argue that they are following Islam. Islam does not provide for 'denominations' or for 'factions' - it argues against these interpretations and commands adherence to a single outlook.
Again with this faulty information? Islam was preached like Judaism and Christianity were: People believed in the message and others disbelieved and fought against it.
Would be an irrelevant penalty either way. Anyone can leave Islam quietly without anyone knowing about it. Or they can leave it by worshipping other Gods or not performing the daily prayers. A Muslim is not someone who claims he/she is one; it's a one who practices it correctly. So this statistic is very invalid.
You are the one who is upset that your religion is not what you want it to be.
By the end of summer, bombings in Saudi Arabia will be quite common, and calls to join the Islamic State will be common. That is just how Islam has always been.
Great prediction skills you have there. For a faulty one.
You may not like that. That may not be the type of religion you wish to be a part of - but you are part of a religion with a book that clearly commands that you subjugate others. You are part of a religion where it is ordained for you to kill and where you are condemned for not 'riding with the prophet.' You are part of a religion where the commands that extend directly from god's wisdom expressly state to kill those who have turned from your religion.
Jews do not have specific location they settled through history accordingly to their linage like mentioned others, and nowadays they are defined with religion rather than their race, Judaism came out during Bronze age though. Still, Jericho predates few thousands years to Bronze age and it is still a town, not technically in Israel but that place is a legimate historical survivor.
Persians would count though, the civilization can be traced back to around 3000 BC.
Roughly two reproductive generations. IE - many slaves' children were the ones who were doing just fine and sporting stronger core families than their white counterparts who had been here for generations.
So social injustice was simply over then? Black men were equal to white men in every single way?
No source?
There is often a disconnect between how liberals interpret a statement and how conservatives interpret a statement. This gets down to the concept of the Constrained versus Unconstrained view of humanity. Those who hold the unconstrained view (liberals) see the individual as being at the extent of their existence - they are who they were born to be and can't change this or alter their place in life. While liberals are often the first to shout to children that they can be anything - it is very rare for those afflicted with liberalism to apply this to their thinking.
If, therefor, a conservative gives and evaluation of a new culture as being uncivil and/or otherwise substantially critical - the liberal interprets this to be an evaluation of the extent and place of this culture. IE - I say that the Chinese are making cheap knock-offs of products and have poor industrial control standards, and a liberal assumes that I believe the Chinese are incompetent and incapable of innovation and therefor a racist.
Some of our founders were quite critical of the German migrants - or the Irish (who were first introduced to America as slaves long before the blacks), but argued strongly to preserve strict interpretations of the law and its authorities. Germans were entitled to the same legal rights and protections as those who had been here for generations. The law wasn't something to interpret in the cause of personal moral virtue.
In short - Conservatives are more apt to follow and enforce laws they may not particularly like at the time - including ones that conflict with whatever opinions they may have of an individual or corresponding demographic.
You must be registered for see links
"No doubt, such accusations stick to conservatives more than to liberals. It was then-Sen. Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat, after all, who described presidential candidate Obama as "the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." If a conservative politician had offered such an opinion, his or her career might have ended; Biden was rewarded with a spot on Obama's ticket. Liberal missteps on race and ethnicity are explained away, forgiven and often forgotten; conservative ones are cast as part of a sinister, decades-long story of intolerance and political calculation, in which conservative ideology and strategy are conflated with bigotry. "
You must be registered for see links
"Voegeli goes on to discuss, not how wrong this hugely mistaken and antagonistic view of conservatism is, but why liberalism fails; why government “kindness” is never enough to achieve its ends; why it is self-defeating.
He finds the root cause of its failure in a contradiction: that while the politician of kindness claims to be altruistic, his real motivation is self-gratification.
He recalls the words of a man who was a chief inspirer of the French Revolution:
As Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in Emile, “When the strength of an expansive soul makes me identify myself with my fellow, and I feel that I am, so to speak, in him, it is in order not to suffer that I do not want him to suffer. I am interested in him for love of myself.” …
We can see the problem. The whole point of compassion is for empathizers to feel better when awareness of another’s suffering provokes unease. But this ultimate purpose does not guarantee that empathizees will fare better. Barbara Oakley, co-editor of the volume Pathological Altruism, defines its subject as “altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm.” Surprises and accidents happen, of course. The pathology of pathological altruism is not the failure to salve every wound. It is, rather, the indifference — blithe, heedless, smug, or solipsistic — to the fact and consequences of those failures, just as long as the empathizer is accruing compassion points that he and others will admire. As philosophy professor David Schmidtz has said, “If you’re trying to prove your heart is in the right place, it isn’t.” "
In short - conservatism is rooted in what is demonstrated to produce outcomes; liberalism is about foisting self-righteous musings in the form of policies and insisting that failure results from a lack of virtue/sincerity.
At the end of the day - Conservatives care about a system that can produce viable results for the people within it. Liberals are just concerned about a system that simply claims good things must happen.
Which is why liberalism is correctly identified as a mental disorder.
You must be registered for see links
"In 2005, Michael Savage famously wrote a book titled, Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, the subject of which is self-explanatory. And more recently, Dr. Lyle Rossiter, a board-certified clinical psychologist, wrote a book in which he diagnosed the ideology of the left as a tangible mental illness. Perhaps though, liberalism is not so much a novel mental disorder, but a more cleverly disguised form of illness already widely studied since the late ‘60s – narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
The Mayo Clinic defines NPD as “a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration.” This seems in tune with the fact that liberals, along with their degenerate offspring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, believe their policies and platforms fall in the majority - or the 99% if you will - despite being outnumbered by conservatives at a 2-1 clip. "
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"For more than 35 years he has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago.
Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by both Barack Obama and his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton can only be understood as a psychological disorder.
...
Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:
creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;
satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;
augmenting primitive feelings of envy;
rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.
“The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind,” he says. “When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious.” "
Of course, the condition affects simple reasoning ability.
You just interpreted that to mean that Conservatives believe you are incurably defective - an invalid who is undeserving of a place as a human being.
But, like I said - conservatives don't typically see the world that way. You are capable of healing - of overcoming obstacles in your way and of adapting to the situations life hands you. Evaluating you is not the same as condemning you.
No source for logic? What...? I really don't understand why you went off on this tangent.
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"18). Gabrielle Giffords Shooting: From the moment that the crime against Representative Gabrielle Giffords became national news, members of the media began to blame her attack on the “violent rhetoric” of conservatives in general and the Tea Party movement in particular. A “climate of violence” perpetrated by the right was at fault, said the media. This line of attack on the right was unleashed by the media before the name of the attacker was even known. It later turned out that shooter Jared Lee Loughner had no discernible political beliefs at all and, in fact, had been targeting Giffords before the Tea Party movement was even started.
30). Herman Cain: We’ve all just gone through the end of Herman Cain’s bid for the GOP nomination for the Republican Party. And while Herman came up against a lot of media bias — Cain was often called an Uncle Tom, for one — the biggest example of anti-conservative bias in his campaign was the story of his alleged (and still unproven) infidelities. Just compare the favorable media treatment that Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and other Democrats got for their bimbo eruptions to how the media covered Cain. Clinton, Edwards, even JFK and his brother’s infidelities were either entirely ignored or their stories were avoided for many long months before the media finally deigned to cover it all. Yet Cain’s accusations ht the news immediately. Cain was not given the benefit of the doubt that Democrats almost always get from the media.
33). George Soros/The Koch Brothers: A recent Fox News story asked the trenchant question, “Why Don’t We Hear About Soros’ Ties to Over 30 Major News Organizations?” It is a good question. While the media constantly slams conservative/libertarian donors David and Charles Koch, George Soros is consistently ignored by that same media seemingly so interested in exposing the influence of big money in politics.
34). Dan Quayle Vs. Joe Biden: In the early 1990s the media targeted Vice President Dan Quayle for total destruction. His silly little missteps were ginned up into examples of his utter stupidity and incompetence, one in particular. When Quayle misspelled potato (he added an “e” at the end) at a school visit the media went into a feeding frenzy of attacks on the veep. These attacks destroyed any further political efforts attempted by Quayle. On the other hand, Vice President Joe Biden has exhibited a similar penchant for stupid missteps — many arguably worse than Quayle’s — yet the Old Media slaps Biden on the back with an endearing refrain that “that’s just Joe.” Biden is given a pass and has not been driven from the public sphere portrayed by the Old Media as a clown. "
You'll find that Soros funded the riots in Ferguson and Balt-no-more.
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Yes, the rioters were paid.
You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet; can't throw a revolution with silk gloves; virtue without tyranny is impotent - you get the picture.
I never said conservatives are never blamed and banished from the political spectrum. I said it happens towards liberals more often than not, and for idiotic reasons too.
There were a few instances where there was not truly equal protection under the law.
Beyond that, it is not the concern of the government. Different ethnic and social groups have been the subject of popular discussions since humans first began organizing into tribes.
The other crucial error is the belief that every man is equal to every other man in every single way. Each individual is unique, a concept progressives are oddly apt to forget. While the law must treat every individual as if he/she is of equal importance to society, it is not responsible for, nor is it capable of, producing an equal outcome.
There was a time when Germans were looked down upon in this nation. Now, 'we' are nearly an invisible backdrop. The ethnic identities of French, British, German, Irish, Finnish, Serbian - all of them are "white" in America. In many ways, some of the older Asian families in America are "white," as well.
These are all groups who were once as distinct as blacks. A Serb can pick a Bosnian out of a crowd without so much as a word shared between the two. There was a time when the various ethnic heritages that comprise "white" were just as distinguished and even persecuted as any free black man was.
There were even times when the law was not fully on their side.
No source for logic? What...? I really don't understand why you went off on this tangent.
"Although the Wild Beast is an Irish-American, he is being held captive in Britain, as indicated by the figure of the policeman. The central action involves a girl held aloft to present the beast with a "Concession to Violence." she represents the "Irish Land Bill," a reform measure designed to defuse social tensions in Ireland. The nursemaid holding her aloft turns out to be Prime Minister William Gladstone, the chief supporter of the bill.
Gladstone's appeasement of violence, the cartoon suggests, will only intensify Irish extremism. two figures in the image embody the loyal and moderate Irish - the woman in the background who addresses the beast in a typically Irish idiom ("Bad luck to ye! You murderin' thief") and the man to her left, brandishing a shillelagh. But Gladstone, his face set in stolid determination, is oblivious to his surroundings. And the policeman is so self-enamored that he has closed his eyes. British officialdom remains blissfully unaware of the consequences of making concessions to violence. Meanwhile, the Irishman to the right adds a sinister dimension to the proceedings. "
And has absolutely nothing to do with American conservatives or the Republican Party.
"Beyond this Irish nationalist context, the Wild Beast image also needs to be interpreted with reference to the larger history of racism in American history. The form of prejudice on display here flourished from about 1845 to 1880, the period when Irish global migration reached its peak and Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species (1859). Ff gorillas were to be man's closest relatives, then some breeds of men - especially the Irish - might at least be closer to the apes than others.
Crude versions of Darwinism offered a ready-made explanation for Irish violence in the United States. The New York City draft riots of 1863, the Molly Maguire case in Pennsylvania in the 1870s, and the exploits of Irish nationalists who, like the Wild Beast were prepared to use physical force to liberate Ireland from British rule - these events and many others called forth an explanation of Irish immigrants' depravity that cast them as inherently violent, savage by nature. ... "
I'm not exactly sure where you got the links to these pictures from - but these are the web pages that host the image. Both the one above, and this one.
" To my great surprise, I found out that it was the Southern Democrats who fought to keepblacks in slavery. As Francis Rice has said, “They were the ones who passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. They started the Ku Klux Klan (the terrorist wing of the Democrat party) to lynch and terrorize blacks.” They fought against the passage of every single civil rights law from the 1800’s through the 1960’s.
...
...I even observed, within the platforms, the exact time period when the Democrats jumped on the civil rights bandwagon, something the Republicans had been pushing for over 100 years. Beginning in the 1950’s, the Democrats proposed to throw tons of government money into poor inner-city communities and offer other government “helps.” By the 1960’s they offered to provide welfare to young mothers and their children, requiring no work, as long as the father was not in the home.
The civil rights agenda met harsh resistance from most Democrats and the party struggled on whether or not they should include civil rights as part of their platform goals. They eventually agreed to do so, but with all of the wrong motivation. Blacks were gaining number and political power (able to provide a candidate with enough votes to win the presidency), and the civil rights agenda was not going away but instead gaining popularity; Democrats had to give blacks something. Not that they wanted blacks to be equal, but they wanted to give them enough to get them to voting Democrat so that Democrats could stay in power. When Republicans were unwilling to be frivolous with taxpayer dollars by robbing one group of people to pay for a host of government funded programs, Democrats were dishonest and said to blacks, “Republicans don’t want to help you. They don’t want to help poor people.” Republicans proposed other ideas to help combat poverty; most involved hard work, education, business ownership, and minimal aid from the government. Those ideas were overshadowed by the powerful attraction that free money had over people that were struggling to make ends meet. Despite the pleading of the Republican Party, which at the time still held the black vote, poor blacks took the bait. They were above all glad that Democrats were no longer interested in terrorizing and lynching them, and almost equally as ecstatic that they would be getting “help” from the government. "
The image you selected would even seem to argue against your earlier assertions - the website that you pulled this picture from (albeit, possibly through a hotlink used by another site or image search service) also argues what is essentially the same thing I have.
I'd like to think you are not this negligent in your thinking and that there has been some kind of misunderstanding or that you are just jerking my chain.
I never said conservatives are never blamed and banished from the political spectrum. I said it happens towards liberals more often than not, and for idiotic reasons too.
There were a few instances where there was not truly equal protection under the law.
Beyond that, it is not the concern of the government. Different ethnic and social groups have been the subject of popular discussions since humans first began organizing into tribes.
The other crucial error is the belief that every man is equal to every other man in every single way. Each individual is unique, a concept progressives are oddly apt to forget. While the law must treat every individual as if he/she is of equal importance to society, it is not responsible for, nor is it capable of, producing an equal outcome.
There was a time when Germans were looked down upon in this nation. Now, 'we' are nearly an invisible backdrop. The ethnic identities of French, British, German, Irish, Finnish, Serbian - all of them are "white" in America. In many ways, some of the older Asian families in America are "white," as well.
These are all groups who were once as distinct as blacks. A Serb can pick a Bosnian out of a crowd without so much as a word shared between the two. There was a time when the various ethnic heritages that comprise "white" were just as distinguished and even persecuted as any free black man was.
There were even times when the law was not fully on their side.
It's ridiculous how 'besides-the-point' your arguments are. This is entirely about the government, so how is it not a concern of the government. It's the people's fault if the government doesn't allow blacks to vote? The government has no fault in blacks being segregated from society almost entirely? Come on man...
You didn't present logic.
Also, what I stated wasn't a tangent. It was a direct address to your mocking of the idea that conservatives are caring and compassionate people.
I'm not surprised you failed to understand this, since you don't even understand the images you post below.
How didn't I present logic. I presented you with facts. Things that actually happened. What are you even saying.
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This is a British cartoon.
"Although the Wild Beast is an Irish-American, he is being held captive in Britain, as indicated by the figure of the policeman. The central action involves a girl held aloft to present the beast with a "Concession to Violence." she represents the "Irish Land Bill," a reform measure designed to defuse social tensions in Ireland. The nursemaid holding her aloft turns out to be Prime Minister William Gladstone, the chief supporter of the bill.
Gladstone's appeasement of violence, the cartoon suggests, will only intensify Irish extremism. two figures in the image embody the loyal and moderate Irish - the woman in the background who addresses the beast in a typically Irish idiom ("Bad luck to ye! You murderin' thief") and the man to her left, brandishing a shillelagh. But Gladstone, his face set in stolid determination, is oblivious to his surroundings. And the policeman is so self-enamored that he has closed his eyes. British officialdom remains blissfully unaware of the consequences of making concessions to violence. Meanwhile, the Irishman to the right adds a sinister dimension to the proceedings. "
And has absolutely nothing to do with American conservatives or the Republican Party.
"Beyond this Irish nationalist context, the Wild Beast image also needs to be interpreted with reference to the larger history of racism in American history. The form of prejudice on display here flourished from about 1845 to 1880, the period when Irish global migration reached its peak and Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species (1859). Ff gorillas were to be man's closest relatives, then some breeds of men - especially the Irish - might at least be closer to the apes than others.
Crude versions of Darwinism offered a ready-made explanation for Irish violence in the United States. The New York City draft riots of 1863, the Molly Maguire case in Pennsylvania in the 1870s, and the exploits of Irish nationalists who, like the Wild Beast were prepared to use physical force to liberate Ireland from British rule - these events and many others called forth an explanation of Irish immigrants' depravity that cast them as inherently violent, savage by nature. ... "
I didn't say anything about the Republican party. I said conservatives. Which means you will need to translate it to democrats in those slave/post-slave times. Back then the democrats were conservative and the republicans were liberal. Don't argue semantics as I'm certain you knew what I was saying.
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I'm not exactly sure where you got the links to these pictures from - but these are the web pages that host the image. Both the one above, and this one.
" To my great surprise, I found out that it was the Southern Democrats who fought to keepblacks in slavery. As Francis Rice has said, “They were the ones who passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. They started the Ku Klux Klan (the terrorist wing of the Democrat party) to lynch and terrorize blacks.” They fought against the passage of every single civil rights law from the 1800’s through the 1960’s.
...
...I even observed, within the platforms, the exact time period when the Democrats jumped on the civil rights bandwagon, something the Republicans had been pushing for over 100 years. Beginning in the 1950’s, the Democrats proposed to throw tons of government money into poor inner-city communities and offer other government “helps.” By the 1960’s they offered to provide welfare to young mothers and their children, requiring no work, as long as the father was not in the home.
The civil rights agenda met harsh resistance from most Democrats and the party struggled on whether or not they should include civil rights as part of their platform goals. They eventually agreed to do so, but with all of the wrong motivation. Blacks were gaining number and political power (able to provide a candidate with enough votes to win the presidency), and the civil rights agenda was not going away but instead gaining popularity; Democrats had to give blacks something. Not that they wanted blacks to be equal, but they wanted to give them enough to get them to voting Democrat so that Democrats could stay in power. When Republicans were unwilling to be frivolous with taxpayer dollars by robbing one group of people to pay for a host of government funded programs, Democrats were dishonest and said to blacks, “Republicans don’t want to help you. They don’t want to help poor people.” Republicans proposed other ideas to help combat poverty; most involved hard work, education, business ownership, and minimal aid from the government. Those ideas were overshadowed by the powerful attraction that free money had over people that were struggling to make ends meet. Despite the pleading of the Republican Party, which at the time still held the black vote, poor blacks took the bait. They were above all glad that Democrats were no longer interested in terrorizing and lynching them, and almost equally as ecstatic that they would be getting “help” from the government. "
The image you selected would even seem to argue against your earlier assertions - the website that you pulled this picture from (albeit, possibly through a hotlink used by another site or image search service) also argues what is essentially the same thing I have.
I'd like to think you are not this negligent in your thinking and that there has been some kind of misunderstanding or that you are just jerking my chain.
But everyone understands that the democratic party and republican parties basically did 180's. Don't you see how ridiculous the above argument is? Think about a president like JFK who was a democrat. He fought for civil rights making the black man more equal to the white man. Meanwhile the republicans were trying to stop presidents like him at every turn. Don't you remember all the republicans(People with conservative mindsets) that did not want blacks to vote, and did not wants blacks in white schools?
Don't you remember events like Selma? Where conservative people who identified as Republican beat and murdered blacks for simply trying to vote. What about all of the republican legislation passed that made it essentially impossible for blacks to vote?
It's ridiculous how 'besides-the-point' your arguments are. This is entirely about the government, so how is it not a concern of the government. It's the people's fault if the government doesn't allow blacks to vote? The government has no fault in blacks being segregated from society almost entirely? Come on man...
If I don't you on my private property, the government has no business getting involved in why not. It is the right of a private property owner to decide who is and isn't allowed there. If a business doesn't want to serve whites, it doesn't have to.
Most business owners are pretty smart and don't much care who the customer is.
The government need only ensure that the laws are equally interpreted and applied to its citizens and agencies. Generally, conservatives do not believe that the operating principles of society are subject to racial differences regardless of opinions on that race's capability to comply. A black society has the same fundamental needs as a white society or an integrated society. Human history is a process of trial and error to develop governing systems that best fit what is a common set of flaws that all societies will have to face.
How didn't I present logic. I presented you with facts. Things that actually happened. What are you even saying.
Logic isn't factual. Logic is a procedural elimination of cause-effect relationships. If you presented facts, as opposed to logic, then you should be able to source those facts. Something like a news article or where you learned these facts from - a book, a journal - even a blog can be a source of information (though not typically one that would be used in a definitive essay or thesis).
Sourcing is more than just: "I don't believe you" - it is giving me the same access to the information you have seen so that I am free to analyze it, myself. Or - likewise, if you ask for the source of something I've stated as being factual or solid reasoning - I should be able to link you to where I am getting this from so that you can see it and analyze it, yourself.
You may have more knowledge of a subject than I do and be more versed in events surrounding a subject. Just because you are younger does not mean that I have been exposed to every piece of information you have.
Sourcing helps to level the ground so that we can be sure we are discussing from relative equality. If you simply insist that I should know what you are talking about, then I can only attribute your knowledge to dogmatic principle and categorize any opinion derived from it as being less informed and valid than one derived from things that I can source.
This is why I source, especially when I quote the material of others.
I didn't say anything about the Republican party. I said conservatives. Which means you will need to translate it to democrats in those slave/post-slave times. Back then the democrats were conservative and the republicans were liberal. Don't argue semantics as I'm certain you knew what I was saying.
I suspected that it was possible you believed this.
The issue basically revolves around what your definition of "liberal" and "conservative" mean. Within a very informal context, a "liberal" is actually a "progressive" and a "conservative" is a "traditionalist." This is how most people apply these terms. A liberal is someone who wants to change something, a conservative if someone who wants to keep something the same.
This is, however, not where the concept comes from. Liberalism versus Conservatism goes back to Plato and Socrates - but can be traced in America back to the Federalist and Anti-Federalist debates.
The Federalists argued for a strong national government with a very loose interpretation of legal authority. If the Constitution didn't expressly forbid it, then it was permitted.
The Anti-Federalists (or, after the ratification of the Constitution - the Democratic-Republicans who would later become just the Republicans) argued for a strict interpretation of the law and of the Constitution. If the Constitution did not expressly state the power as belonging to the nation - then it was forbidden to the national government.
The "Liberal" and "Conservative" terms come from one's outlook on law. A liberal tends to believe in loose interpretation of law and that the government should rule based on ambiguous virtue with laws as a guideline. A conservative tends to believe in a strict interpretation of law and that the government should rule based strictly upon the confines of its legal doctrine.
As the linked video illustrates - this difference between Liberalism and Conservatism quickly manifested in fierce debates early in this country's history regarding national and foreign policy.
The perspectives are easy to identify as Democrat and Republican. The parties didn't change their perspective or their stance.
But everyone understands that the democratic party and republican parties basically did 180's.
This is actually explained in the website you got the picture from.
Don't you see how ridiculous the above argument is? Think about a president like JFK who was a democrat. He fought for civil rights making the black man more equal to the white man. Meanwhile the republicans were trying to stop presidents like him at every turn. Don't you remember all the republicans(People with conservative mindsets) that did not want blacks to vote, and did not wants blacks in white schools?
This is why I asked you to source this. No, I don't. My own studies of the scenarios you mention have shown that racism in the Civil Rights Era was largely expressed in the Northern states as a result of Blacks under-bidding white Unions. There were some areas of the South that were bad, but the trend was more geographic than political.
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"Stoll lays out Kennedy’s fierce anti-communism, his religious devotion (he gave faith-based speeches of a kind Michele Bachmann might consider extreme today) and his advocacy for low deficits, a strong dollar, free trade, tax cuts, free enterprise and individual responsibility. If JFK were here today, he would either have to renounce most of what he stood for or join the Republican party.
Even as late as 1980, supply-side policies could be denounced as “voodoo economics” by George H.W. Bush, but before the term was popularized Kennedy was an instinctive supply-sider. It’s important to keep in mind how unusually courageous a stance this was. The triumph of Keynesian economic theory in the immediate postwar decades was complete. It was simply taken for granted by the leadership class that the government needed to stimulate the economy with centralized spending during downturns. One adviser to Kennedy, the Keynes disciple John Kenneth Galbraith, argued as much. The waggish Kennedy simply exiled him with the post of Ambassador to India. "
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"That’s how Democrats try to erase their racist past. Sure, those old “Southern Democrats” were racist, but the northern Democrats took over at some point and suddenly they became the party of racial harmony. They fail to mention that the Civil Rights Act would never have passed without Republicans. They would rather forget that the late Senator Robert Byrd was a Clansman, or that liberals thought the Nazi’s were fantastic prior to WWII. They gloss over how Democrats thought eugenics was a fine idea. That would be inconvenient. But, unfortunately, plenty of people buy into their revisionist history.
John F. Kennedy is another story. He’s one of their icons, alongside Franklin D. Roosevelt. While Roosevelt created the welfare state, it was Lyndon Johnson that expanded it. Other than passing the law allowing public employees to unionize (which was a doozie for sure), Kennedy was far to the right of FDR and Johnson. That’s something they don’t like to talk about. "
It was actually Kennedy who authorized the treasury to begin printing its own Silver-backed currency because he was against the Federal Reserve.
He was assassinated.
One of the first things Johnson did was overturn Kennedy's executive order authorizing the Treasury to print silver-backs.
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"The primary reason that Republican support was higher than Democratic support -- even though the legislation was pushed hard by a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson -- is that the opposition to the bill primarily came from Southern lawmakers. In the mid 1960s, the South was overwhelmingly Democratic -- a legacy of the Civil War and Reconstruction, when the Republican Party was the leading force against slavery and its legacy. Because of this history, the Democratic Party in the 1960s was divided between Southern Democrats, most of whom opposed civil rights legislation, and Democrats from outside the South who more often than not supported it.
...
Back to Steele's quote: "We fought very hard in the '60s to get the civil rights bill passed as well as the voting rights bill."
The degree of Republican support for the two bills actually exceeded the degree of Democratic support, and it's also fair to say that Republicans took leading roles in both measures, even though they had far fewer seats, and thus less power, at the time. Both of these factors are enough to earn Steele a rating of True. "
Even politifact can't skew to their liberal bias on this one. Yes, Politifact is liberally biased. Not necessarily in a political party sense, but they tend to lean liberal.
Don't you remember events like Selma? Where conservative people who identified as Republican beat and murdered blacks for simply trying to vote. What about all of the republican legislation passed that made it essentially impossible for blacks to vote?
First, if you are getting your information from the recent movie about Selma, then you need to actually get a history book out, because the movie was more or less pure fiction. There was a protest at Selma. That's about the only thing the movie gets right.
First, the Governor was a Democrat and called upon the various state agencies to suppress the protest that had shown no signs, history, or intent of violence. The local sheriff, also a democrat, recruited members from the KKK to assist in suppressing the marches.
If you want another perspective:
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" But now we have a new historical fallacy regrading the attenuation of racial inequality. People want to take credit for what someone else has done. I have heard several news reports that the so-called Selma Civil Rights March “gave blacks the right to vote”. This is totally absurd. Supposedly, this march led to adoption of the Voting Rights Act which they are saying “gave blacks the right to vote”.
The 15th Amendment is what really guarantees that blacks (and people of any other race) have the right to vote. To be more correct, they can't be denied the right to vote on the basis of race. Here it is ratified nearly 100 years before all of this “Voting Rights Act” nonsense:
Section. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
According to Wikipedia, “In Mobile v. Bolden (1980), the Supreme Court held that as originally enacted in 1965, Section 2 [of the VRA] simply restated the Fifteenth Amendment…” "
Conservatives, tending to favor strict interpretation and adherence to the law have always been about equality as the only issue in a conservative's mind is whether or not an individual has violated the law. Race and other such factors do not play a role in the the legal thinking of most conservatives.
Now - I won't lie, you'll find quite a few conservatives who will be willing to tell you that they think certain races are pre-disposed to breaking laws and otherwise acting incompatibly with society - which could be argued to be a form of racism (in the context of a thought crime) - but if the law says "citizen" and the person in question is a citizen - then they have the right to vote.
Conservatism makes life simple.
On the other hand, liberals like to try and rule based upon vague and often subjective concepts of virtue. Which is where you get the idea that certain groups of people are more virtuous than others and whatnot and wherefor.
Jim Clark says it best:
"Basically, I'd do the same thing today if I had to do it all over again," he said. "I did what I thought was right to uphold the law."
The law doesn't require you to "do what is right." It simply requires you to do what it says and then it is upheld.
Now - it is a correct observation that states had adopted laws that were illegal under the Constitution, but such is what happens with liberals - a nation of lawlessness.
However, it wasn't without motivation:
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Even in the South, racism has largely been seated upon organized labor - a timeless liberal policy:
"As The Politics of Whiteness moves forward, we learn why so many mill-hands cheered for Eugene Talmadge, sat out the 1934 General Strike, ignored race baiting, supported the liberal Congress of Industrial Organizations (cio), crossed picket lines, and campaigned for George Wallace. The thread that holds these stories together is Brattain's argument that race, and whiteness in particular, defined wage work for most southerners for historical and structural reasons. As early as the 1880s, industrialists and town boosters justified mill-building campaigns as a way to improve the economic lot of local whites. Thus, wage work, racial solidarity, and company paternalism were interrelated from the beginning. Over the years, the racial make-up of the industrial workforce—the textile industry reserved all non-custodial jobs for white workers—gave race a special economic reality. It also gave white workers a stake in the racial status quo. This intraracial bargain meant more than just not having to compete with African Americans for jobs; it also implied that mill owners had a duty to consider the welfare of the (white) community along with their profit margin. So central was race to southern conceptions of industrial wage work, Brattain maintains, that it often remained, at first glance, implicit.
The whiteness of millwork had an added side effect. During the heyday of the cio in the 1930s and 1940s, white workers were able to ignore management attempts at race baiting during battles over unionization. They knew that in an all white industry, an organized workforce was likely to protect white jobs. "Race mixing" was simply not an issue. In the years that followed, the organization of even a few mills produced surprising results. Even in a region replete with desperate poverty, intransigent mill owners, and hostile judges, unions were able to transfer their gains in the workplace to the political realm. Indeed, one of Brattain's biggest contributions is her discovery that even politicians who castigated "Big Labor" on the stump were willing to quietly pull strings, pressure judges, and call in favors to help what was, after all, an organized bloc of voters. In this instance, at least, the Georgia Democratic party was expansive enough to include a liberal organization, even if this inclusion was often covert."
Basically - Jim Crow laws were part of unions impressing labor controls upon the government.
Again, this isn't an issue with conservatives, who do not generally buy into the argument that organized labor has beneficial virtues nor do they believe the government should have the right to influence the labor market beyond requesting bids for projects that fall within its finite duties/obligations.
Virtually all of this nation's problems can be sourced to liberalism.
Society developed from the mutual desire to not be raided by thugs - an unspoken agreement that we would protect the right of those around us to not be stolen from and to not be abused. Governments developed as a means of making decisions within society.
Liberalism asserts that certain individuals are to be empowered to make judgments upon virtue - to 'do what is right.' This form of arbitration requires a party to be subjected to the independent musings of another individual or group. They can't honestly know whether or not they have done something 'wrong' within a legal context until they enter the court room.
It is conservatives who argue for the necessity of strict interpretation of law, rather than ambiguous enforcement of virtue, and that the laws be kept minimal and to what is absolutely necessary to preserve the function of society. One should have a pretty good idea of whether or not they are in violation of the law when they set foot into a court room - or, more importantly, when they commit to an action.
When liberalism takes hold, it leads to a nation where one can become guilty and assailed by the law based upon 'virtuous reasoning.' This means that any action can be perceived to be a guilty one and therefor guilt is based upon subjective interpretation of the rightfully empowered authorities.
Or, in short, if the thugs want to rough you up, all they have to do is convince people to vote for them. When governments become nothing more than crime syndicates (which is what happens under liberalism), then they cease to give reason to the society they feed upon, and will eventually be destroyed.
The irony is that there appears to be a common ground between conservatives and liberals. Both want our current government to change in an almost revolutionary manner. The difference is in the desired outcome. Liberals see the segregation of power as an impediment to the enforcement of virtue. They would rather vote upon powerful national offices that take the place of Congress and the Supreme Court. They would also prefer to see the States as something of a governing district as opposed to a truly independent and self-sovereign State (which is what they are supposed to be - effectively, each State is its own country that has merely decided to federalize with the United States Government - in theory, nothing stops another country from petitioning to join the United States as a new state within the union).
On the other hand, Conservatives want to see a return to strict interpretation of the Constitution - or perhaps even a new Constitution written in the template and upon the same principles of the original.
These are two incompatible ideologies that cannot exist within the same framework. Liberals will always operate to expand the authority of governing institutions which runs in contrast to the operating principles of any government conservatives create. The end result is that liberals and conservatives can only co-exist so long as one ideology does not see fit to act upon the institutions instated by the other.
Which is why there is a war coming in America. It is inevitable.
Islam is based on the idea of conquest (no wonder considering that great prophet himself was a warlord and slave owner). Thats why this religion is way more dangerous than any other.
So you admit that one’s deeds don’t necessarily represent the teachings of the religion, but are affected by the traditions and the micro-environment as well. Hence, exposure to violence and a lack of proper education can turn someone into an extremist.
I can tell you who is a Muslim based upon the book written to do just that.
And, yes, I will tell you what your religion believes.
Or, rather, all I have to do is point to the sections in the Qu'ran that tell us what a Muslim is supposed to do and the sections of the Qu'ran that explain why the Qu'ran was 'revealed' - to make it clear how the deity that created the universe would have people live.
That is precisely the problem. Thank you for admitting it. You’re cherrypicking texts out of context, so as to fit your bias.
Part of the problem with polling countries like Saudi Arabia is that they have roughly 18 million citizens and 8 million foreign workers with 51% of the population being under the age of 25.
Saudi Arabia is a troubled nation that is trying to balance Islamic fundamentalism against the draw of Western wealth and economics. We know it. The Saudis know it. The people in Saudi Arabia know it.
You’ve also just admitted that economical and social issues play a big role in the radicalization of people.
„Attempts to understand the success of Isis in Iraq would benefit from Marxist analysis, since social and economic factors are the key to explaining Sunni Arab support for, and complicity with, the group.
In addition to the ideological appeal of Isis, the group's social constitution has been a boon in winning over rural Sunnis. There is, relatively speaking, a flat structure to Isis's social and religious make-up that appeals to a poor, agragian society in a way the hierarchical, class-based Sunni Islam of Saudi Arabia never would.
Above all, however, it behoves to consider the specific economic circumstances in which many Iraqi Arab Sunnis have found themselves – roundly ignored by most analysts – in order to explain their inclination to embrace the militants.
Economic deprivation has plagued the Iraqi Sunnis, who are thought to comprise between 20 and 35 per cent of the population (accurate data is lacking), since the 2003 war.
Years of neglect and conflict advanced the contraction of the sector in the decades before the Iraq invasion, but agricultural productivity declined a devastating 90 per cent after the 2003 war.
Once a major exporter, Iraq is now reliant year-round on food imports. Many Sunnis have been working hard on the land, and yet struggling to eat, while perceiving metropolitan Shias in Baghdad and the east to be living in luxury.
Even the Iraqi Shia authorities implicitly acknowledge it. Earlier this week, officials were briefing the US press that Isis was successfully recruiting "mostly young men between the ages of 16 and 25 who are primarily poor, unemployed and lack an education".
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„So if Sunnis disagree with ISIS's theology and don't like living under its rule, why do some of them seem to support ISIS? It's all about politics. Both Syria and Iraq have Shia governments. Sunni Muslims aren't well-represented in either system, and are often actively repressed. Legitimate dissent is often met with violence: Bashar al-Assad gunned down protesters in the streets during the 2011 Arab Spring demonstrations, and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki reacted violently a 2013 Sunni protest movement, as well.
So Sunnis understandably feel oppressed and out of options. Some, then, seem to be willing to wait and see if life under their fellow Sunnis in ISIS is any worse than it was before. ISIS, for its part, appears to be attempting to exploit this concern: that's why it's set up community, child care, and medical services in some of the Sunni communities it controls.”
I’m one of dem ’deluded westernized muslims’. My ancestors had been settled in this land about a thousand years before your Declaration of Independence. Christianity was forced upon the society by the rulers. So, I wonder what are these western values that I couldn’t embrace. I agree with harsh punishments. I agree to the execution of apostates- apostates being people who not only stopped believing/practicing the religion, but turned against islam and trying to cause upheaval. Apart from that, whatever one does at home- is not my concern.
I theoretically agree with the harsh punishment for thieves: I say theoritically, because in an ideal muslim society, where the rich give the zakat and the gvmnt helps the poor, there is no need for anyone to steal. If someone still steals out of greed, the person deserves the harsh punishment. But if the government is corrupt itself, I don’t think it has the right to hypocritically cut hands off- unless the leaders cut their own hands off too.
Anyway, there are at least 6 conditions (if my memory serves) included in the definition of theft in sharia. That’s why such polls and statistics are tricky. Muslims have different concepts about what apostasy or theft is.
The hadith upon which stoning is based, is debated, and that’s why I’d go with lashing/whipping for both fornicators/adulterers. But if there would be an unanimous consent on stoning being the hudud punishment, I’m fine with it. However:
"...only in Iran, Pakistan and Somalia have stonings actually occurred, and all instances in Pakistan have occurred outside the legal system....Although Islam and Muslim codes of law are often used to justify the use of stoning as a punishment for adultery, there is actually no reference to stoning in the Koran. Furthermore, there are many prominent clerics and religious scholars who openly oppose the practice of stoning and have called it "Islamically unjustifiable." For example, Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei, a very prominent Shi’a cleric in Iran, issued a fatwa (a religious edict) against the practice of stoning.”
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You need 4 male witnesses at least (if I’m not mistaken), or the confession of the parties involved, to carry out the punishment. Not an every day thing to meet those conditions.
Interesting numbers. 26+15+11+69= 121%. Or, 26+69=95%. But maybe I missed something about the methodology?
Further. Let’s say that my country is invaded and my house is under attack. My best chance to save my family is to blow myself up along with the house, taking the invaders with me, while my family escapes. Isn’t that justifiable?
But from a military point of view, even you have to agree that if a troop is trapped, and the only means of escaping is someone sacrificing himself, taking down the enemy with a bomb, while the rest of the comrades can flee: it is indeed justifiable. Such heroism is rewarded by medlas of honor. If you don’t admit that self-defense is not justifiable: then „you are intellectually dishonest.”
Now terrorists putting a bomb on children who then blow themselves up in the middle of a crowd- no, that is not justifiable ever. Just like it is not justifiable for drones to kill civilians.
You’ve just shown another example of your ’intellectual dishonesty’. Qaradawi’s definition of apostasy is a bit different than yours.
„With regards to the punishment of apostasy, al-Qaradawi supports the classical Islamic tradition on some points but differs on others. He considers execution as a penalty in principle, but the only apostates that are to be executed are those that combine other crimes with apostasy (e.g., "incit[ing] a war against Islam"). He also advocates that the apostates to be executed should be given a chance to repent. Finally, he believes that "hidden apostasy" (where the apostate does not "proclaim" his conversion) may be left to the judgement of God in the Hereafter.”
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Also, if people were so afraid to leave islam, there wouldn’t be so many converts to islam.
ISIS is simply reading the Qu'ran and applying it. They believe Muhammad was the prophet and that the Qu'ran revealed through him is God's command. Whether or not we 'like' it is irrelevant.
„…However, we should also remember the name of Didier François, a French journalist who was held by ISIS in Syria for ten months before being released in April 2014. François has since given us a rare insight into life inside what the Atlantic’s Graeme Wood, in a recent report for the magazine, has called the “hermit kingdom” of ISIS, where “few have gone . . . and returned.” And it is an insight that threatens to turn the conventional wisdom about the world’s most fearsome terrorist organisation on its head.
“There was never really discussion about texts,” the French journalist told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour last month, referring to his captors. “It was not a religious discussion. It was a political discussion.”
According to François, “It was more hammering what they were believing than teaching us about the Quran. Because it has nothing to do with the Quran.” And the former hostage revealed to a startled Amanpour: “We didn’t even have the Quran. They didn’t want even to give us a Quran.”
…
Nowhere is the fundamental attribution error more prevalent, suggests the forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman, than in our navel-gazing analysis of wannabe terrorists and what does or doesn’t motivate them. “You attribute other people’s behaviour to internal motivations but your own to circumstances. ‘They’re attacking us and therefore we have to attack them.’” Yet, he tells me, we rarely do the reverse.
Few experts have done more to try to understand the mindset of the young men and women who aspire to join the blood-drenched ranks of groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda than Sageman. And few can match his qualifications, credentials or background. The 61-year-old, Polish-born psychiatrist and academic is a former CIA operations officer who was based in Pakistan in the late 1980s. There he worked closely with the Afghan mujahedin. He has since advised the New York City Police Department on counterterrorism issues, testified in front of the 9/11 Commission in Washington, D.C., and, in his acclaimed works Understanding Terror Networks and Leaderless Jihad, closely analysed the biographies of several hundred terrorists.
“Religion has a role but it is a role of justification,” he tells me. “It’s not why they do this [or] why young people go there.”
Religion, according to this view, plays a role not as a driver of behaviour but as a vehicle for outrage and, crucially, a marker of identity. Religion is important in the sense that it happens to “define your identity”, Sageman says, and not because you are “more pious than anybody else.” He invokes the political scientist Benedict Anderson’s conception of a nation state as an “imagined political community”, arguing that the “imagined community of Muslims” is what drives the terrorists, the allure of being members of—and defenders of—the ultimate “in-group.”
“You don’t have the most religious folks going there,” he points out. ISIS fighters from the west, in particular, “tend to have rediscovered Islam as teenagers, or as converts”; they are angry, or even bored, young men in search of a call to arms and a thrilling cause. The ISIS executioner Mohammed Emwazi, also known as “Jihadi John”—who was raised and educated in the UK—was described, for instance, by two British medics who met him at a Syrian hospital as “quiet but a bit of an adrenalin junkie”.
Sageman’s viewpoint should not really surprise us. Writing in his 2011 book The Black Banners: the Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda, the Lebanese-American former FBI agent Ali H Soufan, who led the bureau’s pre-9/11 investigation into Al Qaeda, observed: “When I first began interrogating AL Qaeda members, I found that while they could quote Bin Laden’s sayings by heart, I knew far more of the Quran than they did—and in fact some barely knew classical Arabic, the language of both the hadithand the Quran. An understanding of their thought process and the limits of their knowledge enabled me and my colleagues to use their claimed piousness against them.”
Three years earlier, in 2008, a classified briefing note on radicalisation, prepared by MI5’s behavioural science unit, was obtained by the Guardian. It revealed: “Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could . . . be regarded as religious novices.” The MI5 analysts noted the disproportionate number of converts and the high propensity for “drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes”. The newspaper claimed they concluded, “A well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation.”
As I have pointed out on these pages before, Mohammed Ahmed and Yusuf Sarwar, the two young British Muslim men from Birmingham who were convicted on terrorism charges in 2014 after travelling to fight in Syria, bought copies of Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies from Amazon prior to their departure. Religious novices, indeed.
Sageman, the former CIA officer, says we have to locate terrorism and extremism in local conflicts rather than in grand or sweeping ideological narratives – the grievances and the anger come first, he argues, followed by the convenient and self-serving ideological justifications. For example, he says, the origins of ISIS as a terror group lie not in this or that Islamic book or school of thought, but in the “slaughter of Sunnis in Iraq.” He reminds me how, in April 2013, when there was a peaceful Sunni demonstration asking the Shia-led Maliki government in Baghdad to reapportion to the various provinces what the government was getting in oil revenues, Iraqi security forces shot into the crowds. “That was the start of this [current] insurrection.”
Before that, it was the brutal, US-led occupation, under which Iraq became ground zero for suicide bombers from across the region and spurred the creation of new terrorist organisations, such as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
ISIS is the “remnant” of AQI, Sageman adds. He believes that any analysis of the group and of the ongoing violence and chaos in Iraq that doesn’t take into account the long period of war, torture, occupation and sectarian cleansing is inadequate—and a convenient way of exonerating the westof any responsibility. “Without the invasion of Iraq, [ISIS] would not exist. We created it by our presence there.”
Like Marc Sageman, Richard Barrett has devoted his professional life to understanding terrorism, extremism and radicalization. The silver-haired 65-year-old was the director of global counterterrorism operations for MI6, both before and after the 11 September 2001 attacks, and he subsequently led the Al Qaeda and Taliban monitoring team at the United Nations between 2004 and 2013.
The former MI6 officer, who recently published a report on foreign fighters in Syria, agrees with the ex-CIA man on the key issue of what motivates young men to join—and fight for—groups such as ISIS in the first place. Rather than religious faith, it has “mostly to do with the search for identity . . . coupled with a search for belonging and purpose. The Islamic State offers all that and empowers the individual within a collective. It does not judge and accepts all with no concern about their past. This can be very appealing for people who think that they washed up on the wrong shore.” While Barrett doesn’t dismiss the theological angle in the way that Sageman does, he nevertheless acknowledges, “Acting in the name of Islam means that, for the ignorant at least, the groups have some legitimacy for their actions . . . They can pretend it is not just about power and money.”
“The Ba’athist element was certainly very important . . . as it gave the Islamic State military and administrative capability,” Barrett says. “It also made it possible [for ISIS to] take Mosul so quickly and cause defections and surrenders from the Iraqi army. There was and continues to be a coincidence of interest between Islamic State and other anti-government Sunni groups.”
Here again, it seems, is the fundamental attribution error in play. We neglect to focus on the “interests” of groups such as ISIS and obsess over their supposedly messianic and apocalyptic “beliefs.” The “end of times” strain may be very strong in ISIS, Barrett warns, but: “The Ba’athist elements are still key in Iraq and without them the Islamic State would probably not be able to hold on to the city of Mosul.”
Baghdadi’s appointment as leader of ISIS in 2010 was orchestrated by a former Ba’athist colonel in Hussein’s army, Haji Bakr, according to another recent study produced by Barrett, in which he noted how Bakr had “initially attracted criticism from fellow members of the group for his lack of a proper beard and lax observance of other dictates of their religious practice”. Nevertheless, pragmatism trumped ideology as Bakr’s “organisational skills . . . and network of fellow ex-Ba’athists made him a valuable resource” for ISIS.
Apparently, Baghdadi’s supposed caliphate in Iraq and Syria was less the will of God and more the will of Saddam.
Whether Sunni or Shia, Salafi or Sufi, conservative or liberal, Muslims—and Muslim leaders—have almost unanimously condemned and denounced ISIS not merely as un-Islamic but actively anti-Islamic.
Consider the various statements of Muslim groups such as the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, representing 57 countries (ISIS has “nothing to do with Islam”); the Islamic Society of North America (ISIS' actions are “in no way representative of what Islam actually teaches”); al-Azhar University in Cairo, the most prestigious seat of learning in the Sunni Muslim world (ISIS is acting “under the guise of this holy religion . . . in an attempt to export their false Islam”); and even Saudi Arabia’s Salafist Grand Mufti, Abdul Aziz al ash-Sheikh (ISIS is “the number-one enemy of Islam”).
In September 2014, more than 120 Islamic scholars co-signed an 18-page open letter to Baghdadi, written in Arabic, containing what the Slate website’s Filipa Ioannou described as a “technical point-by-point criticism of ISIS' actions and ideology based on the Quran and classical religious texts.”
Yet buffoonish right-wingers such as the Fox News host Sean Hannity continue to refer to the alleged “silence of Muslims” over the actions of ISIS and ask, “Where are the Muslim leaders?” Meanwhile, academics who should know better, such as Princeton’s Bernard Haykel, insist that the leaders of ISIS “have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”
Legitimacy, however, “comes through endorsement by religious leaders. If Sunni Islam’s leaders consider ISIS inauthentic, then that is what it is,” says Abdal Hakim Murad, who teaches Islamic studies at Cambridge University and serves as the dean of the Cambridge Muslim College, which trains imams for British mosques…
… What Dalia Mogahed doesn’t know about Muslim public opinion probably isn’t worth knowing. And the former Gallup pollster and co-author, with the US academic John L Esposito, of Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, based on six years of research and 50,000 interviews with Muslims in more than 35 countries, says that the survey evidence is clear: the overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslims reject ISIS-style violence.
Gallup polling conducted for Mogahed’s book found, for instance, that 93 per cent of Muslims condemned the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. The 40-year-old Egyptian-American scholar tells me, “In follow-up questions, Gallup found that not a single respondent of the nearly 50,000 interviewed cited a verse from the Quran in defence of terrorism but, rather, religion was only mentioned to explain why 9/11 was immoral.”
The 7 per cent of Muslims who sympathised with the attacks on the twin towers “defended this position entirely with secular political justifications or distorted concepts of ‘reciprocity’, as in: ‘They kill our civilians. We can kill theirs.’” As for Haykel’s claim that Islam is merely “what Muslims do and how they interpret their texts”, Mogahed is scathingly dismissive. “If Islam is indeed ‘what Muslims do’, then certainly numbers should be a powerful factor dictating which Muslims we see as representing it,” she says. “ISIS is a tiny minority whose victims are, in fact, mostly other Muslims.
“Any organisation uses the dominant social medium of its society,” she says. “Today, the dominant social currency in the Arab world is Islam. More than 90 per cent of Arab Muslims say religion is an important part of their daily life, according to Gallup research. Everyone, not just ISIS, speaks in Islamic language, from pro-democracy advocates to civil society groups fighting illiteracy.”
For Mogahed, therefore, “a violent reading of the Quran is not leading to political violence. Political violence is leading to a violent reading of the Quran.”
n a recent despatch from Zarqa in Jordan, birthplace of the late AQI leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and “one of the country’s most notorious hotbeds of Islamic radicalism,” Foreign Policy magazine’s David Kenner sat down with a group of young, male ISIS supporters.
“None of them appeared to be particularly religious,” Kenner noted. “Not once did the conversation turn to matters of faith, and none budged from their seats when the call to prayer sounded. They appeared driven by anger at humiliations big and small—from the police officers who treated them like criminals outside their homes to the massacres of Sunnis in Syria and Iraq—rather than by a detailed exegesis of religious texts.”
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For further education (on the real motives of suicide bombers):
[video=youtube;KDNCwjbGOp4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDNCwjbGOp4[/video]
It’s strategy. Just like the Japanese kamikaze. If they really just wanted to go to Paradise- they coudl all blow themselves up, and wouldn’t stick bombs to little girls’ bodies, using them as living weapons.
But I guess you have your own- conservative- sources.
I guess you’re right, the Pope, Luther and Calvin had nothing to do with Christianity. *sarcasm* There is a reason why the reformation was called reformation. They challenged the dogmas of the Church. The debate was in a huge part theological. However, the consequences were rather political. You see, I’m not the type to blame religions. Most of these so called religious wars were about power. Like most wars. Even before the birth of Christianity and Islam. And so I’m surprised that someone, trained in the military, who says that wars are a normal means of handling conflicts: claims that ’islam is just being islam’, instead of saying it’s just humans being humans.
The primary goal of the Crusades was to open up a path for travel to Jerusalem and to provide a hedge against further invasions. Those who went on the Crusades gave up life, wealth, and property, in many cases.
The Islamic conquest swept the middle East in the 7th century. The Crusades were an attempt by the Church to allow both Jews and Christians to make pilgrimages to the "Holy Land" safely - because the Muslims were killing people who wouldn't convert to Islam and/or robbing them.
No source to back up your claim?
It is a common oversimplification that the crusades took place only as a response to muslim violence. Which crusades? These ones?
Popes frequently called crusades for political reasons and crusades were also declared as a means of conflict resolution amongst fellow Roman Catholic Christians. Pope Innocent III declared a crusade against his political opponent Markward of Anweiler in Sicily. Only a few people took part, and the need for the crusade ended in 1202 when Markward died. This is generally considered the first "political crusade". Between 1232 and 1234 there was a crusade against the Stedingers, peasants who refused to pay tithes to the Archbishop of Bremen. The archbishop excommunicated them, and Pope Gregory IX declared a crusade in 1232. The peasants lost the Battle of Altenesch on 27 May 1234 and were destroyed.
Emperor Frederick II was the object of several political crusades called by a number of popes. In 1240 Pope Gregory IX deposed and preached a crusade against Frederick for his opposition in Italy. In 1248 Pope Innocent IV's crusade against him was transferred in 1250 to his son, Conrad IV when he died, but to little effect. Crusades were called against Frederick's illegitimate son Manfred, King of Sicily, from 1255 through 1266, and Conrad's son, Conradin, in 1268 with the urging of Charles of Anjou.
Two crusades appear to have been called against opponents of King Henry III of England – one from 1215 to 1217 and the other from 1263 to 1265 with the first enjoying the same privileges as those given to crusaders on the Fifth Crusade. The second got as far as having papal legates being dispatched to England with the power to declare a crusade against Simon de Montfort, but Montfort's death in 1265 ended this. The Norwich Crusade of 1383, also called the Despenser's crusade, which was a military expedition that aimed to assist the city of Ghent in its struggle against the supporters of Antipope Clement VII, was really an extension of the Hundred Years War rather than a purely religious enterprise.
A key difference between the Crusades and other holy wars was that the authorization to carry out these wars came directly from the pope, who claimed to be working on behalf of Christ.
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The Fourth Crusade never reached the Holy Land. Instead, it became a vehicle for the political ambitions of Doge Enrico Dandolo and the German King Philip of Swabia who was married to Irene of Byzantium. Dandolo saw an opportunity to expand Venice's possessions in the near east, while Philip saw the crusade as a chance to restore his exiled nephew, Alexios IV Angelos, to the throne of Byzantium. Pope Innocent III initiated recruitment for the crusade in 1200 with preaching taking place in France, England, and Germany, although the bulk of the efforts were in France.[
The crusaders contracted with the Venetians for a fleet and provisions to transport them to the Holy Land, but they lacked the funds to pay when too few knights arrived in Venice. They agreed to divert the crusade to Constantinople and share what could be looted as payment. As collateral the crusaders seized the Christian city of Zara on 24 November 1202. Innocent was appalled and excommunicated the crusaders. The crusaders met with limited resistance in their initial siege of Constantinople, sailing down the Dardanelles and breaching the sea walls. However, Alexios was strangled after a palace coup, robbing them of their success, and they had to repeat the siege in April 1204. This time the city was sacked, churches pillaged, and large numbers of the citizens butchered. The crusaders took their rewards, dividing the Empire into Latin fiefs and Venetian colonies. In the Venetian period, there was particular attention to improving defences of La Cava and Nicosia.
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Ok, let’s see the first. One of the reasons was that the Pope promised forgiveness to crusaders- so quite a lot of sinners like thieves, robbers, joined in. Alas the different versions of the speech were written way later, so it can’t be exactly known what were the Pope’s words. But promising forgiveness of sins, and directing the violence against muslims, was a good way to ease societal tensions within christianity. Attempts at that were made before, in form of the Treuga Dei movement, for example. Violence was so common that the Pope declared that on certain days people should just stop fighting. It was about as useful as when the gvmnt orders that on certain days only cars with a certain plate number can travel so as to prevent more pollution…Turning that violence away became more and more necessary. But back to the speech at Clermont:
"All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested. O what a disgrace if such a despised and base race, which worships demons, should conquer a people which has the faith of omnipotent God and is made glorious with the name of Christ! With what reproaches will the Lord overwhelm us if you do not aid those who, with us, profess the Christian religion! Let those who have been accustomed unjustly to wage private warfare against the faithful now go against the infidels and end with victory this war which should have been begun long ago. Let those who for a long time, have been robbers, now become knights. Let those who have been fighting against their brothers and relatives now fight in a proper way against the barbarians. Let those who have been serving as mercenaries for small pay now obtain the eternal reward. Let those who have been wearing themselves out in both body and soul now work for a double honor. Behold! on this side will be the sorrowful and poor, on that, the rich; on this side, the enemies of the Lord, on that, his friends. Let those who go not put off the journey, but rent their lands and collect money for their expenses; and as soon as winter is over and spring comes, let hem eagerly set out on the way with God as their guide."
Source:
Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, 1, pp. 382 f., trans in Oliver J. Thatcher, and Edgar Holmes McNeal, eds., A Source Book for Medieval History, (New York: Scribners, 1905), 513-17
But then again, there is no legit version of the speech.
There exists no exact transcription of the speech that Urban delivered at the Council of Clermont on 27 November 1095. The five extant versions of the speech were written down quite a bit later, and they differ widely from one another. The five versions of Urban's speech reflect much more clearly what later authors thought Urban II should have said to launch the First Crusade than what Urban II himself actually did say.
However we can know this much:
As a better means of evaluating Urban's true motivations in calling for a crusade to the Holy Lands, there are four extant letters written by Pope Urban II himself.
Urban II's own letter to the Flemish confirms that he granted "remission of all their sins" to those undertaking the enterprise to liberate the eastern churches. One notable contrast with the speeches recorded by Robert the Monk, Guibert of Nogent and Baldric of Dol is the lesser emphasis on Jerusalem itself, which Urban only once mentions as his own focus of concern…
In the letters to Bologna and Vallombrosa he refers to the crusaders' desire to set out for Jerusalem rather than to his own desire that Jerusalem be freed from Muslim rule. Urban II refers to liberating the church as a whole or the eastern churches generally rather than to reconquering Jerusalem itself.
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There was no set goal of securing Jerusalem. Some people saw an opportunity in the crusade to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but others had different motives. That’s why you see mobs like this:
Pope Urban II planned the departure of the crusade for 15 August 1096; before this, a number of unexpected bands of peasants and low-ranking knights organized and set off for Jerusalem on their own. The peasant population had been afflicted by drought, famine, and disease for many years before 1096, and some of them seem to have envisioned the crusade as an escape from these hardships. Spurring them on had been a number of meteorological occurrences beginning in 1095 that seemed to be a divine blessing for the movement: a meteor shower, aurorae, a lunar eclipse, and a comet, among other events. An outbreak of ergotism had also occurred just before the Council of Clermont. Millenarianism, the belief that the end of the world was imminent, popular in the early 11th century, experienced a resurgence in popularity. The response was beyond expectations: while Urban might have expected a few thousand knights, he ended up with a migration numbering up to 40,000 Crusaders of mostly unskilled fighters, including women and children.
A charismatic monk and powerful orator named Peter the Hermit of Amiens was the spiritual leader of the movement. He was known for riding a donkey and dressing in simple clothing. He had vigorously preached the crusade throughout northern France and Flanders. He claimed to have been appointed to preach by Christ himself (and supposedly had a divine letter to prove it), and it is likely that some of his followers thought he, not Urban, was the true originator of the crusading idea. In the late spring and summer of 1096, crusaders destroyed most of the Jewish communities along the Rhine in a series of unprecedentedly large pogroms in France and Germany in which thousands of Jews were massacred, driven to suicide, or forced to convert to Christianity.
Peter gathered his army at Cologne on 12 April 1096, planning to stop there and preach to the Germans and gather more crusaders. The French, however, were not willing to wait for Peter and the Germans and under the leadership of Walter Sans Avoir, a few thousand French crusaders left before Peter and reached Hungary on 8 May, passing through Hungary without incident and arriving at the river Sava at the border of Byzantine territory at Belgrade. The Belgrade commander was taken by surprise, having no orders on what to do with them, and refused entry, forcing the crusaders to pillage the countryside for food. This resulted in skirmishes with the Belgrade garrison and, to make matters worse, sixteen of Walter's men had tried to rob a market in Zemun across the river in Hungary and were stripped of their armor and clothing, which was hung from the castle walls. Eventually the crusaders were allowed to carry on to Niš, where they were provided with food and waited to hear from Constantinople.
Peter and the remaining crusaders left Cologne about 20 April. About 40,000 Crusaders left immediately, while another group would follow soon after (see the German Crusade). When they reached the Danube, part of the army decided to continue on by boat down the Danube, while the main body continued overland and entered Hungary at Sopron. There it continued through Hungary without incident and rejoined the Danube contingent at Zemun on the Byzantine frontier.
In Zemun, the crusaders became suspicious, seeing Walter's sixteen suits of armor hanging from the walls, and eventually a dispute over the price of a pair of shoes in the market led to a riot, which then turned into an all-out assault on the city by the crusaders, in which 4,000 Hungarians were killed. The crusaders then fled across the river Sava to Belgrade, but only after skirmishing with Belgrade troops. The residents of Belgrade fled, and the crusaders pillaged and burned the city. Then they marched for seven days, arriving at Niš on 3 July There, the commander of Niš promised to provide escort for Peter's army to Constantinople as well as food, if he would leave right away. Peter obliged, and the next morning he set out. However, a few Germans got into a dispute with some locals along the road and set fire to a mill, which escalated out of Peter's control until Niš sent out its entire garrison against the crusaders. The crusaders were completely routed, losing about 10,000 (a quarter of their number), the remainder regrouping further on at Bela Palanka.When they reached Sofia on 12 July they met their Byzantine escort, which brought them safely the rest of the way to Constantinople by 1 August.
The extent of the era's antisemitism is apparent in Godfrey of Bouillon, who swore
“to go on this journey only after avenging the blood of the crucified one by shedding Jewish blood and completely eradicating any trace of those bearing the name 'Jew,' thus assuaging his own burning wrath.”
Sigebert of Gembloux wrote that before "a war in behalf of the Lord" could be fought it was essential that the Jews convert; those who resisted were "deprived of their goods, massacred, and expelled from the cities."
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No wonder the jews protected their cities together with dem evil muslims:
Jews and Muslims fought together to defend Jerusalem against the invading Franks.
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In keeping with their alliance with the Muslims, the Jews had been among the most vigorous defenders of Jerusalem against the Crusaders. When the city fell, the Crusaders slaughtered most of the city's Muslim and Jewish inhabitants, leaving the city "knee deep in blood".
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But they were slaughtered.
The massacre that followed the capture of Jerusalem has attained particular notoriety, as a "juxtaposition of extreme violence and anguished faith". The eyewitness accounts from the crusaders themselves leave little doubt that there was great slaughter in the aftermath of the siege. Nevertheless, some historians propose that the scale of the massacre has been exaggerated in later medieval sources.
After the successful assault on the northern wall, the defenders fled to the Temple Mount, pursued by Tancred and his men. Arriving before the defenders could secure the area, Tancred's men assaulted the precinct, butchering many of the defenders, with the remainder taking refuge in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Tancred then called a halt to the slaughter, offering those in the mosque his protection. When the defenders on the southern wall heard of the fall of the northern wall, they fled to the citadel, allowing Raymond and the Provençals to enter the city. Iftikhar al-Dawla, the commander of the garrison, struck a deal with Raymond, surrendering the citadel in return for being granted safe passage to Ascalon. The slaughter continued for the rest of the day; Muslims were indiscriminately killed, and Jews who had taken refuge in their synagogue died when it was burnt down by the Crusaders. The following day, Tancred's prisoners in the mosque were slaughtered. Nevertheless, it is clear that some Muslims and Jews of the city survived the massacre, either escaping or being taken prisoner to be ransomed. The Eastern Christian population of the city had been expelled before the siege by the governor, and thus escaped the massacre.
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The real cause of the crusades are a bit more complex than that of ’pious christians wanted to safeguard Jerusalem coz dem evil muslims killed Christians.’ As if Christians didn't kill each other.
As for pilgrims, they were not mistreated by muslims only, but also by the Byzantines, as we’re talking about an era which took place after the great schism. Not that the crusaders liked the Byzantines. The Pope at the time wanted to help the Byzantines in hope of a reunion, but the crusaders didn’t reestablish Byzantine rule in the recaptured territories. The many crusader states that were born (some of them were born metaphorically out of greed: who wouldn’t want a kingdom of his own?) often were opposed to each other and just further weakened the resistance to muslim invasion.
But before Manzikert, there was a relative power balance between muslims and the Byzantines. If pilgrims were attacked, that was not due to central policy.
The Great German Pilgrimage of 1064–1065 was a large pilgrimage to Jerusalem which took place a generation before the First Crusade. The pilgrimage passed through Hungary, Bulgaria, Patzinakia, and Constantinople, just as the First Crusade would over thirty years later, with similar results: the pilgrims were treated harshly wherever they went, and were ushered off into Anatolia once they reached Constantinople.
It was some beduin bandits that attacked them, but they could complete the pilgrimage and return to Germany. I don’t think I have to tell you that traveling long distances in the middle ages, heck even today, goes with all kinds of dangers- bandits, mainly.
On Holy Thursday they reached Caesarea, and on Good Friday they were attacked by Bedouin bandits. According to the longer version of the Annals of Altaich William of Utrecht was killed in battle, (although he actually survived and lived until 1076). The pilgrims fled to a nearby fort. On Easter Sunday the Bedouin leaders met with Gunther there and agreed to a truce, but the Bedouins threatened to kill the pilgrims anyway. Gunther had them killed and hung over the walls as a deterrent to further attacks.
On Easter Monday the Fatimid governor of Ramla drove off the Bedouins and freed the pilgrims, who then rested in Ramla for two weeks. They arrived in Jerusalem on April 12. After thirteen days they returned to Ramla, and later took ships back to Latakia and returned to Germany.
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So, the real reasons were rather to vent out social tensions, to demonstrate the Pope’s power against the Holy Roman Emperor, as well as to the Byzantines, who were beaten in 1071 by the seljuks.
„In 1095 Alexios sent envoys to the West requesting military assistance against the Seljuqs. Alexios needed to reinforce his tagmata, so the embassy probably sought to recruit mercenaries and may have exaggerated the dangers facing the Eastern Empire in order to secure the needed troops.”
Of this, christian sources are a bit biased as you can see f.e. here:
„Seljuk emperor Alp Arslan humiliating Byzantine emperor Romanos IV after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, according to contemporary European imagination. In reality, Alp Arslan treated his captive Romanos IV with respect and let him return to Constantinople, where he was blinded by the Byzantines and died of infected wounds in 1072 at a monastery in Proti Island in the Sea of Marmara.
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If the christians really just wanted to secure Jerusalem, they wouldn’t have waited years/decades with that.
The evaluation of the real reasons depend on the historician’s emphasis on certain sources.
„It is now impossible to assess exactly why the First Crusade occurred, although many possible causes have been suggested by historians, most recently Jay Rubenstein.The historiography of the Crusades reflects attempts made by different historians to understand the Crusades' complex causes and justifications. An early theory, the so-called "Erdmann thesis", developed by German historian Carl Erdmann, directly linked the Crusades to the 11th-century reform movements. This first theory claimed that the exportation of violence to the east, and the assistance to the struggling Byzantine Empire were the Crusaders' primary goals, and that the conquest of Jerusalem was more a secondary, popular goal.”
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Then you have interesting theories as to why were pilgirimages and who were these so called pilgrims:
Such suicidal religious fervor on the part of peasants highlights the desperate state of city peasants in the 12th century. It also draws our attention to the power of religious piety in this age.
Scholars have offered a variety of explanations for this religious fervor. Some point to the apocalyptic energy of the Millennials, who thought the world would end in the year 1000. In the disappointment that followed, this energy was redirected towards religious fervor.
Other scholars have suggested a far more secular cause. One of the most entertaining is the notion that the increased cultivation of rye and ignorance on how to store this grain resulted in an outbreak of ergotism. When rye rots, it creates a poison, which causes convulsive movements and even hallucinations. The fact that these ergot-driven spells came on so suddenly must have seemed demonic to the people of Europe. The fact that this affliction could be relieved simply by stopping the consumption of rotten rye from dank basements may well have given rise to a new wave of religious conviction.
This explanation also helps us to understand the popularity of pilgrimages in this age. As Europe began to stabilize, pilgrimages to holy sites became ever more popular. Though many factors contributed to the popularity of these pilgrimages, the rise of ergotism might have played its own part. A man struck with ergot poisoning might well go on a pilgrimage to attain healing. People who went on pilgrimages stopped eating rotten rye from dank cellars and thus returned healthy. In many respects, the Crusades can be seen as an armed pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
Rather than a band of mercenaries fighting for cash, Urban would send the Byzantine emperor a horde of Crusaders fighting the infidel for the glory of God. However, Urban's plan, probably inspired by the Spanish Reconquista, was more about increasing the authority of the Church and pope than it was about helping the Byzantine emperor.
Indeed, one major incentive for the First Crusade was the Pope's desire to bring the Greek Orthodox Christians of the East under the control of the Roman Catholic Church in the West. By helping Byzantium reclaim its territory, Urban hoped to make the Byzantines dependent upon the West and bring its people back into the fold of Western Christendom.
Yet Urban was not just interested in expanding his power in the East. He also wanted to reinforce his power back at home in the West. The recent Investiture Conflict & Gregorian Reforms had shaken up Western Europe and challenged the pope's authority. The papacy was being challenged by the lay nobility, especially the Holy Roman emperor, Henry IV, whose growing military power had driven the Pope from Italy to France. The First Crusade can be seen as the Pope trying to reassert his power and authority in Europe.
All of these reasons seem very practical and only marginally related to religion. Though it is tempting to view medieval history through this cynical lens, it is also important to remember that this was a very religious time. The Pope may have had a number of religious reasons to call this crusade. The most likely religious reason for the First Crusade was Urban's desire to establish peace in Western Europe.
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That story, and the papal authority it underlined, shaped the next 500 years of European history. Even today, the idea at the center of the crusades, that religion has long been at the heart of the East-West divide, drives foreign policy from Washington to Islamabad. But the real story is much more complicated, and much more earthly, than most people recognize.
The subject of the crusades, and in particular the first, has received enormous attention from scholars over the centuries, to the point that one leading historian wrote in a recent book review that there was nothing original left to say: the story is too well known, too secure.
Yet for all that work, distortions remain. The armchair historian could be forgiven for thinking, for example, that Jerusalem fell to the Muslims soon before the First Crusade set out to supposedly rescue it. In fact, Jerusalem fell some 450 years earlier.
Most striking, perhaps the central question behind the First Crusade has never really been asked: What happened at the end of the 11th century that made more than 60,000 men head east? If the pope was powerful enough to be able to unleash a huge force of knights, why had he never done so before?
The answer lies far from Western Europe, where the origins of the crusade are always set. In fact, the First Crusade was an eastern project, devised and inspired not by Pope Urban II but by Alexios I of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire, which had survived the fall of Rome.
The Byzantine Empire came under territorial pressure in the second half of the 11th century, particularly at the hands of the Turks, who had swept across central Asia and made themselves masters of the Middle East. Moving like “wolves devouring their prey,” in the words of one contemporary commentator, the Turks supposedly brought chaos to the Byzantine heartland in Asia Minor.
But claims of Turkish penetration and control of the Byzantine east were much exaggerated. Material from long-forgotten and ignored Greek, Arabic, Syriac, Armenian and Hebrew sources shows that things were not as bad as some authors made out; if anything, relations between Christian Byzantines and Muslim Turks were surprisingly cordial and even collaborative.
That changed dramatically, however, at the start of the 1090s. A catastrophic chain of events brought the empire to its knees: emboldened by the death of the sultan of Baghdad, a cluster of local Turkish warlords seized control of some of Byzantium’s most precious and sensitive territories, putting the capital itself at risk. With pressure mounting, Alexios’ closest intimates turned on him. In a dramatic showdown, the emperor forced a gathering of his opponents; it was touch and go as to whether he would leave the meeting alive. Against the odds, he bought himself one last roll of the dice.
He issued pleas for help across western Europe, including one to Pope Urban II, which brought with it the offer to unite the Catholic and Orthodox churches once and for all.
What followed was less a war to protect the Holy Land than a defense of the Byzantine Empire, taking back cities like Nicaea and Antioch, places whose Christian significance was, at best, tangential. And, rather than being under the command of the pope, the knights were controlled by Alexios, to whom they swore solemn oaths over precious Christian relics as they passed through Constantinople. They also promised to hand over all the cities, towns and territories they conquered.
But Alexios eventually lost control. The crusaders simply refused to give over what they had conquered, which by the end included much of the eastern Mediterranean region. The resulting crusader states, as they were called, lasted for another 200 years.
As a result, a new story was needed. Alexios and Byzantium were ripped from the heart of the narrative, while Pope Urban II was moved to center stage — even though the very earliest accounts of the First Crusade barely mention him.
In short, the western knights’ glorious deeds, recorded in such lavish style by medieval historians and celebrated ever since, provided a cover story that only now has been revealed. Their bravery, heroism and piety, fodder for countless medieval romances, really were too good to be true.
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As you can see, the crusaders promised to hand the recaptured territories over to Byzantine- alas they didn’t keep that promise. So, altogether, not all crusades were directed against muslims in the first place, but also against political enemies, heretics, and against the orthodox Byzantine as well. Pilgrims faced all kinds of hardships, mostly due to bandits, but as there was a renewed war between seljuks and byzantines, of course it was harder to make pilgrimage. But that’s nothing unusual to expect in war time. And as I pointed out, Pope Urban II didn’t seem to entertain the idea of recapturing Jerusalem. He was more concerned with the re-unition of the church.
„Alexios and Urban had previously been in close contact in 1089 and after, and had discussed openly the prospect of the (re)union of the Christian church. There were signs of considerable co-operation between Rome and Constantinople in the years immediately before the Crusade.”
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The Pope tried to call for a crusade into Spain against dem evil muslims, few decades before the first crusade, but only a couple of knights responded. So, interestingly, they only started to care about muslim aggression 20 yrs after the muslims capturing Jerusalem.
The defeat at Manzikert was not enough a reason either:
„In response to the defeat at Manzikert and subsequent Byzantine losses in Anatolia in 1074, Pope Gregory VII had called for the milites Christi ("soldiers of Christ") to go to Byzantium's aid. This call, was largely ignored and even opposed. The reason for this was that while the defeat at Manzikert was shocking, it had limited significance and did not lead to major difficulties for the Byzantine empire, at least in the short term.”
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So, while it’s true that booty was not necessarily the main reason, neither was the protection of pilgrims. At one hand religious zeal played a big role in general, at the other hand, it was not always directed against muslim. On one side, we have a vigorous Papacy that got the upper hand in the investiture controversy against the Holy Roman Empire (see Canossa walk in 1077), on the other side, we have Byzantine, close to collapse, asking for the help of catholics (4 decades after the great schism). Then finally, ~25 yrs after the capture of Jerusalem and the battle of Manzikert, after (at least) 2 failed attempts of crusades, we get a mob (the People’s Crusade), miserably failing, then we have the „noble” knights’ crusade, which didn’t actually restore Byzantine rule despite their promise. We have ’superpowers’ with ulterior political motives (demonstrating power, uniting western and eastern christianity, venting out social tensions) , we have a Byzantine civil war and let’s not forget either that muslims were fighting over power amongst themselves too, and we have a zealous crowd having been promised forgiveness– but the whole crusade thing can hardly be taken as a serious effort to permanently recapture the 'Holy Land' , let alone a caring outreach to pilgrims. No wonder that the crusader states didn’t last long, and eventually the crusades turned into splitting up the Byzantine Empire.
Of course none of this is a justification for muslims to mistreating pilgrims or minorities. But if christians had been really concerned about evil muslims, they would have acted a long time ago- but they didn’t: not when the Pope called for a crusade in Spain, and not after Manzikert either… Too bad they were more occupied fighting amongst themselves. The Pope might have been concerned with the muslim expansion, but still, retaking Jerusalem was not his main goal at all. The first crusade was rather an outburst of the accumulated social tensions and religious zeal, and one could say it was just a huge armed pilgrimage, with no clear goals, but with all kinds of individual motivations mixed, that could gain temporary successes only due to the fact that the Byzantines and the muslims were in civil wars.
„As Thomas Asbridge wrote, "Just as we can do nothing more than estimate the number of thousands who responded to the crusading ideal, so too, with the surviving evidence, we can gain only a limited insight into their motivation and intent."
Riley-Smith argues that the enthusiasm for the crusade was perhaps based on family relations, as most of the French crusaders were distant relatives.Nevertheless, in at least some cases, personal advancement played a role in Crusaders' motives. For instance, Bohemond was motivated by the desire to carve himself out a territory in the east, and had previously campaigned against the Byzantines to try to achieve this.”
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Btw, sometimes muslims fought alongside the crusaders.
…the politics were often complicated to the point of intra-faith competition leading to alliances between combatants of different faiths against their coreligionists, such as the Christian alliance with the Islamic Sultanate of Rûm during the Fifth Crusade.
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So, let’s sum up the facts:
- muslims mistreated christian and jewish minorities just like christians discriminated muslim and jewish minorities
- pilgrimage was a rather dangerous enterprise anyway, they were exposed to bandits even in christian territory, and we are talking about war time here, at the end of the 11th century
- still, muslims, jews, and christians often fought side by side
- previous attempts to organize crusades against muslims were a failure, it finally only took place when the Byzantine Empire was at the edge of collapse, and the muslims had internal issues as well, both weakened by fighting each other anyway. The crusades however didn’t save the Byzantine Empire, but on the contrary, they ended up splitting it.
- the first „army” that set off, was a rather undisciplined mob that ended up looting and attacking jews
- the Pope didn’t even want to recapture Jerusalem, and the crusaders had no intention of restoring Byzantine rule, later they actually split up the Byzantine Empire which furthered the muslim conquest. So, I infer the Pope might have seen a chance of uniting christianity by aiding the Byzantines, but alas the crusaders didn’t indulge similar global political insight/hopes. They had all kinds of different individual motivations, many of them just wanted to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, get forgiveness, return home and that's all.
- christians often launched crusades against other christians as well
Based on all of this, while it’s undeniable that the muslim expansion was one of the reasons of the crusades, but there were many other factors in play. Helping the Byzantines was probably also not the main motive of an individual. People were used to fighting and violence at the time, and now they had a chance to get forgiveness for that, as well as making a visit to Jerusalem.
Their zeal and in many cases, their misery and violent nature, was directed towards the east now.
„According to Tancred's biographer, he was worried about the sinful nature of knightly warfare, and was excited to find a holy outlet for violence. „
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They went on a journey/adventure, some for forgiveness, some for the spoil, some for family reasons, some for glory, some out of piety- but you can’t seriously believe that an army half of which consisted of non-combatants, really considered long-term military strategies. Especially if it’s true that most of them returned home after completing their ’armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem’.
„…almost all of the crusaders eventually returned home after completing their pilgrimage rather than trying to carve out possessions for themselves in the Holy Land. It is difficult or impossible to assess the motives of the thousands of poor for whom there is no historical record, or even those of important knights, whose stories were usually retold by monks or clerics. As the secular medieval world was so deeply ingrained with the spiritual world of the church, it is quite likely that personal piety was a major factor for many crusaders.”
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See? "Personal piety was a major factor for many"...Not the concern about muslims.
If the trained knights considered military aspects, that was rather for personal reasons. In many cases it was a family enterprise. As I already pointed out:
According to Tancred's biographer, he was worried about the sinful nature of knightly warfare, and was excited to find a holy outlet for violence. Tancred and Bohemond, as well as Godfrey, Baldwin, and their older brother Eustace III, Count of Boulogne, are examples of families who crusaded together. Riley-Smith argues that the enthusiasm for the crusade was perhaps based on family relations, as most of the French crusaders were distant relatives. Nevertheless, in at least some cases, personal advancement played a role in Crusaders' motives. For instance, Bohemond was motivated by the desire to carve himself out a territory in the east, and had previously campaigned against the Byzantines to try to achieve this. The Crusade gave him a further opportunity, which he took after the Siege of Antioch, taking possession of the city and establishing the Principality of Antioch.
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Then, as early as 1107, Bohemond I of Antioch turned against the Byzantines. Then in 1122 the Venetian Crusade raided the Byzantines as well. So, they didn’t seem to be focused only on stopping the muslims. They cared about power- and they exerted it against fellow christians just as well. So, altogether, the big picture is a bit more complex. The world is not black and white. It’s not as simple as ’christians vs muslims’.
But well, you can always say ’squirrel’, or that none of the above contradicts your statement. Not that I wanted to contradict anything, just to detail an oversimplified statement. But well, you’re the military expert here.
