Differences
One thing that many Americans forget is the people from different cultures are, well … different. What we see as cooperative and supportive some others see as weak. If we are going to be true to the multiculturalist ideal, then we have to learn to address those other cultures on their own terms. For example, here is an incident I got from another board:
I don’t remember but I think I’ve mentioned before that I follow a blog run by a guy up the road a piece from me in Austin. He’s made posts about Islam, the Quran, and the islamic reaction to the cartoonist on his blog.
His blog has been hacked and crashed 3x in the last 8-10mos after some posts that were shall we say, less than complimentary towards Islam?. After getting the site back up after the most recent attack in… early July I believe it was, might have been the end of June, he went out and bought a used copy of the Quran. He then posted on his blog that the next time his site went down to the oh so ‘tolerant’ islamopricks..he would smear that Quran with fresh dog crap[he's got 4 dogs, 2 of them Great Danes. so supply of feces is NOT an issue] then bury it in the middle of a pile of dried out feces and light the whole thing and watch it burn. He said he would record video of the entire thing and post it to you tube afterwords. Now so far …. he hasn’t had anymore problems. Trolls yes, hackers no, but he’s always got the former.
I am not going to say that the preacher in Florida is right — I think he is merely a publicity seeking glory hound. On the other hand the people who were saying “stop, don’t do that, it’s mean” need to take a dose of smelling salts.
America has made a point of attempting to be inoffensive to the point of being obsequious … and all it has brought us is contempt for being weak. The other culture we are dealing with respects only strength, and that is what needs to be brought to bear.
