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d6f62b6 From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. extremism fanaticism god inhumanity justification religion zealotry Salman Rushdie
266d03b There were a lot of gods. Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything. extremism fanaticism god inhumanity justification religion Margaret Atwood
82d613a In the days when hyenas of hate suckle the babes of men, and jackals of hypocrisy pimp their mothers' broken hearts, may children not look to demons of ignorance for hope. bigotry coexistence coexisting-together coexistência election-year-politics extremism gun-laws gun-violence hate-crimes hatred human-rights-day humanity hypocrisy ignorance intelligence leadership megalomania national-history-day nonviolent-conflict-resolution police-reform police-shootings political-commentary political-corruption politics prejudice presidential-election terrorism world-suicide-prevention-day xenophobia Aberjhani
7d2858b "They" hate us because they feel--and "they" are not wrong--that it is within our power to do so much more, and that we practice a kind of passive-aggressive violence on the Third World. We do this by, for example, demonizing tobacco as poison here while promoting cigarettes in Asia; inflating produce prices by paying farmers not to grow food as millions go hungry worldwide; skimping on quality and then imposing tariffs on foreign products made better or cheaper than our own; padding corporate profits through Third World sweatshops; letting drug companies stand by as millions die of AIDS in Africa to keep prices up on lifesaving drugs; and on and on. We do, upon reaching a very high comfort level, mostly choose to go from ten to eleven instead of helping another guy far away go from zero to one. We even do it in our own country. Barbara Ehrenreich's brilliant book describes the impossibility of living with dignity or comfort as one of the millions of minimum-wage workers in fast food, aisle-stocking and table-waiting jobs. Their labor for next to nothing ensures that well-off people can be a little more pampered. So if we do it to our own, what chance do foreigners have?" -- extremism hate ignorance irresponsible passive-aggressive poverty poverty-and-politics suffering third-world violence Bill Maher
f65615f "They" hate us because they feel--and "they" are not wrong--that it is within our power to do so much more, and that we practice a kind of passive-aggressive violence on the Third World. We do this by, for example, demonizing tobacco as poison here while promoting cigarettes in Asia; inflating produce prices by paying farmers not to grow food as millions go hungry worldwide; skimping on quality and then imposing tariffs on foreign products made better or cheaper than our own; padding corporate profits through Third World sweatshops; letting drug companies stand by as millions die of AIDS in Africa to keep prices up on lifesaving drugs; and on and on. We do, upon reaching a very high comfort level, mostly choose to go from ten to eleven instead of helping another guy far away go from zero to one. We even do it in our own country. Barbara Ehrenreich's brilliant book describes the impossibility of living with dignity or comfort as one of the millions of minimum-wage workers in fast food, aisle-stocking and table-waiting jobs. Their labor for next to nothing ensures that well-off people can be a little more pampered. So if we do it to our own, what chance do foreigners have?" extremism hate ignorance irresponsible passive-aggressive poverty poverty-and-politics suffering third-world violence Bill Maher
6efbbea During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Susan Sontag and her son, my dear friend David Rieff. On one occasion, we made a special detour to the town of Zenica, where there was reported to be a serious infiltration of outside Muslim extremists: a charge that was often used to slander the Bosnian government of the time. We found very little evidence of that, but the community itself was much riven as between Muslim, Croat, and Serb. No faction was strong enough to predominate, each was strong enough to veto the other's candidate for the chairmanship of the city council. Eventually, and in a way that was characteristically Bosnian, all three parties called on one of the town's few Jews and asked him to assume the job. We called on him, and found that he was also the resident intellectual, with a natural gift for synthesizing matters. After we left him, Susan began to chortle in the car. 'What do you think?' she asked. 'Do you think that the only dentist and the only shrink in Zenica are Jewish also?' It would be dense to have pretended not to see her joke. bosnia bosnian-war city-councils croats david-rieff extremism humour intellectuals islamic-extremism jews muslims religion religious-extremism serbs sontag zealotry zenica Christopher Hitchens
6ae42e9 Fanaticism is the opposite of love. A wise man once told me - he's a Muslim, by the way - that he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Jew than he does with a fanatic from his own religion. He has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded Christian or Buddhist or Hindu than he does with a fanatic of his own religion. In fact, he has more in common with a rational, reasonable-minded atheist than he does with a fanatic of his own religion. extremism fanaticism religious-fanaticism tollerance understanding Gregory David Roberts
da4357b Virulence is the sound of a self-selecting community talking to itself and positively reinforcing itself with no obligation to answer to anyone or look anyone in the eye. extremism ideology openness prejudice Thomas L. Friedman
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