I've said similar. In other words many who are called racist are actually better described as selfish.

i dont want to allow any refugees into the US from syria right now

We're all shocked.

So the sorrow and outrage are actually expressions of fear? Maybe a little bit but I'm not ready to discount the emotions as expressed by people over this. Fear is also expressed but alongside what seems to be genuine sorrow. That empathy is good but it seems apparent that if people here were just willing to extend that empathy to the people who we are terrorizing then none of this **** would be happening.

Our own security analysts have been consistently saying that our tactics will increase terror against us. I'm sure their counterparts in France have said the same thing. I think many people would be surprised to know the extent to which terrorist threats flowing from the Iraq war fallout was predicted.

All evil traces to selfishness, so the label doesn't convey that much information.

nice

going there then

The sorrow and outrage is real. Part of that is fear talking but it's also a product of the reality of the situation being brought home to them. They are thinking more about the victims because it could so obviously be them or people they know. People don't extend empathy very well, some do it more than others but we're just not built that way.

The Iraq was a catastrophe because but there's plenty of other troubles. It makes much more sense to take advantage of any opportunities to prevent trouble and build on positive progress. We have to deal with hypotheticals but the objectors will always pooh pooh them and point of the costs and relatively minor problems until it's suddenly too late and someone else's fault.

Nothing this sinister imo. Part of it is the fear as chez said, I think another part is some sort of irrationality based around the fact that they can relate more to it, thus making it more real. Atrocities are always happening in other countries but it's such a foreign world that most don't give it a second of thought.

I'd imagine that if you took the average person who suddenly cares about this, and they were in a situation where they'd recently spent some time in a country like Yemen and then a terrorist attack was widely broadcast with people around them being all emotional about it, they would have a similar reaction as they did to this.

Most of us are guilty of this though. You probably have a stronger reaction to seeing a starving child on the streets than to the constant knowledge that there are millions of children starving in third-world countries.

Obligatory disclaimer that of course for some people it's as you say.

It could be useful to know which of the two traits is driving someone. For instance in the case of immigration it would be important to realize that minds could be changed if immigration could be shown to be to advantageous to the selfish if that was why they were opposed, as compared to if their stance was based on racism.

Assuming that you support the USA taking in refugees from Syria, any preconditions for who to take in and who not too?

Foldn the drunk driving rapist found the problem and, what a shock, it's people saying mean things to bigots on the internet

It works the other way too- not all selfishness trace to evil. Not all selfishness traces to egocentricity.

LOL @surveillance,technology and Sh@itees..

Wake up, we just need to educate all the people in the right and proper way..and please ignore all the media nonsenses

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That is a good example of a perfectly valid theoretical approach which, for reasons not readily apparent, doesn't seem to work. The case I am thinking of is immigrants from Mexico to the U.S. The benefits of flooding the labor pool with unskilled or semi-skilled cheap labor should be obvious to republican small business owners, the type of republicans purportedly filling the Tea Party ranks. Yet, these are the republicans seemingly most opposed to immigrants. It can't be that they don't see the economic benefit (the usual euphemism for self interest) so it must be that something else is deemed more important than the one obvious benefit.

The only reasons offered up to the public discourse for justification of anti-immigration efforts are canards about crime or welfare exploitation and enforcement of immigration laws for the sake of enforcement itself. My suspicion is that the actual justification can find neither a mode suitable for public discussion nor is amenable to rational appeals to self-interest.

I suppose I do care more about one child starving here than multitudes in other countries. But France is another country. And if I thought my own government was responsible for those starving in another country then I would care about those kids just as much as one in my own country. That's why I care about the Israeli/Palestinian issue- we in the U.S. are responsible for that.

There is a severe disconnect between Americans and their government's foreign policy. Maybe that is natural to some degree, a consequence of the combination of our ego-centrism and massive fear.

Yeah we're not going to take in anyone (on purpose) that has ties to ISIS or AQ. Other than that, not really.

all terrorists are bad people

Even if they say "I didn't want to do it, but it was necessary."?

I ask because that line seems to, in the minds of their domestic populations, absolve the West from it's own massive terrorism.

I see.... so you mean, like, the Saudi Monarchy? Gosh, they visit and invest here a whole lot.

Jiggs, how long are you going to wait before opining that peak oil caused the Paris attacks? Like a week, couple weeks, what's the time frame here?

The Patriots must have won. You're in early-week dick mode.

If I thought the field here would ever budge in understanding/accepting that resource depletion largely led to Arab Spring, I might bother.

In any event, as Saudi Arabia increasingly careens towards bankruptcy, and the Sunni-Shia war intensifies, expect more of this.

It is disgusting, though, watching our leaders essentially beg for increased Iranian production after years of sanction, while simultaneously funding a proxy war against Shia Islam.

So yeah, peak oil, standard Jiggs.

*and of course by "peak oil" we mean "such an oversupply of oil that oil prices are getting crushed"

LOL... and as we've covered, an "oversupply" caused mostly by reduced demand (after years of astronomically high prices) doesn't do much for your argument, genius. ... In fact, it only underscores mine. Poor Japan, sliding back into recession.

You must be holding your nose and begging for that Iranian production boost at this point, with U.S. production beginning its long predicted nose-dive. ...

lolGambool: Dead wrong, all along.

For the euro countries (like the one im from) it has already been shown that the current immigration is a net negative (if you discard the gains from moral masturbation for the few). Nobody is actively letting in terrorists but the policies are also unfit to stop the few we could so in a way we are definitely contributing to it consciously. Not letting in any immigrants is definitely a partial solution (stopping them all is impossible), I dont think its the right one though.

immigrants are good people