He exercised his Constitutional Rights. Good for him. NJ Transit chose to exercise theirs. I feel bad for the guy, he has a family and he's probably basically a nice guy. The hysteria over the not-exactly-a-Mosque is hurting a lot of people and serves the purposes of nobody except racists like Pamela "Geller" Oshry.
(a) If NJ Transit is a government outfit, this is a bit sticky.
ReplyDelete(b) Why would you assume he's "basically a nice guy?" when all you know about him is he likes to burn books? I'll defend his right to do that, but that doesn't make him anything other than a creep, absent other evidence.
Eh. I'm reading for context in the NPR article. One of the cops described him as "nervous" and "having second thoughts." Clearly it's easy to feel that way when the cops are leading you away; but I prefer to be generous to this guy, and put the blame on Pammycakes and the rest of the bigots who incited this and benefit from it.
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ReplyDeleteI don't see a link to an NPR article here. (I read the NYDN article, though.)
ReplyDeleteIn any case, no, sorry. The attitude he displayed when he got grabbed by the cops is easily written off as the feeling of "regret" one gets when one is caught. Which means he knew it was wrong beforehand.
In any case, I am not in a million years going to excuse someone for allowing Pam Geller to inspire him to do anything. The most I could say is I have a twinge of sympathy for someone who's obviously so stupid that he would fall for a hate-mongerer like Geller, in the same way I feel sympathy for all severely disabled people.
I'd rather win the debate than precisely assign moral culpability to every bit player i I think you're more likely to be convincing in a public debate of this nature if it doesn't appear that your side is the mean and vindictive side. I think we can afford a degree of rhetorical generosity toward people like this guy without giving up anything important. Geller, Gingrich, Robert Spencer, Beck, Breitbart - these are the people who count, the way I see it. And it should be easy to convince people that those folks are simply being mean and vindictive.
ReplyDeleteReasonable points, but as far as just having a conversation and expressing my own views about this guy goes, what I said is what I believe.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't want it any other way. Feel free to express those views openly, they're always welcome here.
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