Moonbox

and this is the kind of statement that people are wondering if Justin's hinting at - a thinly veiled attack on American foreign policy. At least eyeball comes out and says it.... Which is a great thing for a political leader to say. "You guys are to blame for that 8 year old kid's death because you support the Shah in Saudi Arabia...." Criticize American foreign policy if you want, but have the intelligence not to do it immediately after an event like this. Show some class. Understanding does not mean justifying or believing or sympathizing. FBI or RCMP profilers are expert empathizers. They have zero interest in justifying or sympathizing with a killer, but they try very hard to get in his head and find out why and how he does what he does. Justin doesn't appear to be following this line of thought.

So you understand the term, but your logic is too broken for that to be of use to you. The statement above is just a giant fallacy. Understanding someone's perspective is no more a precursor to compassion as it is to further anger. You could just as easily end up hating the person more for doing what they did. If it turns out that they did it because they believe in a blood god that demands human sacrifice en masse, you're not going to feel compassion for them, but perhaps you can understand where the hell they came from and try to find out if you can stop additional attacks.

You're confusing empathy with sympathy. Empathy just means you're trying to view things from another perspective, however twisted it may be. Nobody should ever justify or condone terrorism, but sometimes it's a good idea to try and put yourself in a terrorist's shoes and imagine what the world looks like from his/her point of view. The idea of strapping a bomb to your chest and blowing yourself up in a bus is so alien and so despicable to us it seems unimaginable. In other parts of the world, however, people have decided it's a reasonable and desirable course of action. It's not because they're all batshit crazy. It's because they grew up in and live in a completely different world than we did and view it entirely different than we do. Trying to see the world through their eyes is empathy, and it does excuse their actions or mean we sympathize with it. The problem, however, is that a lot of the time these world views are not something that we can influence or change. Understanding them may, in the end, only give us fair warning of who not to trust and who to protect ourselves from, but that's still something we need to do. Justin's comments, however, had undertones suggesting more than simply understanding what happened and why. His suggestion was that there was a tangible cause and effect relationship. This happened because we did or didn't do _______ .

Whatever you say bud. If you have an actual argument to make, then make it. I've explained why I don't like Trudeau's position, and I wouldn't like it if Harper or anyone else made it. As I already said, the response from the rest of the world's leaders (barring the Taliban and similar groups) was unanimous and explicit. Justin the drama teacher, however, managed to make his statement confusing. His age, looks and name, however, are enough to get him out of any trouble his dumb mouth lands him in, and the average voter is too dumb and ignorant to care.

I wouldn't say it's a very good article. It's an opinion piece for someone who obviously really doesn't like Harper. You are reading the Toronto Star, however, so I can't expect you to know any better or what a good article is

At least you know what the word means. The problem I have with Justin's statement isn't that he's empathizing or wants to find out how and why this happened. My problem is specifically the statement, "this happened because". He's already decided that there was a rational cause and effect relationship here. You can pull all sorts of implied statements out of that. Personally, I'm willing to believe that this was just your typical warm and fluffy liberal statement. Realistically, however, I don't think it's a huge stretch to see it being a swipe at American foreign policy, especially considering his father's relationship with our neighbour. Either way, all anyone needed to say about this at first really was, "This is aweful and unforgiveable and our hearts and support go out to the victims." Read the statements from the rest of the world's leaders. They all knew that. Justin, however, decided to add his own analysis of the situation. At best, it was poorly worded and poorly timed.

He said more than that. Read the rest of the post genius.

He's not formidable at all. His name is formidable, and he's formidable enough to take advantage of that. Barring his name, he'd still be a drama teacher.

Exactly. If Justin was merely interested in preventing this sort of thing from happening again, he would have said that. He would say, "We need to find out how and why they did this." When you say, "this happened because", you're going beyond simply wanting answers. You may still want answers, but you've decided that some sort of wrong was committed that led to the crime itself. You're saying that someone/something other than the attackers is also to be blamed.

You're right. What Justin and his supporters fail to realize is that it takes a REALLY different and skewed view of the world to decide that blowing up a bunch of completely innocent people is an acceptable way of getting a message across.

Your response was a red herring. Nobody was talking about the courts involvement yet.

That might be how the Trudeau fan-club might interpret it, but in the wake of attack that's probably not how the American president or the people of Boston would. Let's go back to: "this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded." In other words, they blew up a bunch of people because somewhere along the lines Boston or the USA did something (or failed to do something) that made him angry. Brilliant. Did you look up the definition of empathy? I'm betting you didn't, because you don't seem to understand the word! If the authorities are investigating the tragedy and trying to find out who committed the crime, where they're from and why they did it, does that not satisfy the 'gaining knowledge' part of the process? Saying something like, "We need to get to the bottom of this." is one thing. Saying, "This happened for a reason." is something entirely different, and can easily be viewed as a swipe at American foreign policy.

Did you read my entire post, or did you just start drooling after you read the first sentence of it? Finding these guys IS the immediate problem. The immediate problem is that a bunch of people were cowardly murdered in cold blood and the bombers are still at large. Now that we seem to have an idea of who they are, Justin's suggestions are becoming more and more vapid. We're looking a couple of Chechnyans who came to the USA as refugees and likely were brainwashed over the internet by a bunch of yahoo-clerics from home. As far as 'finding out what the root causes are', I don't think we'll be surprised what we find out.

Justin's comments were offensive. Not only were they offensive, but they were also stupid. If a man beats his wife into a coma, is the appropriate response: "Why did he do it?" Why he did it isn't relevant. In Justin's case, he precisely stated that we need to empathize with the bombers and find out 'where their tensions are coming from'. Look up the definition of 'empathy' and then reread Justin's comments.Understanding the motive behind murder is one of the most important part of an investigation. It goes without saying that US authorities are doing everything they can to figure it out. Justin's knows this, or he's an idiot. So when he says things like this, wording it the way he does: “But there is no question that this happened because there is someone who feels completely excluded. Completely at war with innocents. At war with a society. And our approach has to be, okay, where do those tensions come from?” He's either vaccuously stating the obvious, or he's implying that the attacks can be attributed to something the Americans did or failed to do, which is a terrible public response for our closest ally.

The optics of what he's saying are terrible. His timing and judgment were poor. At this point in the game, nobody even knows who did the bombing, so talking about their motive or the root causes is pointless and stupid. This is basic common sense, so when this bag of hot air starts saying stupid stuff like this you start to question where he's coming from. Asking what the 'cause' was for cowardly acts like this implies that the attacks were deserved or that there's some sort of rationalization or justification for it. Harper's approach is common sense. Show solidarity with the victims and your allies and go with what we know as fact. Someone blew a bomb up in a crowd of innocent civilians and there is NEVER justification for it and universal condemnation is the most reasonable response. The whole point of an investigation is to find out who and why (ie. understanding). It literally goes without saying that this is what the authorities are trying to find out. They're trying to discover the culprit, the means and the motive. When Trudeau opens his big dumb mouth, what he's basically saying is either: 1) You guys need to find out who did this and why. (THANKS CAPTAIN OBVIOUS! You'll make a great national leader). or 2) There's a reason this happened. Either he's a ditz, or his judgment sucks. You decide.

Yes...I think he did. Whoops!

I have the right for you guys not to make sense? Interesting...

What are you guys even talking about? You're not making any sense.

No offense but that's a goofy straw-man and you seem to really be confusing the definition of freedom.

and those fundamental freedoms all have limitations. There are countless examples we could easily bring up showing how the courts decide on those limits.

Those backbenchers can complain all they want, but the contentious issues they're bringing up are things that the vast vast majority of Canadians want nothing to do with. They'll get nowhere by leaving the party or causing a stir and they'd do well to realize that Canada wants nothing to do with what they have to say.

Eventually, people stop paying attention to attack ads. Early on, the Conservatives are going to try and see if they can frame Justin as a flake (drama teacher makes a good Prime Minister?) and make sure Canadians get a glimpse of how much of a pompous ass he can be. If those don't take they're going to have a problem. All the Liberals need to do is make sure that Justin expresses his personal thoughts and opinions as little as possible and that he sticks to the script and keeps his dumb mouth shut. It's going to be an interesting dynamic. On the one side, you have Harper at the top controlling the message and trying to make sure his underlings keep their dumb mouths shut. On the other side, you'll have the Liberal Party trying to manage Justin and keep him smiling and on message.

Not 'could be' PIK. They are that stupid. They will elect him. If he keeps his stupid mouth shut and avoids saying the sort of stupid shit he's prone to, he's a shoe-in for are next PM. Canadians, on average, have the political IQ of 10 year olds. Nobody actually knows anything about their candidates and nobody knows anything about the election outside of what they see on TV commercials.You only have to look at the Liberal and Conservative attack ads from 2004 onwards to see how much contempt they have for the average voter.

This is a response to Trudeau. Layton and the NDP's proverbial blip on the radar of relevancy are going to get smashed in by Trudeau's smile, and this is something Mulcair and his party are terrified about. They'll go from official opposition to fringe party next election and they're scrambling to avoid it.

I wish you could see stunningly dumb a statement that was. You're arguing. You're losing the argument badly too. You're being torn apart by pretty much everyone because even high-school logic eludes you. Other than that you can't spell. As I stated previously, your Canada exists in a magical fantasy world, where 2+2 = whatever you feel it equals and common sense and reason have no place. I'm attacking your brain-dead arguments (or opinions if you prefer lol), your blatant contradictions and your hilarious hypocrisy. You just told bambino that you might as well be talking to feces, and here you are trying to fault me for ad hominem? That's so ridiculous it's sad. What are we supposed to discuss with you? You're not making any effort to actually engage us on our points. You've demonstrated zero interest in having a rational argument. Every time we try to discuss Constitutional or Charter Rights and how they're interpreted by the authorities and by our legal system, you revert to vacuous ramblings about "your Canada" and spout a bunch of meaningless tripe, liberally inserting the word "freedom" and telling us that we support a police state for disagreeing with you. I mean, how are we supposed to argue with your feelings and fantasies? I invite you to re-read Section 1 of the Charter, which (for good reason) comes before Section 2. I got a chuckle out of your misspelled attempt to tell me I don't understand the Charter, however. That's a "NO YOU!" come-back if I've ever seen one. I mean, I don't know how many times I've called you out for not understanding our legal system and not having a clue how it interprets the Charter. Your response, without fail, has been to give us some diarrhea about how you're a libertarian and how your Canada is different from our Canada and ramble ramble ramble...