Scotty

BE POLITE AND RESPECT OTHERS Mapleleafweb operates these forums in the hopes that they will promote intelligent, honest and responsible discussion. We encourage you to speak your mind on relevant issues in a thoughtful way. Please respect others using this board and treat them with respect and dignity.

911 was what made Americans afraid. Underwear bombers and shoe bombers and crazed army doctors are what make Americans afraid.

First, let's recap. Your side says affirmative action is necessary and beneficial. No evidence has been presented of this. My side says affirmative action is unfair and just as racist as any other kind of prejerential hiring, also with no evidence to speak of. So I don't think it's fair of you to suggest that my lack of evidence invalidates my argument while embracing the counter argument which has a similar lack of evidence. Second, while you are disparaging (and embellishing) my statement suggesting such studies would not be allowed you haven't actually said I was wrong. So let me ask you point blank. Do you believe that a city like, say, Toronto, would undertake a study of police competence based on race, or that the union would allow it?

I apologize if it seemed I was singling you out. The conversation between the two of you was trending in that direction, no doubt due to previous discussions of a similar sort. I think this site could do with more moderation. I've come across literally hundreds of posts over the past few weeks which fail the test of respect. It seems to me that someone sneers at someone else who they have previous unpleasant acquaintance with, then that person sneers back, and so on and so on until they're simply resorting to namecalling. Proper moderation would stop that at its inception.

From what I have read Egypt is becoming more and more religious and more conservatively religious year by year. I saw an article not long ago which said that while women usually didn't wear the hijab twenty years ago now most do, and this trend is continuing. There is also growing intolerence towards religious minorities.

TrueMetis, we will have a tug of war. I will be driving a Dodge Ram. You will be driving a Smart Car. Would you care to place any bets on who will win?

I have noticed a habit which is fairly common among many posters here to engage in sneers, disrespect, ridicule and mockery towards those they are debating, often clearly based on previous acquaintance/argument. It seemed to me that this was starting to trend in that direction and I merely wished to point out that this is against the rules of the site and that it interferes with intelligent discussion.

They are a small, weak patch of dirt on the gulf who are virtually defenseless against anyone else. Al quaeda and islamist terrorists are as much a threat to them, if not more, than to anyone in the West. Their oil fueled lifestyle of glittering wealth, parties, alcohol and women is hardly one Islamists would respect. Our fight against the Islamists is thus just as much in aid of them as it is of the Americans, probably more. So over nine years we supplied the billions of dollars to send troops over there, did the fighting, the bleeding and dying, while they partied. And all they supplied was a patch of dirt on an airfield for our supply base. Not exactly an equal participation in the fight, eh? And now they demand dozens of landing spaces for their burgeoning toy airline, and when the government says no they kick us out? Sorry, but that goes beyond wrong and unjust into breathtaking ingratitude. And I consider ingratitude to be a major moral failing in any person, institution or government.

People will argue about a variety of interpreations, but no one actually deviates from the general societal interpretation of moral behaviour here. And that is to treat all others, wherever possible, fairly and justly, as you wish to be yourself. No one here will argue that murder, rape, arson, assault, armed robbery, fraud, etc. should be allowed or is moral.

Ah, that would be nice, wouldn't it? To have a definitive study of such things? Alas, there has never, to my knowledge, been such a study, for who would call for one? Who would dare run one? And who would cooperate? There seems to be an aversion to even keeping statistics based on race, even for criminals. I can't imagine cities would allow a study on competence based on race of any of their employees, and can't imagine the unions allowing it. And I have a good imagination! So we fall back on logic, which can at least be debated, and personal experience, which would simply be dismissed as anecdotal or based on a dishonest need to support our argument.

You shouldn't. You are simply wrong, TrueMetis. This doesn't reflect on your honor, integrity, intelligence, morality, or anything else you ought to care about. You're mistaken. That's all. It's no big deal. I'm often mistaken!

I see far too much disparagement here, from Left and Right, from Conservative and Liberal. It is not conducive to intelligent debate, and does not respect the rules as set forth below. BE POLITE AND RESPECT OTHERS Mapleleafweb operates these forums in the hopes that they will promote intelligent, honest and responsible discussion. We encourage you to speak your mind on relevant issues in a thoughtful way. Please respect others using this board and treat them with respect and dignity.

I will have to at least quibble with your statement above. You are, as he is, attempting to change the equation from "large vs small", to "out-of-shape-large vs in-shape small". In point of fact, a large man DOES have a strength advantage over a small man - physical fitness and conditioning being equal. There is a reason why individual sports which test strength, such as weightlifting and boxing are separated by the size of the competitors. However good his shape, however skilled he is, no competition will consider putting in a featherweight boxer against a heavyweight. Nor would they put a featheweight weightlifter into competition with a heavyweight. And putting a heavyweight male against a small female would simply be an appeal to comedy or sadism. This is all self evident but for some reason there seems to be an aversion to admitting the obvious sometimes because we fear this would be unfair to smaller people. I don't believe, speaking as a smaller person, this is realistic.

Forgive me, but I made a presumption that you had at some point taken the same sorts of tests I had been subjected to. That is to say, you make a decision based on what information is at hand. If you aren't told anything more than it should not be a part of your decision process. Yes, it's certainly true that a well-trained, skilled, physically fit smaller person can be stronger and more capable than a fat, out of shape, unskilled larger person. But that isn't the basis of the discussion here. Given both persons are physically fit and well-trained (a reasonable assumption for firefighters and police) the larger person is simply stronger than the smaller. Further, males have more upper body strength than females. This is inarguable from a purely scientific point of view. Thus in jobs where strength count, such as, for example, rescuing people from burning buildings or stopping drunken brawls, the bigger man would be the best choice. Dragging takes too long, slows the process down, and keeps both firefighter and victim in the building longer, thus further endangering both. It can also cause damage to the victim. Do you want to drag them down a flight of stairs, or perhaps four or five, banging their heads on every step on the way down? Your misconception might come from the occasional glimpses of candidate tests for firefighters, which involve dragging a dummy across the floor. However, this is done both because there is no 'partner' for the rescue, and because standards have been lowered in order to allow smaller, weaker individuals, esp, women, to succeed. Tests twenty years or so ago required carrying the dummy in the firearman's carry, down a flight of stairs. Currently they simply require dragging the dummy across a level floor. I don't beliee I mentioend axes. The point remains that force is often required in order to affect rescues, and thus the individual with the most available force would be the best choice - all other things, such as skill and training being equal.

I'm satisfied that the term visible minority is understood in Canada and is used in a number of necessary functions, reports and statistical studies which are in no way racist. The U.N., on the other hand, is a fairly racist organization peopled by individuals of no moral and little intellectual value. I have as close to zero respect for any pronunciations it makes as is possible.

With respect, the police are the most clannish group in our society, and having minorities among them has done absolutely nothing to change that. Even in the U.S., where some police departments are 50% or even 90% black, the clannish mentality persists just as strong as it ever was when they were 100% white. And you DO have to lower your standards. When you have one particular group, in this case young white men, who for cultural reasons apply in droves for a job, and work their asses off, accumulating volunteer time, doing ride-alongs, getting training and employment in security and the military, in first aid, in self defense and firearms, in psychology, all in a desperate effort to get into that job they love... And then you have another community, Asians, who have virtually NO interest in policing as a career, who make NO effort to prepare themselves for the job, who have to be begged, bribed and persuaded, in very small numbers, to grudgingly apply, you are simply not going to have the same quality of candidates, to say nothing of the selection. 100 of those eager young white men apply for one of 2 jobs. Meanwhile the police manage to, through herculean efforts, recruit 2 Asians to apply for the second job. What is the likelihood the Asian candidate will be of the same quality as the White candidate who succeeds? And I'm not picking on Asians. I could as easily have used women or some other disinterested minority. Would you recruit a hockey team this way? Would you tell yourself that you absolely had to find a Black man to be goalie and needed an Asian for defense and an Arab to play center?

The above is simply bluster without meaning. I will ask the question once again. Do you really feel its advisable to make such definitive statements without a single shred of supporting evidence? You haven't supplied any facts, merely your opinion. Nor could you possibly have any facts to support such a conclusion. There are thousands of hiring managers and you can't possibly, nor can anyone, have any idea what goes through their minds as they make decisions under the pressure of affirmative action quotas and pressure from above to increase their minority mumbers. Thus to make the following statement... Borders on the silly. No, actually, it IS silly. This is an argument based on denial. The discussion is not about individual visible minority races but the demands of AA to hire them. Thus in one case a Black person is hired over a more competent White person, in another case it's an Asian, and in another case a native or a woman. I frankly don't understand why you would seize on a particular race merely because that was used as an example and claim this disqualifies the argument. And now you continue along the path to changing the basis of the discussion to the point of absurdity while demanding "overwhelming evidence" to counter it. Is it unfair of me to point out you have yet to provide a single, solitary shred of evidence in support of your all-encompassing support for affirmative action? By insults and innuendo, by snearing or using deliberately insulting tones. Discussions of this nature are better carried out in a mature and adult fashion. I will not lower myself to an exchange of contemptuous dismissal of other people's imaginary motivations or ideologies, of their morality or intelligence. And I won't discuss politics with those who do.

Why? Who says? Why would you turn down applicants for a white police officer, then beg, plead and bribe some asian, almost ANY asian, to please, pretty please apply? The fact is Asians don't want to be cops. To recruit them you have to drastically lower your standards and select from a minute pool which will inevitably yield lower quality results. What possible difference is it to society if firefighteres are all whites? Why does it need to go to desperate lengths, almost anything short of dragging the riverfront bars, to dredge up a few black candidates, then accept them and pass them regardless of qualifications?

I've never quite understood this argument. On the face of it, for PR purposes, I suppose, it would be helpful to have black/female/asian police officers in order to liason with community leaders. However, when you get beyond that, what really is the point? Any police officer is going to be dealing with a broad swath of the community. Unless you get to the point where black constables are assigned only to "black" areas, Asian constables go only to "asian" areas and women only deal with female criminals and witnesses, which seems silly on the face of it. The RCMP, as an example, would rarely deal with blacks at all. Given the geographic responsibilty of the force, it would deal with whites, asians and natives. Yet it will give preference to a Black applicant with far fewer qualifications, then select him from a pool of "qualified" candidates even though he finishes far lower down in the testing than white officers. What's the reason behind that?

I will grant you the second statement while vigorously disagreeing with your first.

Do you really feel its advisable to make such definitive statements without a single shred of supporting evidence? I mean, you're not even stating it as an opinion but as a fact. That's chutzpah but poor debating. Your habit for personalizing these types of discussions inevitably leads to nothing more than back and forth echanges of insults. If you continue it I will simply stop responding to you.

That is really only partially the point. The point being that we should want the best applicants for the positions, not someone with the apropriate designation of skin coloration, gender or sexual preference. It offends our sense of justice that people should get important, not to mention well-paying jobs they don't deserve on merit. How well do these "advantaged" cops perform their duties? Has anyone ever actually had the temerity to investigate the work histories of a hundred or so firemen and policemen who were unjustly hired and promoted against the work history of their white contemporaries to see whether they actually perform well in their jobs? Note: being promoted unjustly does not = performing well.

I'm not sure how a study taken of American Blacks and their experiences has much relevance in Canada. I think, however, that this issue has been heavily influenced by the American experience. I think Canadian liberals have seized on the American need for affirmative action to propagate the same theories in Canada despite our wildly different cultural, historical and racial facts. Affirmative action is a sort of touchstone in the liberal experience simply because they've been reading too many American books and seeing too many American movies. Again, as I said, you may be able to demonstrate that the centuries long experience of slavery and extreme racial discimination in the US requires some kind of counter to lift a long subjugated people from widespread poverty, but none of that applies in Canada. Once again I ask, why exactly does Canada need sweeping affirmative action programs in order to assist people who are almost all first and second generation immigrants?

This is simply continued avoidance of the obvious. You're well aware that large men are physically stronger than small men or women but refuse to concede the point because you believe this will damage your argument in favour of affirmative action. Levitation not yet being an option, victims are still carried where that is a possibilty. Granted, where firefighters are too weak to carry the victims they have to be dragged, inevitably resulting in further harm and slowing the rescue. But that appears to be something the supporters of AA are willing to accept in pursuit of equality of results. This is just silly. Stop please. Is it your position that firefighters knock politely at each apartment door and then shrug and walk off if someone doesn't open it? If they hear children crying do they urgently call for a locksmith? Come on. Nowhere. Why raise her as an issue?

Technically speaking if you were illiterate you wouldn't be able to understand a single thing I wrote. On the other hand, you appear to not be understanding it regardless, though I suspect that is mostly tactical on your part. I'm not sure your use of the term "deriding" really made any sense to begin with and so an argument over the legitimacy of what I was or was not deriding seems to be about as productive as discussing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. My standards are my own, and if you check you'll see that only a few of my posts followed the path of least resistance into discussing family income as a basis for the economic success of the following generation. I'm actually more interested in returning the conversation to affirmative action, which, despite your above statement, has not been "decidedly and incontroveritbly" altered. You surely must have had some interest in discussing that when you clicked on a thread titled Affirmative Action Explained?