Saudi's arrest male flirters/BBC word association

You missed my point. Mormons stopped practicing polygamy because the Supreme Court ruled polygamy unconstitutional. Utah's statehood, if I'm not mistaken, was part predicated on Mormons giving up polygamy. The rest of America judged Mormons, and forced them to change. As a human being you can and should at times judge other people, particularly when one's religous/cultural practices are harmful to people.

 

Lyle. We'll just have to agree to disagree on the judging thing.

 

Okay... but do you not understand that slavery, polygamy, and segregation, for example, would all still be around if people didn't judge one another?

 

Lyle. The most effective positive change comes from within, not from without. It was, for example, the English who stopped slavery in England.

While it was Americans who stopped segregation in America - at the local level, where change was forced (by non-local Americans), you still had, and in some cases still have, the presense of the root cause issues.

The stopping of polygamy was forced on the Mormons by non-Mormons, and resulted in the formation of radical off-shoot groups like the FLDS church in the news today for forced marriages of underage girls.

By all means, we should judge "ourselves", but when we judge others and force change upon them, we never have the full story and often miss the root cause of the issue we are judging.

So, while I encourage Islam to perform some introspective self-inspection, I'm not going to judge them or call for a forced change of their doctrine. Heck, part of the reason we were as successful in Afghanistan as we were is that WE didn't go in to change things, we supported the Afghani people (albeit those portions whose viewpoints we supported) to execute that change and while, by US standards, Afghanistan is not "there" yet, they are in a better place and one in which most Afghanis feel 'ok' with.

 

Actually, no. Slavery in the United States was ended by a war. Segregation was ended partly do to foreign voices telling JFK to stop lecturing them on liberty when blacks in America weren't exactly equal participants in America.

Genocide has only ever been stopped by war: Germany, Vietnam, the Balkans, and Rwanda.

... and we actually did invade Afghanistan to change things. The Taliban were in charge, we destroyed them, and then we helped form a new government. Actually no different than in Iraq, just arguably less of a mess.

 

Lyle. You're missing my point.

Slavery in the US was stopped by a war - and we still had major civil rights issues 100 YEARS! later.

Slavery in England was stopped, internally and politically, by the English - they didn't have the same level of civil rights issues.

In Afghanistan, we didn't invade. We supported the (then) losing side in the ongoing civil war; we provided the air cover, logistics support and training while they provided the vast majority of the troops on the ground. It has gone better than Iraq because of this (as Iraq WAS an invasion).

Where the change is internal in nature, it is a more lasting and comprehensive change; where change is forced, you never tackle the root causes for the issue.

As far as genocide goes (new subject!), I do agree that forcefully stopping it from occuring is a good thing (TM), but that doesn't change the fact that the only lasting change comes from within. Tito ruled Yugoslavia with an iron fist, so there was no ethnic conflict; as soon as the "iron fist" was removed, the conflict flared up again, because the root cause had never been dealt with. Same in Iraq. South Africa, on the other hand, internally dealt with their tribal conflicts and, while things aren't perfect there, they are greatly improved and moving in the right direction.

 

Good discussion, guys!

I can find lots to quarrel with/ nitpick, but I'll leave that to you both, and whoever else.