Tolerance is an intractable term.

Should we tolerate the intolerant, the racist,

or the violent? Who decides whos who, whos what? Words used in complex
social situations have always a degree of double-speak; there is a
disconnection between what we think we mean and our actual thinking.
Tolerance (http://www.tolerance.org/ ) is supposed to be about letting those
different from us be themselves, but in practice is about pretending that we are
different from ourselves. To always have a favorite football team as an essential
part of our identity? Even in this limited sense, one has to be careful; it might
not be healthful to display the wrong loyalty in the wrong bar.
Mass attitudes towards the other are influenced by the Media. For instance,
many Serbian communities believed that the western media portrayed a
negative image of the Serbian people during the NATO bombing in Kosovo and
Serbia (http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/tolerance ).
it is easy to protest
when the bombs fall miles from the fridge
yet, we are still afraid
a trip to Disney World on the line
so what hundred children massacred a day
better to have less terrorists, right?
In this day and age of information overload modern society is in a state of data
deluge, and our brains are struggling to keep up with the demands of the
digital age (https://www.thersa.org/events/2015/01/thinking-straight-in-the-ageof-information-overload/ ). Moreover, the Media is not a neutral player, but an
instrument of the power elite. Thus, we are ripe for the simplifying power of
the sound bite (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_bite ) and the Media is
more than willing to provide us with a boogeyman
(http://www.salon.com/2015/11/11/ben_carson_rails_against_secular_progressiv
e_boogeyman_at_liberty_university/ ).
The neat and sharp-focused World offered by the establishment - where God is
on our side, and the others are evil Muslims and political correct Marxists
conspiring to take away our freedom and wealth- is compelling and comforting
(https://arnulfo.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/cultural-marxism/ ); we have the
firepower to do what needs to be done.
While the political ideology of the Tea Party is not an exact match of the
European fascism of the 1930s, there are troubling parallels between the
events that lead to the Second World War and the circumstances of the early
Twenty-First Century (https://arnulfo.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/fascism/ ).
Robert Paxton says that fascism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism ) is a
form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community
decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy,

and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants,

working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons
democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical
or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
The Tea Party movement shares with Fascism an obsessive preoccupation with
community decline, humiliation, and victimhood, as well as compensatory cults
of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed
nationalist militants embrace a credo of violence and ideology-driven armed
militias (https://arnulfo.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/the-oregon-militia/ ).
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of
patriots and tyrants:
Thomas Jefferson.

For Tea Partiers, the root of knowledge is a bedrock certainty about the Bible. This
provides them with clear, absolute answers and that much of what we see on earth
is a struggle between good and evil (https://arnulfo.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/aconversation-about-gun-control/ ).
When the 2012 Republican Party platform stated that we should reaffirm that
our rights come from God, that reflected a sincere and genuine sense of
bright-line natural law.
That kind of certainty in faith, which so often draws good/evil lines on theological
issues, very naturally supports a similar outlook on political issues that arent
directly rooted in the Bible. American conservatives tend both to see their
opponents as evil and to catastrophize potential political losses.
The ability of Government to keep the upper hand in the application of force is an
important factor in social stability. The primary function of Government is to
guarantee the Social Contract. The freedom to engage in seditious activities and
Social peace do not mix.

Gun owners tend to be among the political right, and Second Amendment support
is a common thread among Tea Party demonstrators. One of the fundamental
mantra of them is guns as a mechanism of check and balance against tyranny. It
sounds like sedition. There is a not only idle talk, there is a trail of actual terrorist
activity. The Hutterite militia in Michigan was planning to kill police officers but
they had not actually done anything violent before they were arrested, and their
ultimate goal was to war against the anti-Christ. Timothy McVeigh in 1995 blamed
the US Government for attacks against American citizens at Waco and Ruby Ridge.
The FBI is leading the investigation into the armed occupation of a federal wildlife
refuge in Oregon and says it will work with local and state authorities to seek a
peaceful resolution to the situation.
President Obama is aware of the Oregon situation, but the White House considers
it a local law enforcement matter, Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday.
The Southern Poverty Law Center said in a report on that standoff that the
militiamen and the federal land-return movement are part of the same spectrum.

Anti-government extremists have long pushed, most fiercely during Democratic

administrations, rabid conspiracy theories about a nefarious New World Order, a
socialist, gun-grabbing federal government and the evils of federal law
enforcement, the center said.
Law enforcement officials said that the occupiers came to the region with a specific
goal:
These men came to Harney County claiming to be part of militia groups
supporting local ranchers, Harney County Sheriff David M. Ward said in a
statement Sunday. When in reality these men had alternative motives, to attempt
to overthrow the county and federal government in hopes to spark a movement
across the United States.
The gun crowd likes to wax eloquent about protecting our natural rights with our
weapons when the government becomes unconstitutional, and all other avenues
have failed. They see themselves as law abiding insurrects that do not use violence
and have confidence in the ballot box, and that that ensure that the government
cant stray too far toward tyranny. It sounds like fools playing with fire. A fire that
will get us all burned.
In the NRAs world, we are only free to the extent that our guns allow us to impose
our will on others.
Dennis Henigan of the Brady Campaign, Gun Rights and Political Violence

More guns were sold in December 2015 than almost any other month in nearly two
decades, continuing a pattern of spikes in sales after terrorist attacks and calls for
stricter gun-buying laws, according to federal data released on Monday
(http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/10/us/gun-sales-terrorism-obamarestrictions.html ).
The heaviest sales last month, driven primarily by handgun sales, followed a call
from President Obama to make it harder to buy assault weapons after the terrorist
attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

Fear of gun-buying restrictions has been the main driver of spikes in gun sales, far
surpassing the effects of mass shootings and terrorist attacks alone, according to an
analysis of federal background check data by The New York Times.
During the previous record month, December 2012, President Obama called for
new buying restrictions after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Few political terrorists in recent history took as much care to articulate their
ideological influences and political views as Anders Behring Breivik did. The rightwing Norwegian Islamophobe. One of the most remarkable aspects of the
manifesto is the extent to which its European author quoted from the writings of
figures from the American conservative movement
(http://maxblumenthal.com/2011/08/americas-breivik-complex-how-state-terrorelectrifies-the-islamophobic-right ). Many of the American writers who influenced
Breivik spent years churning out calls for the mass murder of Muslims, Palestinians
and their left-wing Western supporters. American Islamophobes simply sit back
from the comfort of their homes and cheer as American and Israeli troops and
their remote-controlled aerial drones leave a trail of charred bodies from
Waziristan to Gaza City.
While Israel has sought to insulate itself from the legal ramifications of its attacks
on civilian life by deploying elaborate propaganda and intellectual sophistry
(witness the countrys frantic campaign to discredit the Goldstone Report), and the
United States has casually dismissed allegations of war crimes as any swaggering
superpower would (after a US airstrike killed scores of Afghan civilians, former US
CENTCOM chief David Petraeus baselessly claimed that Afghan parents had
deliberately burned their children alive to increase the death toll), the online
Islamophobes who inspired Breivik tacitly accept the reality of Israeli and
American state terror.
In American and Israeli society, Professional Terrorism is acceptable, whereas
Amateur Terrorism is absolutely the worlds greatest evil
(http://www.loonwatch.com/2011/08/gallup-poll-jews-and-christians-way-morelikely-than-muslims-to-justify-killing-civilians/ ). Amateur Terrorism provides the
justification for Professional Terrorism (this even though it is usually almost always
the case that Professional Terrorism started the cycle of violence). Those who have
the capability to carry out Professional Terrorism have absolutely no need to resort

to Amateur Terrorism since the former is so much more effective in killing civilians
than the latter.
Public Policy Polling asked Republicans if they would want to bomb the fictional
town of Agrabah in Disneys Aladdin movie
(http://www.loonwatch.com/2015/12/30-percent-of-republicans-want-to-bombaladdins-hometown-agrabah/ ).
These are the results:
Support bombing Agrabah 30%
Oppose bombing Agrabah 13%
Not sure 57%
In sharp contrast with Americans who identify themselves with other faith groups
(http://www.gallup.com/poll/148763/muslim-americans-no-justificationviolence.aspx ), Muslim Americans are more likely to say military attacks on
civilians are never justified (78%) than sometimes justified (21%). Respondents
from other faith groups, particularly Mormon Americans, are more likely to say
military attacks are sometimes justified than never justified. The opinions of
Americans who don't identify themselves with any religion are more in line with
those of Muslim Americans, but they are also more divided.
Gallup analysts (http://www.gallup.com/poll/157067/views-violence.aspx ) tested
correlations between the level at which populations say these attacks are
"sometimes justified" and a number of independent indicators, and they found
human development and societal stability measures are most strongly related.
Residents of the Organisation of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states are
slightly less likely than residents of non-member states to view military attacks on
civilians as sometimes justified, and about as likely as those of non-member states
to say the same about individual attacks.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSPvnFDDQHk]
Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.
Fox Newss Brian Kilmeade .
Per the 2013 State Departments report on terrorism, there were 399 acts of terror
committed by Israeli settlers in what are known as price tag attacks. These Jewish
terrorists attacked Palestinian civilians causing physical injuries to 93 of them and
also vandalized scores of mosques and Christian churches.
Back in the United States, the percentage of terror attacks committed by Muslims is
almost as miniscule as in Europe. An FBI study looking at terrorism committed on

U.S. soil between 1980 and 2005 found that 94 percent of the terror attacks were
committed by non-Muslims. In actuality, 42 percent of terror attacks were carried
out by Latino-related groups, followed by 24 percent perpetrated by extreme leftwing actors.
And as a 2014 study by University of North Carolina found, since the 9/11 attacks,
Muslim-linked terrorism has claimed the lives of 37 Americans. In that same time
period, more than 190,000 Americans were murdered (PDF).
A Muslim man was attacked by Piro Kolvani who decided he had to drive from
Florida to New York to beat on a Muslim (Kolvani was inspired by the NY Post
front covers). Kolvani viciously attacked Sarker Haque, who stated, I never saw a
situation like that. Not even after 9/11.
Yet, the conflict is not about religion nor race, but power (in the sociopathic sense)
and resources. Human activity is not driven by justice but by power. In a way,
justice is the right of the strong. One thing is rationalizations used to justify actions,
and another, real social and psychological motives behind. These ulterior motives
are not necessary explicit or even conscious.
All three religions - Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - in conflict share the same
core barbaric Bronze Age believes sated in the Hebrew Bible, and all pick and
choose whats convenient to their respective social order. Whether one is consider a
Christian or a Muslim is more an accident of geography or ethnicity, than a
reflection of actual belief. That is, religion is mainly a marker of cultural identity.
Israel, for all the talk about being a Jewish state is in practice rather secular.
Although the idea of a vibrant queer community in Israel, reputed birthplace of the
biblical condemnation of same-sex relations, may seem far-fetched, Israel today is
one of the worlds most progressive countries in terms of equality for sexual
minorities. Politically, legally, and culturally, the community has moved from life at
the margins of Israeli society to visibility and growing acceptance
(http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/homosexuality-in-israel/ ).
Many Israelis are not Semitic (http://www.livescience.com/40247-ashkenazi-jewshave-european-genes.html ). While Ashkenazi Jews have a long tradition in
Judaism, they cannot claim a bloodline from David, which is a mythological figure
anyway (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/davidjer.html ).
The scourge of Islamic fundamentalism is a monster created by the same people
crying wolf (https://arnulfo.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/the-islamic-state/ ).
The modern Islamic fundamentalist movements have their origins in the late 19th
century. The Wahhabi movement, an Arabian fundamentalist movement that

began in the 18th century, gained traction and spread during the 19th and 20th
centuries. During the Cold War following World War II, some NATO governments,
particularly those of the United States and the United Kingdom, launched covert
and overt campaigns to encourage and strengthen fundamentalist groups in the
Middle East and southern Asia. These groups were seen as a hedge against
potential expansion by the Soviet Union, and as a means to prevent the growth of
nationalistic movements that were not necessarily favorable toward the interests of
the Western nations. By the 1970s the Islamists had become important allies in
supporting governments, such as Egypt, which were friendly to U.S. interests. In
many cases the military wings of these groups were supplied with money and arms
by the U.S. (https://arnulfo.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/religion-and-terrorism/ ).
Regardless of the machinations behind the current crisis in the Middle East, its
effects will unsettle the whole World, including the US and Europe
(http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-roots-of-the-migration-crisis-1441995372 ). The
Syrian refugee disaster presents a dilemma to the West. A massive influx of
refugees into any country compromises its social and economic stability but the
crisis cannot be ignored in humanitarian and practical grounds. Furthermore, the
rise of religious fundamentalism (of all flavors: Christian, Muslim, or Jewish) is a
treat to the long term viability of modern society.
Humans are social animals and its our natural instinct to be emphatic with others.
Its natural for us to bond by kinship. Unfortunately the same tribal instinct
hampers our ability to recognize the essential and vital global brotherhood of man.
We cling to nationality, religion, and many artificial walls we build around us that
compromise our chances for long term survival
(https://arnulfo.wordpress.com/2015/12/12/merry-xmas/ ).

We must overcome our fears and reach out for peace. To live or die together is the
choice.