SweeTea said:[quote]

IceNine said:

You are very logical!

Do you teach a course in logic at a major university? I only ask because your reasoning and analytical skills are nothing short of top-notch!

:LOL:

Hi guys,

I'm sorry but I think this thread really needs to be locked now, it isn't going anywhere. I'm sure you'll agree!

There have been some very good posts from lots of people - for example NuPwrSoul, IceNine, SweetTea, Tommyalma - but alas it wasn't enough to keep it from descending into flame war

I'm not convinced it is helpful in any intelligent discourse to label ANYONE as a "this" or a "that". If someone IS a racist in some way (and we all have our own elements of bigotry and our own prejudices, since none of us are born in a vacuum!) that is one thing, but someone spreading their racist dogma or defending their racist viewpoint is generally something that will be deleted from the Org. It's against the rules, mainly because people have proven time and time again that they are incapable of discussion such contentious issues without losing their tempers. I'd include myself in that, based on some threads we had on the old Org, haha.

It was an impossible task really - if someone DOES hold racist views and puts them on the Org, we will remove them. Those are the rules, and they're there for a reason

Lessons learned from this thread:

• When someone criticises your statements and you can't defend them, just admit it and consider switching to a side of the argument you can get along better with. The alternative is getting angry at being pushed into a corner as SweetTea was and end up calling someone a "motherfucker" and sending abuse. This only serves to make yourself look unintelligent and incapable of choosing a side of an argument and defending it.
  
• When someone you are arguing with expresses some extremist views and is unable to defend them, rather than labelling that person and hounding them for the rest of the thread - why not just realise "hey, I've won that battle" and move on to the next topic of discussion. When tommyalma and IceNine made it clear that no one was going to be able to defend SweetTea's "perceived" racist comments, the best thing to do would have been to realise that part of the conversation was done and move the topic back to Farrakhan. A few people tried to do it unsuccessfully (like NuPwrSoul) so thanks for trying to keep the chat flowing.
  

Locking it now, thanks for playing

PS I feel like I'm Jerry Spring doing his "final thought" here...