It is really difficult for me to empathize with the people who are threatening to kill people over this. I honestly can't think of a similar situation where a cartoon would want to make me kill someone. Maybe I am the weird one here. Who knows. But institutionalized theocracy has done some very odd things throughout history and it's really not even worth trying to justify the actions of extremist groups anymore. If southpark hasn't offended you at some point you haven't watched enough episodes. I think people need to grow some thicker skin... but maybe that's the easy thing to say here.

I think it depends on the situation. In my opinion, the most reasonable healthcare system would have “socialized” or “universal” (depending on what political party you are) for large scale, life threatening procedures while the day-to-day stuff should get covered by the private stuff. I think that would alleviate a lot of the downsides to either system done by themselves. I think this is exactly what should be done with illegals. I don't feel the need to burden the taxpayers with an illegal's nonemergency care, but are you really going to turn someone away and let them die because they can't afford the are?

When someone close to you passes, it is painful. It hurts. You don't grieve because you “should” grieve or that its expected for you to grieve. You had a strong emotional connection with that person and you just realized that person is no longer alive, and thats a very strong emotionally disturbing feeling. You do not choose to feel it. You just do. If you need to take time off it's not a vacation out of respect its time you need for the sake of your psychological welfare.
So, asking people to get upset over deaths in some other part of the globe is a nice ideal. It is nice to feel respect for other people. But it is also insincere. There is no one in Haiti or China I have a strong connection to. I can feel bad and donate money and time after these disasters but am I really that emotionally shaken? Honestly, not really. I think people that say that but do not know anyone there are really being insincere. I am not saying that I do not care. But, my life is going on with or without me. It's selfish for me to worry about my exams while people have recently died? Really? If I don't care about my exams I fail my classes and this entire college experience becomes pointless. I have a lot of pressure to do well and I do not have the luxury of being able to slack off so I can exaggerate how bad I feel about people dying hundreds of miles away. People die every day. Around 115 people die in car accidents everyday in the United States. In the time you have taken to do your race relations homework this week, a couple people have tragically lost their lives. Are you really immediately emotionally devastated?
A resounding theme I have seen in this class, especially in comments on this blog, is how people should or should not “feel bad.” Can someone explain to me how “feeling bad” helps or solves any issue? I really started noticing it during the native american discussions. People were discussing why everyone in the United States should “feel bad” because they are staying on native american land. Conversely, some argued that their ancestors were not in the United States at the time the land was taken so they did not, in fact, need to “feel bad.” Is that situation tragic? Sure. Are there important issues here that should be resolved? Sure. IS there something we can do? Maybe. Does that thing need to involve “feeling bad?” Why? This has got to be some of the most misguided discussions I have ever seen in my life.

I think we could have avoided this situation a little bit. There has been a lot of anger towards the americans because iraqi's see specific tragic events like civilian tragedies and decided to retaliate. I saw a talk a while ago that had a good idea on how this war should have been handled. Unfortunatly I do not remember the name of the person who was speaking. He said that the war should have been multinational in a different sense, where the Americans do what the do best, destroy enemy combatants, and other people send a force specialized in rebuilding and counter insurgency takes over after. People wouldn't be able to take anger out on the second force due to animosity towards the first one.

I think the arabs have a fairly legitimate complaint in regards to this situation. If my understanding on this is correct, which it may not be since I have not taken a history class in a while, Israel was formed under shady conditions from the arabic perspective. After WWI the balfour declaration esentially created a state in the middle east for western zionists. I can see how animosity is created in situations like that. If the United Arab Emirates was just like “hey we're gonna go ahead and take Florida OK?” a lot of americans would be pretty pissed off. At that to the fact that it was formerly the Ottoman empire in WWI, which was on the losing side of the war. I am sure that contributed to a lot of anger too. So the end result was a whole bunch of wars with the West siding with Israel and the Islamic world siding with Palestine.
While I am sympathetic to the cause of the palestinians, I am fairly certain this situation could have been handled more peacefully. Now, that Israel has been inhabited by the Jewish people for so long they are considered that natives of the country. So, I believe the palestinians should have their home land returned. However, they can not simply kick everyone out. The people in Israel are mostly native borns now, why would they leave? Some of the extremists are calling for straight up genocide. Obviously, people like this have been getting in the way of the peace process for decades. That is why I only see one solution to the issue. Compromising to a two state agreement would be peaceful and allow both the Jewish and Arab people to live in Israel.
I think a big thing getting in the way are the extremists on both sides. Some of the westerners are unwilling to listen to any of the arabic people. Some of the middle easterns are unwilling accept the israelis on their land. Each side is polarizing each other. They become farther to the extreme as the see the other side doing the same, preventing a rational solution. Even when Egypt tried to reach a solution, it was ostracized in the Islamic world. That was viewed as a huge step towards peace, which it was considering Egypt's historical willingness to go to war with Israel throughout the mid 20th century, but there is a lot left to be done. Firstly, Islamic fundamentalism need to stop being institutionalized by middle eastern governments. Having religious leaders with legitmate power really destabilizes the region in my opinion. They have too much authority over people without any checks, leading to a lot of corruption. But, I do recognize this might not be feasible. Hopefully things get better.

Oh my, Japan. This is kind of messed up. But, to be honest, it is really not fair to vilify the Japanese for this. I doubt it is that huge of an thing there. The section of the video game store was a general porn game section, not specific to “rape games” or whatever you would like to call that genre. It also said the developer was shamed into pulling the last game with the subway station. Some of the comments here make it sound like this is a rampant disease spreading all over japan turning innocent children into horrible sexual predators or whatever. It is also not fair to solely blame japan for this kind of behavior. If you have ever been to a website like /b/ on 4chan, your faith I the rest of humanity will be just as washed away fairly quickly. I think a place like Japan has the unique position of being technologically advanced, economically successful internationally, but maybe a little lagged behind socially as far as gender relations. I think this possible for this to be able to be legal, commercially successful product. This issue raises two questions for me: Clearly some people have some fetishes that they are willing to spend their money on. At what point does something go from being acceptable to society (as far as something sexual can be) to being evil and deviant? Also, what role does a federal government have in regulating and censoring media, pornographic or not?
As far as the sexual taboos, I can see both sides. I personally think it is wrong to make a porn centered around raping a girl on a subway train. But, clearly, some people do not. If that is their thing, who am I to tell them it can not be? Sexuality is not something that can be altered or successfully repressed. Maybe it could be helpful for them to explore whatever fantasies they have in some bizarre video game instead of letting it build up to the point where they are considering doing it for real. The “girls” in these games are temporary zeros and ones, not real people who could become psychologically scarred for life as a victim of sexual violence if one of these people let their deviancy (for lack of a better word) get out of their control. Are these games extremely distasteful? Yes. Are they hurting anyone? I do not think they are.
As far as government censorship, I am always reluctant to recommend a type of media. Age restrictions are one thing, but outright banning something on the basis of subject matter? I do not like the precedent that sets up. These games are crass and obscene to the point of absurdity but there are legitimate pieces of art in literature and cinema that do deal with themes of sexual violence. If these games should be banned, Should those be too? How do we define those outside of these?

Ethnocentrism is specific to culture or ethnicity but I do agree with the general principle. It is important to examine our own values and be honest and unbiased about our life and values. I grew up raised in a very conservative religion and accepted it without question until the church I belonged to had a couple controversies in which I was prompted to reexamine my values and my upbringing. I saw a lot of biases in myself, my peers, and my church leaders. This is maybe a controversial example but I think I am a better, more free person now that I have seen this.

I think in some ways white people's hands are tied because of this concept of white guilt. As mentioned over and over again in lecture, there is a societal norm that white people are reluctant to even mention race. So making an insult based on race from a white people is very very taboo, while a racial insult made by a black person is less controversial. I think this is an annoying social convention. I like Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle stand up but at some point it gets old. This is why we need to revise our core values.

It is really difficult to see why this bill has caused such a hugely impassioned and borderline violent response from the right. Increasing taxes is hardly unprecedented and in my lifetime has never evoked such a bombastic hyperbole of a response. People have been so absurd about exaggerating the impact of this. The entire country is not going to disintegrate because of this.
Even if we are going to take the stance that state's rights constitutional are being violated, this is hardly the first time that a questionable policy has gone into place. While we are on the subject of the right, wing does anyone remember wire tapping? The country did not go absolutely crazy over this even though that seems to me a little more indicative of a suspiciously powerful government. Let us keep going with this. Who were those wonderful gentlemen who wanted to amend the Constitution to permanently ban gay marriage? That is somehow a federal issue but this is not? Abortion? Stem Cell research? Gosh, shouldn't these things “be left up to the states?”
But we're not really here about health care, are we? We are holding signs threatening violence, yelling out racial slurs. We are not here to hold rational mature discussions on budgets or the economic impacts of tax rates. We are just inexplicably infuriated. “Fucking idiot liberals and their communist agenda” (Actual direct quote from an acquaintance of mine). So lets throw bricks into some windows and call it civic activism.
So where is this magnificent magnitude of malice coming from? Could it be bitterness about the election? When Obama took office I saw a somewhat similar outcry of infuriated paranoia. Not to be too critical of conservatives; if one more liberal had told me they wanted to move to Canada in October 2004 I might have thrown up. So conservative politicians and media have been simultaneous trying to prevent Obama from doing anything and criticizing him for not doing anything ever since. This was a politically bad one to let past the goalie. Politics has become a competition.
Or, perhaps, this is misguided McCarthyism. Ever since Hillary Clinton even thought about considering maybe running in the primaries for the 2008 election the right has started bringing back “socialist” as an insult. They haven't slowed down since. Why would they? Socialism sounds evil enough. Well, when socialism isn't throwing peasants into the gulags and threatening democracy across the world, it can also be found residing in many of our economic policies. If we are defining socialism as any slight deviation from pure laissez faire open market capitalism, we have all been dirty freedom-hating commies since the industrial age. Interstate highways? Department of Health? FDA? Labor unions? How can we even live with ourselves?

You said bringing pollution was a bad thing. To an extent it is, but oil drilling and refining is and has been an integral part of our economy for a very long time. I do not think that is a valid reason to view this as a bad thing. If we stopped drilling for oil, we'd run out. If we ran out, our society would stop, in a very literal sense. So, we should just be glad this community can benefit from this so greatly. This will have a huge impact in a lot of people's lives for generations.