Tuesday, December 8, 2015

How many dead Americans are you willing to pay?

In order to permit Muslims to live in the West? Scott Adams calls out the virtue-signalers:

I propose that instead of calling fellow citizens racists or idiots we do a deeper dive into the risks and put a price tag on our preference for religious intolerance. If the risk of future terror attacks is tiny, most of us would prefer maintaining our respect for religious differences.

But if the risk is more than tiny, can you put a price on your love of religious tolerance? In other words, how many dead Americans are you willing to accept? I’ll go first.

Personally, I would accept up to 1,000 dead Americans, over a ten-year period, to allow Muslim non-citizens to enter this country. My calculation assumes we are better off accepting some degree of tragedy in the name of freedom. That is often the case with freedom.

If you believe there is no risk from allowing Muslim immigration to continue as is, please explain that thinking in the comments. I have not seen that argument yet.

And if you believe there is some risk of a Muslim terrorist slipping through our current system of screening, what level of American deaths do you consider an acceptable tradeoff?

And keep in mind that you are not offering to die for freedom, since your personal odds of dying in a terror attack are negligible. What you are offering is a higher risk that other people will die so you can live in a country with uncontested religious freedom.

My answer is straightforward: Zero. We don't have uncontested religious freedom; we already have people refusing to let Christians on sports teams freely pray. That being the case, we Christians have absolutely no duty to abide any religion or religious practice of which we don't approve.

As The Duck observed on Twitter: "If you told American colonists they had to allow mosques because religious diversity they would have laughed, then tarred & feathered you."

Vox Popoli: How many dead Americans are you willing to pay?
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/134791529391/risk-management-trump-persuasion-series