I can see both sides of the coin on this one.
And being one of those Lutherans who wasn't responsible for St. Bartholomew's Night Massacre, I can also see some shrillness in reply.
Racial profiling, as they call it now, is still quite rampant. I'll go one step further and say that it's even encouraged since 9/11/01. Who encourages it? I transited Orlando International Airport the other week enroute to Omaha. Were I of Middle-Eastern descent, I could be GUARANTEED to have extra attention given to my luggage and person.
Security and Law Enforcement still keep a wary eye for people, innocent or otherwise, who match a certain profile. As I'm carrying an M9 or M16 on my monthly Security Forces augmentee duty, I get to read briefings on potential threats that include sightings and possible "casing" of my installation by people of a certain ethnicity. That's bad. Really bad, because it's targeting a certain group of people. Timothy McVeigh wasn't Arab or Muslim, but he did the unthinkable, too.
The deal with your poster, Oleg, is that it's a sensitive topic, even 8+ months after the terrorist attacks. More sensitive, right now, than even the standard 2nd Amendment fare. Maybe too sensitive for some folks who don't need to be, or particularly care to be, reminded of last fall's events.
Your "in-your-face" style of posters are always very good at getting the message across to the readers. That's commendable, heck, even the anti's are starting to use them, a somewhat insincere form of flattery if ever there was. But the shock value still can hit the wrong nerve, even if it was carefully designed from the start to avoid such a happening.
I know, I know, if I don't like the message, I can surf another website or forum. Nobody's forcing me to look at the poster. If the slew of TFL moderator backup/support is indicative of how we're supposed to think on this forum, dissenting viewpoints may be a thing of the past, at least, or highly disencouraged. I'm well aware of the Nisei relocation camps. After 16+ years of military service I need not be reminded by a forum moderator of how wartime history goes. I'm also aware of the fact that it was a wartime contingency, against a known enemy. The American people of the time authorized their President (FDR) to conduct such a campaign in an effort to bring a quicker end to the war. Same for the A-Bomb. Were either of them the right thing to do? At the time, they were. It saved U.S. GI's lives. Here in 2002, in the middle of another war, we're paying for our sins of the past, the Nisei camps, Native American relocation, even businesses who had a beginning during the slave trade. Do I think we're gonna repeat such relocations in the current war against terrorism? Probably not. Some might say it's already started in Guantanamo Bay. Maybe history's bound to repeat itself after all...
I don't like the profiling and hatred toward our fellow humans. But when tasked to keep an eye open for suspicious persons who fit a certain description, I'll continue to do my duty as sworn. It's hard to keep the two mindsets separate. I feel sorry for the folks whose job requires them to arrest and apprehend people who fit such a description, while maintaining decorum and objectivity. I'd be the first to buy them a drink, the stresses must be astounding.
