re: #77 LudwigVanQuixote

Yet another big difference is that frankly, Irish people are vastly more civilized than most cultures in the M.E. You simply can not look at a culture that thinks that honor killings are just fine, or that public decapitation is a family event to take a picnic to, through Western eyes and think that such people will be just like Westerners.

When somebody decides to murder innocent civilians for political reasons, I don’t care what else they do or don’t do that you like or don’t like. Terrorists are terrorists. Murderers are murderers. IMO, honor killings should be treated as hate crimes. When you start saying one culture is better than another based not on how the best of them behave but rather on how the worst of them behave, that’s just cherry-picking your way towards racism.

And yeah, people in the West have taken family picnics to beheadings. Ever hear of the French Revolution? The century after that it was witches (again), and in the last century it was black people swinging from trees. But that’s better because it uses a rope instead of a blade, I suppose?