Eliza says: "In my view (not worth a lot I realise) bitter and frenzied argument can take place, and be stimulating and interesting, IF people hold tightly to an underlying civility and goodwill, agree to differ, 'shake hands' and be friendly in spite of their opposing standpoints. That, by the way Joe, is a traditional British way of behaving, even if somewhat diluted nowadays."

And Musket, not to be undone, says (21 Apr 14 - 04:43 AM): "No, sorry Eliza. On this one, niceties don't work. Both our countries have a proud past of confronting bigotry and slowly but surely killing sections of it off. We have people on this website who are free to propagate hatred towards others, question the right of some people to exist and then call those who question them the fascists."

Eliza, I like your approach far better - and in the long run, I think it's far more effective.

-Joe

Cor, I haven't even posted to this thread yet and I've been named in it twice. Nice!

Joe, we have a record of some of us trying to confront some bigotry and failing abysmally, at times, because we vacillate and we refuse to properly take it on. You live in a country which is supposed to have espoused "civil rights" decades ago, yet your schools in the South are getting more and more segregated and your social inequality gets worse and worse by the year. Never think that letting people mix on buses is the answer to anything. White supremacy rules as it always did in your country as it does in mine as it does in South Africa as it does (par excellence, defended here by more than one very nasty man) in Israel. When I see some of you lot being rather nice to pete, Keith, Ake, Goofus, bobad and one or two others, and telling us good guys off for having a bloody good bash at them because you think we're being not quite nice, I think of that bloke in 1938 waving that piece of paper at us Brits as he got off that plane from Germany. Accommodation with bigots is not just useless, it's a bloody sight worse than that. In effect, the mods here have sided with some serious bigots. Maybe they didn't mean to (but who knows - by their fruits...)